La place de l’instance narrative

Abstract in English:

This article locates authorial voice in Isabelle de Charrière by analyzing its paradoxical role in her novel Trois Femmes. This novel is organized by continual breaks in narrative voice, addressee, and modes of narration: whereas the “Première Partie” uses a male narrative voice to recounts a third-person narrative, the “Seconde Partie” switches to an epistolary mode that includes multiple narrators who address a single male confidant. Finally, the story concludes with a female narrator, who takes up the storyline in a first-person confessional form. Through the use of multiple narrative lenses, Trois femmes questions the role of authority traditionally ascribed to the narrator, thereby rendering problematic the very notion of authorship. This article shows how Trois femmes permits Isabelle de Charrière an occasion to explore the different possibilities of narrative voice, and, significantly, the role that “sexual difference” plays in narrative forms of enunciation.

SvD, July 2008

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• Publications > Belle de Zuylen Papers > 2007 > Hakim