Le français dans l’écriture conradienne

Conrad chose English, his third language, to write some of the masterpieces of literature in English, yet French was familiar to him and remarkably mastered by him from an early age. His knowledge and practice of the language have long been extensively documented from his childhood to his four-year...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Claude Maisonnat
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée 2013-09-01
Series:Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/cve/959
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1832581248370868224
author Claude Maisonnat
author_facet Claude Maisonnat
author_sort Claude Maisonnat
collection DOAJ
description Conrad chose English, his third language, to write some of the masterpieces of literature in English, yet French was familiar to him and remarkably mastered by him from an early age. His knowledge and practice of the language have long been extensively documented from his childhood to his four-year stay in Marseille and the numerous letters he wrote in French to friends, family, fellow writers and translators during his whole life. The aim of this essay is to show that although he never wrote a line of fiction in French, the latter is omnipresent not only in his fiction, through characters, locations, dialogues, quotations, intertextual borrowings, but most of all in the highly idiosyncratic medium of his prose, mainly in the guise of Gallicisms and occasionally erroneous loan translations. The result is that French is essential to his art in so far as it provides a constant challenge to the master discourse of the authorial voice and thus constitutes the basis of the poetic dimension of his prose based on the Lacanian notion of lalangue, as if French acted as a surrogate maternal language.
format Article
id doaj-art-926a033387e24aa0b2bca6a147522496
institution Kabale University
issn 0220-5610
2271-6149
language English
publishDate 2013-09-01
publisher Presses Universitaires de la Méditerranée
record_format Article
series Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
spelling doaj-art-926a033387e24aa0b2bca6a1475224962025-01-30T10:21:51ZengPresses Universitaires de la MéditerranéeCahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens0220-56102271-61492013-09-017810.4000/cve.959Le français dans l’écriture conradienneClaude MaisonnatConrad chose English, his third language, to write some of the masterpieces of literature in English, yet French was familiar to him and remarkably mastered by him from an early age. His knowledge and practice of the language have long been extensively documented from his childhood to his four-year stay in Marseille and the numerous letters he wrote in French to friends, family, fellow writers and translators during his whole life. The aim of this essay is to show that although he never wrote a line of fiction in French, the latter is omnipresent not only in his fiction, through characters, locations, dialogues, quotations, intertextual borrowings, but most of all in the highly idiosyncratic medium of his prose, mainly in the guise of Gallicisms and occasionally erroneous loan translations. The result is that French is essential to his art in so far as it provides a constant challenge to the master discourse of the authorial voice and thus constitutes the basis of the poetic dimension of his prose based on the Lacanian notion of lalangue, as if French acted as a surrogate maternal language.https://journals.openedition.org/cve/959translationFrench languageGallicismsConrad (Joseph)linguistic inventionFrench intertextuality
spellingShingle Claude Maisonnat
Le français dans l’écriture conradienne
Cahiers Victoriens et Edouardiens
translation
French language
Gallicisms
Conrad (Joseph)
linguistic invention
French intertextuality
title Le français dans l’écriture conradienne
title_full Le français dans l’écriture conradienne
title_fullStr Le français dans l’écriture conradienne
title_full_unstemmed Le français dans l’écriture conradienne
title_short Le français dans l’écriture conradienne
title_sort le francais dans l ecriture conradienne
topic translation
French language
Gallicisms
Conrad (Joseph)
linguistic invention
French intertextuality
url https://journals.openedition.org/cve/959
work_keys_str_mv AT claudemaisonnat lefrancaisdanslecritureconradienne