War palimpsests: Latin intertext in Claude Simon

• Grant number: 14/01905-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: May 01, 2014
• End date: May 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Comparative Literature
• Principal Investigator: Sandra Margarida Nitrini
• Grantee: Daniel Falkemback Ribeiro
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil

Abstract

The idea is analyzing the intertextual relations in the Claude Simon's novel La bataille de Pharsale (1969), especially the presence of the Latin intertext. By its title, which reminds us the final combat of the Second Roman Civil War (49-45 b.C.), we can notice this intertextuality. Throughout Simon's text, there are also some excerpts in Latin in some points, besides other graphically marked quotations from the French culture that are elaborated in different ways (such as Marcel Proust's quotes, pastiches of radio announcements and May 1968 protesters sayings). In the first part of the novel, for example, it is possible to read passages that come from Caesar's Commentarii de bello ciuili, although they do not have any indications of their origin. Thus, the Latin text becomes part of the French text not by the linguistic aspect, but by the literary criteria. According to Gérard Genette's Palimpsestes, there is also the possibility of saying that works like Caesar's text or Lucan's epic poem Bellum ciuile are hipotexts for what we would call the Simonian hypertext. Therefore, they would be models for the textual creation, just like Homer's Odyssey is considered for Joyce's Ulysses. The presence of this Latin intertext does not seem to be just a quotation, as we could affirm on Caesar's passages, because it seems to act like a way of production of a new narrative, which wants to think again the form of the novel by a new perspective of time.

Academic Publications

(References retrieved automatically from State of São Paulo Research Institutions)

RIBEIRO, Daniel Falkemback. War palimpsests: the Latin intertext in Claude Simon. 2015. Master's Dissertation - Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD) São Paulo.