Le Réel dans le texte : lecture et interprétation de la figure de Bartleby le scribe
The short story “Bartleby The Scrivener. A Story of Wall Street” raises questions about reading and literary interpretation. Using approaches where language is the object or means of knowledge (rhetoric, etymology, psychoanalysis, pragmatics) along with writings from Herman Melville, we aim to consider what is represented by Bartleby, who is often described as unaccountable. This very word structures the study. The first part of the thesis examines this word, taken as a whole or broken down into morphemes, as conveying universes of meaning in which Bartleby appears as marginal, short-circuiting diverse systems: the universe of language (unaccountable), the universe of the law (count) and the universe of the numbers (account, count). The second part links the implicit threads of meaning thus revealed to the theme of the strange and unexplainable (unaccountable), explicit in the text, allowing for interpretations bearing on the world of literary texts, their conveyance and circulation through reading and interpretation.
Bartleby "Unaccountable" Bartleby Reading Interpretation Text addressee Negation Text as object Circulation of the signifiers Unaccountable