Language, Literature, and Culture

Hésitation, déchiffrement, et le rôle de l'adolescente dans le récit fantastique de la fin du dix-neuvième siècle

Document Type

Article

Abstract

This article examines the role of deciphering and hesitation in the reading of late 19th-century fantastic texts, especially as they relate to the role of the young woman in the texts. It is argued that parallels can be drawn between the male gaze upon the adolescent character and the gaze of the reader upon the fantastic text itself. The female adolescent character represents the ambiguous space between childhood and adulthood, an ambiguity that is often figured as androgyny. She also represents a certain threatened innocence. Works by Théophile Gautier and Henry James provide the basis for this analysis of the relationship between deciphering, hesitation and the female adolescent character in the fantastic text. They present characters who are themselves "reading" events occurring around them, and can refuse to see, misinterpret what they see, or willfully misread the signs around them. The characters are also themselves being "read," both by other characters and by the reader of the text. It is finally the reader who must decide what he or she is seeing/reading, despite the often misleading or ambiguous information contained therein. © 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.

Publication Title

Neophilologus

Publication Date

10-2007

Volume

91

Issue

4

First Page

555

Last Page

564

ISSN

0028-2677

DOI

10.1007/s11061-007-9051-2

Keywords

adolescence, decoding, fantastic, French, hesitation, literature, nineteenth-Century, tales

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