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Démonstratifs insolents. De quelques emplois du démonstratif dans le texte célinien

1998; Éditions Larousse; Volume: 120; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3406/lfr.1998.6273

1957-7982

Jean Bénard,

Diverse Cultural and Historical Studies

Johanne Benard : Some specific uses of demonstratives in Céline's texts. This article studies three different uses of the demonstrative in two novels by Louis-Ferdinand Céline. It argues that, in the three cases, the demonstrative cannot be reduced to its usual anaphoric and deictic values. First, I demonstrate that in the context of what one critic has described as a "deixis imitative" (for Guignol's band), the demonstrative has an exclamatory value. Secondly, I analyse the demonstrative with the "nom de qualité » , showing that in a text which is full of insults (like in the war novel Casse-pipe), the demonstrative and the definite are interchangeable. Thirdly, I examine the demonstrative in an excerpt written in the « style indirect libre », where it signals a double enunciation.