Mémoire et manipulation dans The House in Paris d’Elizabeth Bowen
In an article dealing with the problem of nostalgia in post-World War II Britain, Elizabeth Bowen made a comment that seems particularly apt for her writing as a whole: « […] the past is veiled from us by illusion – our own illusion. It is that which we seek. It is not the past, but the idea of the...
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| Vydáno v: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| Hlavní autor: | |
| Médium: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Jazyk: | Français |
| Vydáno: |
Études britanniques contemporaines
2019
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| On-line přístup: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Shrnutí: | In an article dealing with the problem of nostalgia in post-World War II Britain, Elizabeth Bowen made a comment that seems particularly apt for her writing as a whole: « […] the past is veiled from us by illusion – our own illusion. It is that which we seek. It is not the past, but the idea of the past which draws us » (« The Bend Back », Bowen 1986, 58). The relation between memory and illusion, and the underlying desire not for an impossible reality, but for what is inevitably representation, are clearly reflected in the author’s novel The House in Paris. Indeed, the attraction of memory, present in the very structure of the text (the book is divided into three sections, the Present, the Past, and the Present, the last of which takes up where the first left off), contrasts with the story itself, where the characters show a marked suspicion of memory and its subversive influence. Through this contradiction among others, Bowen posits the essentially ambiguous nature of memory: the recall of the past is necessary both within the diegesis and as a narrative strategy, but it is a siren call, invariably heeded and necessarily dangerous, which shapes the perception of the present, while insidiously changing the vision of the past. In The House in Paris, as in many of Bowen’s novels, memory and manipulation are inextricable, both for the characters, and for the reader. |
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