Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea
When the narrator of The Sea returns after fifty years to the place by the sea where his years of childhood had come to a tragic end, he notes that his sense of the uncanny is unorthodox, since its origin is not, or not chiefly, the presence around him of the ghosts from the past, but the aura surro...
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| Publicado no: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc, |
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| Formato: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Idioma: | Anglais |
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Études britanniques contemporaines
2019
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| Acesso em linha: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:ebc_7225 |
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openedition |
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openedition-oai:revues.org:ebc_7225 https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.7225 urn:doi:10.4000/ebc.7225 en https://journals.openedition.org/ebc/7225 2019-06-17T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/fe9k https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea Études britanniques contemporaines Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2271-5444 info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/1168-4917 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc Vitoux, Pierre When the narrator of The Sea returns after fifty years to the place by the sea where his years of childhood had come to a tragic end, he notes that his sense of the uncanny is unorthodox, since its origin is not, or not chiefly, the presence around him of the ghosts from the past, but the aura surrounding the new world he had discovered in his innocence. But the reader finds itertextual clues in the text to solve the apparent paradox. They refer him to Freud’s description of the unending struggle of the ego to maintain a coherent personality, and also to his early speculations in his essay ‘The ‘Uncanny’ ‘ about what he will call the death instinct. That instinct is intertextually related in the novel to the ‘high instincts’, the ‘intimations of immortality’ of Wordsworth’s Ode, but as their obverse, so that the myth of the birth out of the sea is here steeped in the mood of serene disenchantment characteristic of the ironic mode of post-Romantic fiction. Quand le narrateur de The Sea retourne cinquante ans plus tard aux lieux en bord de mer où ses années d’enfance ont connu une fin tragique, il note que pour lui le sentiment de ‘l’Inquiétante étrangeté’, contrairement à sa définition officielle, naît moins de la présence autour de lui des fantômes du passé que de l’aura enveloppant le monde nouveau découvert pendant les années d’innocence. Mais le lecteur découvre les indices qui lui permettent de résoudre au fil du texte cet apparent paradoxe. Ils le renvoient à l’analyse par Freud de la lutte sans terme de l’ego pour maintenir la cohérence de la personnalité dans le jeu de forces contraires, et aussi à ses premières remarques sur ce qu’il appellera l’instinct de mort. Le roman relie cet instinct au thème de la mer comme origine de la vie humaine tel qu’il apparaît dans l’ode ‘Intimations of Immortality’ de Wordsworth, mais dans une relation intertextuelle d’opposition, situant le mythe de la naissance hors des flots dans un climat de désenchantement caractéristique du mode de l’Ironie qui est celui du roman post-Romantique. |
| collection |
OpenEdition Journal |
| language |
Anglais |
| format |
Article ou chapitre numérique |
| building |
0/Bibliothèque numérique/ 1/Bibliothèque numérique/OpenEdition Journals/ |
| description |
When the narrator of The Sea returns after fifty years to the place by the sea where his years of childhood had come to a tragic end, he notes that his sense of the uncanny is unorthodox, since its origin is not, or not chiefly, the presence around him of the ghosts from the past, but the aura surrounding the new world he had discovered in his innocence. But the reader finds itertextual clues in the text to solve the apparent paradox. They refer him to Freud’s description of the unending struggle of the ego to maintain a coherent personality, and also to his early speculations in his essay ‘The ‘Uncanny’ ‘ about what he will call the death instinct. That instinct is intertextually related in the novel to the ‘high instincts’, the ‘intimations of immortality’ of Wordsworth’s Ode, but as their obverse, so that the myth of the birth out of the sea is here steeped in the mood of serene disenchantment characteristic of the ironic mode of post-Romantic fiction. |
| author |
Vitoux, Pierre |
| spellingShingle |
Vitoux, Pierre Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea |
| author_facet |
Vitoux, Pierre |
| author_sort |
Vitoux, Pierre |
| title |
Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea |
| title_short |
Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea |
| title_full |
Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea |
| title_fullStr |
Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Ghosts in John Banville’s The Sea |
| title_sort |
ghosts in john banville’s the sea |
| publisher |
Études britanniques contemporaines |
| publishDate |
2019 |
| container_title |
URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc |
| url |
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.7225 https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/ebc/7225 |
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