The « Signalman » de Dickens – ou le crime sans châtiment

In this short story, Dickens is commonly supposed to have tried his hand at the fantastic, writing a ghost story both gripping and enigmatic: a nightmarish atmosphere, the fatal encounter of a middle class narrator visiting a working class signalman, a pathetic ending, the hand of fate itself… We ch...

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מידע ביבליוגרפי
הוצא לאור ב:URI:https://journals.openedition.org/jsse,
מחבר ראשי: Gilbert, Bernard
פורמט: Article ou chapitre numérique
שפה:Français
יצא לאור: Journal of the Short Story in English 2004
גישה מקוונת:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
תיאור
סיכום:In this short story, Dickens is commonly supposed to have tried his hand at the fantastic, writing a ghost story both gripping and enigmatic: a nightmarish atmosphere, the fatal encounter of a middle class narrator visiting a working class signalman, a pathetic ending, the hand of fate itself… We choose to follow the clues that Dickens gives with impeccable and implacable precision and which transform this horror story into a detective story with moral and political warnings. In this light, this improbable encounter turns into the destruction of a gullible working class martyr by his better, as the visitor/ narrator complacently pictures himself. Inexorably Dickens sets into motion a terrible narrative mechanism, ending on the sacrifice of the signalman by an executioner understanding too late his role as the helpless representative of a modern vision of hell.