Démonstratifs balzaciens. Personnage et temporalité

Abstract

Martine Leonard : Balzacian demonstrative determiner : character and Time. From the corpus of demonstrative noun phrases (ex. this woman) by which the characters of La Duchesse de Langeais (a novel by Balzac dating 1834) are designated, we show that the demonstrative determiner marks the character's transformation in time and, thanks to its reclassifying value, allows to express both permanence and reincarnation. In a third-person narrative, the subjectivity (which the demonstrative determiner displays) raises a problem of interpretation and the present time, as a fictive object represented, is to be decoded.