Révision de Jane Eyre comme métacommentaire philosophique dans les romans d’Anita Brookner

Although none of Brookner’s twenty-three novels to date actually re-write Jane Eyre as hypotext, Brontë’s novel is part of the pervasive intertextuality of Brookner’s text, addressed here as a monolithic fiction. This omnipresent intertextuality, which is the key to understanding the whole œuvre, se...

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Main Author: Eileen Williams-Wanquet
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Presses universitaires de Rennes 2006-12-01
Series:Revue LISA
Subjects:
Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/1879
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author Eileen Williams-Wanquet
author_facet Eileen Williams-Wanquet
author_sort Eileen Williams-Wanquet
collection DOAJ
description Although none of Brookner’s twenty-three novels to date actually re-write Jane Eyre as hypotext, Brontë’s novel is part of the pervasive intertextuality of Brookner’s text, addressed here as a monolithic fiction. This omnipresent intertextuality, which is the key to understanding the whole œuvre, serves to define the moral codes followed by the heroine and to make a philosophical metacommentary on contemporary culture. Brookner’s characters read and comment on Jane Eyre, the heroine takes Jane as a role model of virtue and the masculine characters are divided into those who resemble Mr Rochester and those who belong to the same category as St John Rivers. But Brookner’s text is a re-vision of Brontë’s novel, as of other novels set in the tradition of the classic realist text and of romance, which have Cartesian rationalism and Christianity as philosophical underpinnings. Brookner reverses the poetic justice of Jane Eyre, which is re-contextualised to fit a new moral landscape in which God is dead as ultimate justification for virtuous conduct. Whereas Jane Eyre can ultimately be read as a “Victorian romance” which preaches reason in the name of social order, by replacing the traditional happy ending by an unhappy ending in which virtue is punished and by foregrounding the disastrous effects of suppressing passion in the name of reason or self in the name of the other, Brookner announces the end of a philosophical humanistic tradition in which the subject / object or self / other opposition gives rise to a host of binary oppositions, the notion of centre validating the dominance of one of the terms of the hierarchy.
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spelling doaj.art-adcf7e7a64344683b939e399ae57bbdb2024-02-13T14:36:30ZengPresses universitaires de RennesRevue LISA1762-61532006-12-01410411710.4000/lisa.1879Révision de Jane Eyre comme métacommentaire philosophique dans les romans d’Anita BrooknerEileen Williams-WanquetAlthough none of Brookner’s twenty-three novels to date actually re-write Jane Eyre as hypotext, Brontë’s novel is part of the pervasive intertextuality of Brookner’s text, addressed here as a monolithic fiction. This omnipresent intertextuality, which is the key to understanding the whole œuvre, serves to define the moral codes followed by the heroine and to make a philosophical metacommentary on contemporary culture. Brookner’s characters read and comment on Jane Eyre, the heroine takes Jane as a role model of virtue and the masculine characters are divided into those who resemble Mr Rochester and those who belong to the same category as St John Rivers. But Brookner’s text is a re-vision of Brontë’s novel, as of other novels set in the tradition of the classic realist text and of romance, which have Cartesian rationalism and Christianity as philosophical underpinnings. Brookner reverses the poetic justice of Jane Eyre, which is re-contextualised to fit a new moral landscape in which God is dead as ultimate justification for virtuous conduct. Whereas Jane Eyre can ultimately be read as a “Victorian romance” which preaches reason in the name of social order, by replacing the traditional happy ending by an unhappy ending in which virtue is punished and by foregrounding the disastrous effects of suppressing passion in the name of reason or self in the name of the other, Brookner announces the end of a philosophical humanistic tradition in which the subject / object or self / other opposition gives rise to a host of binary oppositions, the notion of centre validating the dominance of one of the terms of the hierarchy.https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/1879romanceideologyphilosophyre-visionBrookner Anitameta-mimesis
spellingShingle Eileen Williams-Wanquet
Révision de Jane Eyre comme métacommentaire philosophique dans les romans d’Anita Brookner
Revue LISA
romance
ideology
philosophy
re-vision
Brookner Anita
meta-mimesis
title Révision de Jane Eyre comme métacommentaire philosophique dans les romans d’Anita Brookner
title_full Révision de Jane Eyre comme métacommentaire philosophique dans les romans d’Anita Brookner
title_fullStr Révision de Jane Eyre comme métacommentaire philosophique dans les romans d’Anita Brookner
title_full_unstemmed Révision de Jane Eyre comme métacommentaire philosophique dans les romans d’Anita Brookner
title_short Révision de Jane Eyre comme métacommentaire philosophique dans les romans d’Anita Brookner
title_sort revision de jane eyre comme metacommentaire philosophique dans les romans d anita brookner
topic romance
ideology
philosophy
re-vision
Brookner Anita
meta-mimesis
url https://journals.openedition.org/lisa/1879
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