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- Title
Le corps communicant : le libertin, l'œil et le regard dans Les liaisons dangereuses.
- Authors
LESUEUR, CHRISTOPHE
- Abstract
Both the eye and the glance play an elemental role in Laclos's Les liaisons dangereuses. The novel's ending with the punishment of the Marquise de Merteuil disfigured by smallpox invites a study of this organ's function and activity in terms of the communication code. As a component of non-verbal communication, the eye appears in numerous references in the protagonists' letters. The eye and the glance serve as prime instruments of libertine communication and corporeal expression. The masterful eye enables the roué to be a voyeur too, to see without being seen and hear without being heard. The omnipresence of the eye in Laclos's novel points to the existence of a semiotics. It underlines the vitality and importance of non-verbal communication in fiction. As part of the communication code, the eye also mobilizes a hermeneutics: the character's eye becomes the reader's eye, an essential element in the poetics of Les liaisons dangereuses.
- Subjects
DANGEROUS Liaisons (Book : de Laclos); LACLOS, Choderlos de, 1741-1803; EYE in literature; VISION in literature; FREETHINKERS; NONVERBAL communication in literature; VOYEURISM in literature
- Publication
Études Françaises, 2013, Vol 49, Issue 2, p163
- ISSN
0014-2085
- Publication type
Literary Criticism
- DOI
10.7202/1019497ar