Browsing by Author "Von Wielligh-Steyn, Mercy Lydia"

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    Intertextualité chez Michel Houellebecq : un monde suspendu entre réalité et fiction
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2018-12) Von Wielligh-Steyn, Mercy Lydia; Du Toit, Madeleine Catherine Kepler; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Modern Foreign Languages.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: In a world where the media has blurred the boundaries between public and private life, the status of the contemporary writer has become increasingly difficult to define. One can rightly raise the question of whether a literary text can still exist independently when the author acquires a certain celebrity status and when his works generate – in written and audio-visual form – an important mass of information, as well as popular and critical commentaries, in which creation and life merge. A hermeneutic framework is used in this study to examine intertextuality in Michel Houellebecq's work. The analysis includes external sources such as the media and writings of other writers and philosophers, as well as the various art forms practiced by the author himself. These intertextual elements are important in the interpretation of his literary work. The contemporary confluence of reality and fiction increases the perilous temptation to analyse Houellebecq's literary production only in the light of his autobiography and even to reduce his entire work to autofiction/autofixation. We do not advocate such an approach. It has, however, become almost impossible to separate the author from the individual, since Houellebecq is constantly in the spotlight. Houellebecq also adds to this ambivalence by his own (often controversial) public appearances. His star status has turned him into an indisputable modern writer, who holds a mirror to society to highlight the suffering that lies at the base of our daily lives. His changing relationship with the public domain has been traced in this study, starting from his initial enthusiasm to engage with the media, to a progressive disillusionment and, more recently, to a retreat from public life. After decades in which the person of the author has been evacuated from the interpretation of a literary text, this omerta is profoundly impacted by the Houellebecq phenomenon. The writer as an individual plays an important role again, even if the evolution of Houellebecq's relationship with the outside world can at best be described as ambiguous. His work, mirroring our current society, sways (sometimes precariously) between reality and fiction.