Réjean Ducharme: L'affirmation du sujet dans L'Avalée des avalés

Abstract

This thesis is an analysis of the process of subjectivation which the narrator of Réjean Ducharme’s L’Avalée des avalés undergoes. The objective of this study is to raise awareness regarding the urgency of a restoration of the subject when the latter is confronted by a hostile environment which seeks to silence her voice. The analysis will be organized around three main axes representing the various stages necessary to achieve this objective. We will first tackle the question of a confrontation with the solitude which the world has imposed on Bérénice Einberg, the young narrator of the novel. We will then show that this withdrawal into the self, far from being a form of surrender, is in fact a necessary trigger for a major internal revolution which necessarily involves a rejection of an antagonistic world - notably that created by the adults responsible for the subject’s enslavement. Finally, we will analyze the strategies developed by the narrator to redefine herself on her own term, that is to say, through the re-appropriation of her subjective power. Given the complexity of the novel, we deemed it appropriate to adopt an interdisciplinary approach in order to better encompass the author’s own philosophical, psychological and mythological treatment of the subject.