Sous l'oeil de Dionysos: _Les Trois Mousquetaires_ ou le mythe litteraire
Open Access
- Author:
- Petit-Rasselle, Roxane M
- Graduate Program:
- French
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- March 22, 2007
- Committee Members:
- Kathryn Marie Grossman, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Jean Claude Vuillemin, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Benedicte Marie Christine Monicat, Committee Member
Willa Zahava Silverman, Committee Member
Adrian Johannes Wanner, Committee Member - Keywords:
- Semiosis
Perceptive semiosis
Umberto Eco
Literary myth
The Three Musketeers
Alexandre Dumas - Abstract:
- Since its publication in 1844, _The Three Musketeers_ has been feeding the collective imagination. As Alexandre Dumas père’s four heroes are perpetuated by cinema, literature, theater, music, advertisement and any kind of fixed image, they are maintained in the cultural environment –they are known by all. However, the novel contains never ending passages, its dialogues are sometimes excessively stretched, and the characters’ defects are such that d’Artagnan, Athos, Porthos and Aramis should be perceived as anti-heroes. What are then the elements that allowed the Musketeers to exercise so great of a fascination over the public ? To answer to this central question, the nature of Dumas’ novel first needs to be determined. The term « literary myth » seems to define it best. Written for entertainment, the novel seduces an always eager public and it diffuses throughout time and space. Despite many comparative studies, the confusion persists around the literary myth. The latter designates a mythical tale that literature rewrote and maintained in the cultural environment, or a literary tale that the public transformed into a myth. The incompatibility between the terms « myth » and « literary » comes into play, along with the question of the primary text, its validity and the importance of the narrative. After having questioned the comparative studies, this thesis examines, from the perspectives of semiosis and perceptive semiosis, the production of the literary myth with the mechanism of the original text and the perception of the myth. It takes interest not in the narrative, but in the hero, who carries conventional invariants which ensure not only his fascination over the receptors, but also his mobility from one medium to another. As the dionysiac convention emerges behind the Musketeers, the myth of the Greek god is defined as a theoretical tool. It is then possible to examine how it manifests itself in the heroes, and the way it is actualized by the readers. Eventually, the study of the occurrences of the novel validates the invariants produced by the original text, the importance of the original text itself and the existence of a model reader.