Résumés
Abstract
This paper investigates readers’ experience of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, focusing on the themes of death and finitude. In close comparative reading, we first argue that certain passages of the novel effectively explicate Heidegger’s discussion of “thrownness,” “anxiety,” the “uncanny,” the “call of conscience,” and “Being-towards-death.” We then report an empirical study of 46 readers’ comments on passages from Mrs Dalloway that they found striking or evocative. A combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses revealed that a form of enactive and expressive attunement leads some readers to an existential engagement with the text that involves a form of ontological reflection on finitude. We draw on phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty) to articulate several distinct reading profiles, emphasizing their relationship to what we call “existential reading.”
Résumé
Cet article analyse l’expérience qu’éprouvent les lecteurs du roman Mrs Dalloway de Virginia Woolf, surtout en ce qui a trait aux thèmes de la mort et de la finitude. Par une lecture comparative de certains passages de Mrs Dalloway et d’Être et Temps de Martin Heidegger, nous montrons, dans un premier temps, que le roman de Woolf illustre bel et bien des concepts heideggeriens, dont « l’être-jeté », « l’angoisse », « l’inquiétante étrangeté », « l’appel de la conscience » et « l’être-pour-la-mort ». Ensuite, nous présentons les résultats d’une étude empirique dans laquelle ont été analysées (qualitativement et quantitativement) les réactions de quarante-six lecteurs à des passages jugés par ceux-ci comme étant frappants ou évocateurs. Celle-ci a permis de constater que certains lecteurs entretiennent un rapport de nature existentielle avec le texte, rapport qui sous-tend une réflexion ontologique sur la finitude. La définition que nous donnons des divers profils de lecture et du concept de « lecture existentielle » se fonde sur la phénoménologie (Husserl, Heidegger et Merleau-Ponty).
Parties annexes
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