A qui la palme? deux lectures d'un texte de Lautre?amont /

by 1976- Widgren, Kenneth D.

Literary theory is a tool, a guide for the interpretation of a text, but often poses more questions than it resolves. The theorist Roland Barthes provides one model, a “top-down” approach to literary analysis. While effective, such an approach is not without weaknesses. Michael Riffaterre uses an opposite approach, looking not only for the development of the key ideas in a text, but how those main ideas are generated, and thus can be used to fill in the holes left by Barthes. Les Chants de Maldoror by Lautréamont serves as a jump-off point for a comparison of these two theorists. In the end, Riffaterre’s more “objective” viewpoint provides a better path to understanding Lautréamont’s enigmatic text.