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Building Beyond Limits: Fantastic Collisions Between Bodies and Machines In Université de Montréal Building Beyond Limits: Fantastic Collisions Between Bodies and Machines in French and English Fin-de-Siècle Literature par Lianne Christine Castravelli Département d’études anglaises, Faculté des arts et des sciences Thèse présentée à la Faculté des arts et des sciences en vue de l’obtention du grade de Philosophiae Doctor (Ph.D.) en études anglaises décembre 2012 © Lianne Castravelli, 2012 Résumé de synthèse «Construire hors limite: collisions fantastiques entre corps et machines dans la littérature fin-de-siècle française et anglaise» explore un ensemble de textes qui ont surgi à la fin du dix-neuvième siècle en réponse et en réaction à la fulgurante évolution de l’environnement scientifique et technologique, et qui considèrent la relation entre l’homme et la machine en fantasmant sur la zone grise où ils s’intersectent. Les principaux textes étudiés comprennent L’Ève future de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, Le Surmâle d’Alfred Jarry, Trilby de George Du Maurier, Le Château des Carpathes de Jules Verne, ainsi qu’une sélection de contes dont nous pouvons qualifier de «contes à appareils», notamment «La Machine à parler» de Marcel Schwob. Utilisant la théorie des systèmes comme base méthodologique, cette dissertation cherche à réinterpréter les textes de la fin du dix-neuvième siècle qui naviguent les limites de l’humain et du mécanique et les surfaces sensibles où ils se touchent et interagissent en les réinscrivant dans un projet plus vaste de construction d’identité qui défie le temps chronologique et les échelles mathématiques. Le lien entre la théorie des systèmes et l’architecture – comme méthode d’organisation d’espace blanc en espace habitable – est exploré dans le but de comprendre la manière dont nous façonnons et interprétons le néant à l’origine de l’identité individuelle, et par association collective, en pratiquant littéralement la schématisation et la construction du corps. Des auteurs tels Villiers et Jarry imaginent la construction du corps comme une entreprise scientifique nécessairement fondée et réalisée avec les matériaux et les technologies disponibles, pour ensuite démanteler cette proposition en condamnant le corps technologique à la destruction. La construction d’une identité amplifiée par la ii technologie prend donc des proportions prométhéennes perpétuellement redessinées dans des actes cycliques de rasage (destruction) et d’érection (édification), et reflétées dans l’écriture palimpsestique du texte. L’intégrité du corps organique étant mis en question, le noyau même de ce que signifie l’être (dans son sens de verbe infinitif) humain pourrait bien s’avérer, si l’on considère la correspondance entre perte de voix et état pathologique dans les textes de Du Maurier, Verne et Schwob, être une structure des plus précaires, distinctement hors sens (unsound). Mots clés: Corps, Machine, Système, Réseau, Architecture, Technologie, Son, Appareil, Origine, Décadence iii Abstract iv “Building Beyond Limits: Fantastic Collisions Between Bodies and Machines in French and English Fin-de-Siècle Literature” explores late-nineteenth-century texts that emerged in response, or in reaction to, the rapidly evolving scientific and technological environment and which specifically consider man’s relationship to the machine by fantasizing about the grey area where they intersect. The core texts examined include Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s L’Ève future, Alfred Jarry’s Le Surmâle, George Du Maurier’s Trilby, Jules Verne’s Le Château des Carpathes, and a selection of short stories which we may refer to as contes à appareils, most prominently Marcel Schwob’s “La Machine à parler.” Using systems theory as its underlying structure, this dissertation sets out to reinterpret late-nineteenth-century texts that navigate the limits of the human and the mechanical and the sensitive surfaces where they touch and interact by re-inscribing them into a greater project of identity-building that defies chronological time and mathematical scale. As such, the connection between systems theory and architecture – as a method of organizing blank space into space that is inhabitable – is explored in order to understand the way in which we shape and make sense of the void at the origin of individual, and by extension collective, identity by engaging in the literal act of body mapping and building. Authors such as Villiers and Jarry set up the building of bodies as a scientific endeavor which must necessarily rely on available materials and technologies only to level this proposition by condemning the technological body to destruction. The construction of a technologically-enabled identity thus takes on promethean proportions which are perpetually redesigned in the cyclical acts of raising v and razing, and reflected in the palimpsestic qualities of the texts. At stake is the integrity of the organic body, of the very nucleus of what it means to be human which, as evidenced by the equating of pathology with the loss of voice in the texts of Du Maurier, Verne and Schwob, may very well prove to be a structure which is distinctly unsound. Key words: Bodies, Machines, System, Network, Architecture, Technology, Sound, Apparatus, Origin, Decadence vi For Antoinette Martella vii Acknowledgements I would first like to thank Dr. Michael Sinatra for allowing me to benefit from his guidance and erudition during the process of developing this dissertation, and for offering support, advice and encouragement throughout. I am also grateful to my father, Claude Castravelli and my sister, Miranda Castravelli, who have provided assistance in both practical and less tangible, but certainly no less appreciated, ways. Thanks are also due to Dr. Jane Desmarais, who set me irrevocably on the path of decadence many years ago. For supplying motivation and inspiration, I would like to thank those friends whose company and conversation I have had the good fortune to enjoy. Amongst these, I would like to especially thank Jessica Murphy, whose outstanding academic work has been invaluable, and Veneranda Wilson, who has provided the most sympathetic of ears at a difficult time. Merci à Jean-Mark Leon, pour sa présence inestimable. Thank you also to my children, Mathis, Gisele and Hadrien, whose arrivals may have lengthened the process, but who supplied a significant quantity of the motivation required to see this unwieldy project through to its conclusion. (I hope you three will want to read this someday. When you learn to read, that is.) I offer my final thank you to my mother, Antoinette Martella, whose sharp analytical mind and evocative writing provided a model of excellence to aspire to, and whose love of literature and of her daughter lead in no small part to the undertaking and completion of this dissertation. I wish you could have read this last version, Mom, because in the end I did it for us. I will continue to give thanks, always. viii List of Figures 1 Julien Schuh’s diagram of Schwobian symmetry; my version as a Venn diagram.............................................................................................................169 2 Sketch of Remy de Gourmont’s assessment of Schwobian geometrical strategy..............................................................................................................171 3 Elliptical textual strategy..................................................................................172 ix Table of Contents Introduction.............................................................................................1 Chapter 1 Architectural Articulations: Framing Late-Nineteenth-Century Fantasies of Bodies and Machines.........................................................................36 Chapter 2 Synthetic Structure: Building Origin and Identity in Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s L’Ève future.....................................................................59 Commercial Break..................................................................................89 Chapter 3 Infinite Space, Depleted Resources: Building Beyond Limits in Alfred Jarry’s Le Surmâle..................................................................................91 A Word From Our Sponsors.................................................................128 Chapter 4 Unsound: Fragile Structures of Body and Soul in Jules Verne’s Le Château des Carpathes and George Du Maurier’s Trilby.....................130 Chapter 5 The Mechanisms of Ellipses and Noise in Marcel Schwob’s “La Machine à parler” and selected contes à appareils..............................164 Epitaph.................................................................................................197 Works cited...........................................................................................200 x Introduction Any declaration of a starting point or original locus for this project would probably be artificial, but in the thickets of my mental archives glimmers the moment of heightened awareness that came with reading Jean-Marie-Mathias-Philippe- Auguste, comte de Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’s L’Ève future. The Decadent literary corpus had long been of interest, but here was a text that combined the peculiarities of an obscure late-nineteenth-century genre and the very contemporary preoccupation with humans being superseded by seductive humanoid machines. One of the least contested assumptions about the term “decadence,” with regard to a particular period or work, is that it is notoriously resistant to definition. The term's very fluidity and adaptability are paradoxically
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