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From Shell to Center: Gaston Bachelard and the Transformation of Domestic Space in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel

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From Shell to Center: Gaston Bachelard and the Transformation of Domestic Space in the Nineteenth-Century French Novel University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 12-2013 From Shell to Center: Gaston Bachelard and the transformation of domestic space in the nineteenth-century French novel Emily Pace University of Tennessee - Knoxville, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Part of the French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Pace, Emily, "From Shell to Center: Gaston Bachelard and the transformation of domestic space in the nineteenth-century French novel. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2013. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/2605 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Emily Pace entitled "From Shell to Center: Gaston Bachelard and the transformation of domestic space in the nineteenth-century French novel." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Modern Foreign Languages. John B. Romeiser, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Mary K. McAlpin, Sebastien Dubreil, Gregor A. Kalas Accepted for the Council: Carolyn R. Hodges Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) From Shell to Center: Gaston Bachelard and the transformation of domestic space in the nineteenth-century French novel A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Emily Pace December 2013 Copyright © 2013 by Emily Pace The University of Tennessee, Knoxville All rights reserved. ii ABSTRACT This dissertation will look at the house-occupant relationship in four major French novels of the long nineteenth century: Balzac’s Le Père Goriot (1835), Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1856), Zola’s Thérèse Raquin (1867), and Proust’s “Combray,” from Du côté de chez Swann (1913). Each of these novels relies heavily on the use and description of interior and domestic space, and the manner in which the characters in each novel inhabit and relate to this space is a reflection of the specific and evolving cultural landscape of the moment when these works were composed, I argue, as well as of the particular obsessions of each author. The hermeneutic tool used to explore these novels is the theory of domestic space outlined in Gaston Bachelard’s La Poétique de l’espace (1957). I rely on four images from Gaston Bachelard’s philosophical musing on the house-occupant relationship in this work: the shell, the armoire, the miniature and the round. These paradigms of domestic space reflect the evolution of the house- occupant relationship in the aforementioned novels. That Bachelard chose to label his treatise on the philosophy of space a “poétique,” makes his treatise particularly well suited to my analysis of the evolution of the house-occupant relationship in the nineteenth-century novel. A “poétique,” like Aristotle’s first and most influential Poetics, is a blueprint for interpreting or reading a work of literature that can be simultaneously a poetic work of art of its own. Bachelard’s inventive and evocative Poétique provides, I argue, a useful tool or key to unlocking the private and somewhat mystical nature of the relationship between house and occupant. After introducing the four modes of dwelling outlined by Bachelard in chapter one, I trace a chronological evolution. Through the study of the occupant-house relationship in these novels, we can trace the evolution of the house toward a more independent and self- controlled space that corresponds to the French nation’s struggle toward individual freedom. The occupant’s new relationship to himself and his intimate space imparts a new way to situate himself inside while also giving the occupant a newer more peaceful and secure way of existing in the world. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter One – Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter Two – Shell homes in Le Père Goriot ........................................................................................... 20 2.1 – Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 20 2.2 – Sea creatures in the city of the sea ................................................................................................ 31 2.3 – Solitude, isolation, and leaving the shell ....................................................................................... 39 2.4 – The end of Rue Tournefort: Conclusion ....................................................................................... 48 Chapter Three –Madame Bovary’s armoire ............................................................................................... 50 3.1 – Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 50 3.2 – Emma Bovary's armoire: Ordering outside and in ...................................................................... 56 3.3 – From the inside : studying the house in Yonville-l’Abbaye ........................................................ 64 3.4 – Être mixte: Emma and the armoire .............................................................................................. 72 3.5 – Spatial Re-ordering: Conclusion ................................................................................................... 80 Chapter Four –Zola’s passageway and Bachelard’s miniature ................................................................... 87 4.1 – Introduction ................................................................................................................................... 87 4.2 – Zola’s miniature ............................................................................................................................ 94 4.3 – Miniature as a verb ....................................................................................................................... 99 4.4 – Sound miniatures and synesthesia ............................................................................................... 102 4.5 – Hallucination, theatricality, and the attention or "frame" of the miniature ................................. 106 4.6 –The miniature and a nightmarish oneric space ............................................................................ 111 4.7 – Conclusion: Haussmanisation hallucinatory spaces ................................................................... 117 Chapter Five –The roundness of house and being in “Combray” ............................................................ 122 5.1 – Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 122 5.2 – My story of Illiers-Combray: beginning with soup and ending with the Madeleine ....125 5.3 – Definition of Bachelard’s Rond .....................................................................................127 5.4 – Proust’s definition of roundness ....................................................................................130 iv 5.5 – En dehors et en dedans ..................................................................................................139 5.6 – Round unity of the flora and fauna of Combray ............................................................143 5.7 –The house is round ..........................................................................................................149 5.8 – Round living inside ........................................................................................................154 5.9 – Inheritance of miniature and becoming round in Proust ...............................................160 5.10 – Conclusion ...................................................................................................................164 Chpater Six –Conclusion ............................................................................................................168 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................178 APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................................186 VITA ..........................................................................................................................................209 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1 “Evolution in Four Steps” ................................................................................. 18 Figure 2 “Evolution step one”.......................................................................................... 49 Figure 3 “Evolution step two ........................................................................................... 86 Figure 4 “Evolution step three” .......................................................................................120
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