Bangor University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Back and forth between written and spoken : studies of transposed voices in Celine's 'Voyage au bout de la nuit', Queneau's 'Zazic dans le metro' and their adaptations Blin-Rolland, Armelle Award date: 2011 Awarding institution: Bangor University Link to publication General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 25. Sep. 2021 Back and Forth between Written and Spoken: Studies of Transposed Voices in Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit, Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro and their Adaptations Armelle Blin-Rolland Bangor University Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) 1 Abstract of thesis Full name: Armelle Blin-Rolland Title of thesis: Back and Forth between Written and Spoken: Studies of Transposed Voices in Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit, Queneau’s Zazie dans le métro and their Adaptations What happens to literary voices when they are transposed into another medium? This is the central question of this study, which takes as its primary focus Céline’s 1932 Voyage au bout de la nuit, Queneau’s 1959 Zazie dans le métro and their adaptations into a variety of media, namely illustration, comic book, film, recorded reading and stage performance. Through the lens of the model of ventriloquism and with a theoretical framework that includes post-structuralist theories of voice and Bakhtinian dialogism, the analysis first reveals differing modes of relationships between voices (narrator’s and characters’) in Voyage and Zazie, in terms of vocal control and vocal power. The analysis then moves onto the further layers of complexity added to the voices of Voyage and Zazie in the adaptations. The literary voices, and the different ventriloquial relationships between narrators and characters, are re-configured through the relationship between text and image (in illustration and comic book), between the soundtrack and the imagetrack (in film), and through the use of the dynamics of voice (in acting). My analysis of ‘voice’, firstly within the texts and secondly in their adaptations, aims to reveal how ‘voice’ remains in a permanent process of construction. The study, then, explores how textual vocality is created through ventriloquism and relationships of control and power between voices, and how it is actualised and transposed in adaptation. I suggest that the ways in which the textual voices of Voyage and Zazie are, in turn, challenged, empowered, trapped, uniformised or dislocated in the adaptations show the cyclicality of loss and gain with regard to voice. I seek to demonstrate that voice is constructed in a dynamic of appropriation and expropriation, through the dialogue between one’s voice and the other’s voice, between the unfinished textual voices and the readers’ and adapters’ own voices. 2 Table of Contents Abstract of thesis ......................................................................................................................... 2 Table of Contents ........................................................................................................................ 3 List of tables ................................................................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgements ..................................................................................................................... 6 Declaration ................................................................................................................................... 7 Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 8 Part I: Textual Voices ............................................................................................................... 41 Chapter 1: Textual Voices in Voyage au bout de la nuit....................................................... 41 Voices at the intradiegetic level ....................................................................................... 43 Bardamu’s voice as a character ....................................................................................... 49 Bardamu’s speech experience .......................................................................................... 53 Bardamu’s ventriloquial narrative voice ........................................................................ 58 Robinson ............................................................................................................................ 65 Chapter 2: Textual voices in Zazie dans le métro ................................................................. 72 The characters of Zazie and the ‘flaw’ of the polyphonic system .............................. 77 The relationship between the narrator’s and characters’ voices: polyphony and ventriloquism ..................................................................................................................... 83 Consequences of a ‘flawed’ polyphony .......................................................................... 87 Zazie: the potential powers of voice .............................................................................. 92 Trouscaillon, polyphony, cacophony, and ventriloquism ........................................... 96 Conclusion of Part I ............................................................................................................. 99 Part II: Adapted Voices .......................................................................................................... 100 Chapter 1: Challenging Bardamu’s narrative voice in Tardi’s illustration of Voyage au bout de la nuit ......................................................................................................................... 100 Illustration and adaptation ............................................................................................. 100 Voices in illustrated Voyage ............................................................................................ 109 Adaptation and the reader(s) ......................................................................................... 118 3 Chapter 2: The voices of Zazie in text and image: Carelman’s illustration and Oubrerie’s comic book adaptation of Zazie dans le métro ............................................... 124 Carelman’s illustration: trapped and contained voices .............................................. 125 Oubrerie’s comic book: uniformised and idealised voices ....................................... 138 Chapter 3: Post-synchronisation, heterogeneity and the powers of voices in Malle’s film adaptation of Zazie dans le métro ................................................................................. 149 Post-synchronised voices ............................................................................................... 154 Voices and words ............................................................................................................ 165 Relationship between voice and body: silent, distorted and recorded voices ........ 172 The powers of voice ....................................................................................................... 176 Chapter 4: From a textual voice to an actor’s voice in readings and performances of Voyage au bout de la nuit ........................................................................................................ 184 Céline, Bardamu and voice ............................................................................................ 191 An actor’s relationship with his and others’ voices .................................................... 199 ‘La Guerre’: a comparison of readings by Michel Simon and Denis Podalydès .... 208 ‘La Mère Henrouille’ read by Pierre Brasseur and Denis Podalydès ....................... 218 Fabrice Luchini’s Bardamu ............................................................................................ 230 Four voices, four Bardamus .......................................................................................... 251 Conclusion................................................................................................................................ 254 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 260 4 List of tables Table A: readings and performances of Céline’s Voyage au bout de la nuit and/or Mort à crédit analysed or mentioned in the present study ..................................................................... 183 Table B: transcription conventions for the analysis of the recordings of actors’ performances of Voyage .................................................................................................................... 189 5 Acknowledgements