La métalepse dans Don Quichotte, exemple canonique

Premier exemple de métalepse narrative dans Don Quichotte, Première partie, chapitre 8. Tout se fige pendant le combat que livre Don Quichotte, l’auteur [Cervantes] laisse la bataille indécise, en suspens, et renvoie au narrateur [intra-diégétique] qui va essayer de trouver la fin de l’histoire; le chapitre 9 s’ouvre sur la découverte au marché de Tolède des papiers qui contiennent la suite de l’histoire.

Dans la seconde partie de Don Quichotte, Don Quichotte lit un roman dont lui-même est le héros. En un sens (métalepse ontologique) le personnage fictif se perçoit comme un personnage réel; en sens inverse (métalepse illocutoire) le narrateur laisse entendre que lui-même existe dans le livre qu’il est en train de raconter:

«Pourquoi sommes-nous inquiets que la carte soit incluse dans la carte et les mille et une nuits dans les Mille et une nuits? Que Don Quichotte soit lecteur de Don Quichotte et Hamlet spectateur d’Hamlet? Je crois avoir trouvé la cause: de telles inversions suggèrent que si les personnages d’une fiction peuvent être lecteurs ou spectateurs, nous, leurs lecteurs, ou leurs spectateurs, pouvons être des personnages fictifs. En 1833, Carlyle a noté que l’histoire universelle est un livre sacré, infini, que tous les hommes écrivent et lisent et tâchent de comprendre, et où, aussi, on les écrit.»

Jorge Luis Borges, «Magies partielles du Quichotte», Œuvres complètes (Paris, Gallimard [La Pléiade], 1993, tome 1, p. 709)

La métalepse implique que la réalité du récit ne dépend que de la narration. Non seulement le personnage romanesque sort des cadres du récit, mais le sens qu'a le lecteur de sa propre réalité commence à vaciller.

 

Debra Malina, Breaking the frame: metalepsis and the construction of the subject, Ohio State University Press, 2002. 184pp.

(Page 1) “A least since Don Quixote overstepped his prescribed bounds to offer critiques of the Quixote and its apocryphal sequel, the novel has toyed with the borders between the theoretically mutually exclusive zones of (extra-textual) reality, the fictional frame (extradiegetic level), the main story (diegesis), and the story-within-the-story (hypodiegesis).”

Le déploiement de ce procédé littéraire est complémentaire de l'effondrement du métarécit (the collapse of master narratives), de la désintégration de la catégorie du Réel (the dismantling of the category of the real) et de la déconstruction des systèmes d'explication binaires et hiérarchiques (les dichotomies, les arbres aristotéliciens).

(Page 2) “Metalepsis dramatizes the problematization of the boundary between fiction and reality endemic to the postmodern condition. More specifically, because it disrupts narrative hierarchy in order either to reinforce or to undermine the ontological status of fictional subjects or selves, it provides a model of the dynamics of subject construction in an age that has witnessed both the deconstruction of the essential self in favor of a subject constituted in and by narrative and the complication of a simple, teleological model of narrative with an emphasis on the form's repetitive, self-undermining, and even violent aspects.”

 

ramanujan_thinking.pdf — Attipat K. Ramanujan, Is there an Indian way of thinking? An informal essay, in McKim Marriott, Ed., India Through Hindu Categories, New Delhi: Sage, 1990, pp. 42-58.

(48-49) No Indian text comes without a context, a frame, till the 19th century. Works are framed by phalasruti verses — these verses tell the reader, reciter or listener all the good that will result from his act of reading, reciting or listening. They relate the text, of whatever antiquity, to the present reader — that is, they contextualise it. An extreme case is that of the Nâdisâstra, which offers you your personal history. A friend of mine consulted the Experts about himself and his past and future. After enough rupees had been exchanged, the Experts brought out an old palm-leaf manuscript which, in archaic verses, mentioned his full name, age, birthplace, etc., and said suddenly, 'At this point, the listener is crossing his legs — he should uncross them.'

Texts may be historically dateless, anonymous; but their contexts, uses, efficacies, are explicit. The Râmâyana and Mahâbhârata open with episodes that tell you why and under what circumstances they were composed. Every such story is encased in a metastory. And within the text, one tale is the context for another within it; not only does the outer framestory motivate the inner sub-story; the inner story illuminates the outer as well. It often acts as a microcosmic replica for the whole text.

In the forest when the Pandava brothers are in exile, the eldest, Yudhisthira, is in the very slough of despondency: he has gambled away a kingdom, and is in exile. In the depth of his despair, a sage visits him and tells him the story of Nala. As the story unfolds, we see Nala too gamble away a kingdom, lose his wife, wander in the forest, and finally, win his wager, defeat his brother, reunite with his wife and return to his kingdom. Yudhisthira, following the full curve of Nala's adventures, sees that he is only halfway through his own, and sees his present in perspective, himself as a story yet to be finished. Very often the Nala story is excerpted and read by itself, but its poignancy is partly in its frame, its meaning for the hearer within the fiction and for the listener of the whole epic. The tale within is context-sensitive — getting its meaning from the tale without, and giving it further meanings.

Scholars have often discussed Indian texts (like the Mahâbhârata) as if they were loose-leaf files, rag-bag encyclopaedias. Taking the Indian word for text, grantha (derived from the knot that holds the palm leaves together), literally, scholars often posit only an accidental and physical unity. We need to attend to the context-sensitive designs that embed a seeming variety of modes (tale, discourse, poem, etc.) and materials. This manner of constructing the text is in consonance with other designs in the culture. Not unity (in the Aristotelian sense) but coherence, seems to be the end.

Histoires à tiroirs, ou structures à facettes, chaque histoire ou chaque facette étant alternativement enchâssée (embedded) ou englobante (framing).