Semantic variations of the French verb voir and the discourse system in Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s Rigodon

Using Culioli’s Theory of Enunciative Operations and Notional Domains as its starting point, this paper presents a unified characterisation of the French verb voir and its variations. These variations are then related to its enunciative nuances. I argue that voir is used profusely by Céline in his last novel Rigodon and plays a significant role in the book’s discourse system. From the beginning of the narrative, voir appears as the core of a brilliant meta-narrative metaphor setting the tone and tying together the entire story. I conclude that, throughout the novel, different forms of this verb are either attributed to the narrator or to the main character (which are in fact both incarnations of the author himself). This strategy helps to enhance the sense of immediate presence in the narration and results in a permanent dialogue with the reader.