Revue Romane. Langue et littérature - Volume 44, Issue 2, 2009

This paper deals with the universal quantification operated by fois with chaque and tous les; more specifically, we analyze here the quantifying NP in which fois is determined by a relative clause, such as: chaque/toutes les fois + relative. After describing this anticipating structure, we show that it differs from other corresponding structures containing a standard noun. In the last section, we give preliminary answers to the question raised by the preference of the quantifier tous les for this cataphoric structure.

In this paper, we study the french adverbs of completion totalement, complètement, entièrement and intégralement in the verbal domain, from a semantic point of view. Following Tenny (2000), we argue that completion adverbs with a quantitative value can only modify telic predicates (*regarder totalement le tableau / détruire totalement une ville). We also identify a qualitative use which doesn’t impose such a constraint (avoir totalement raison). Then, through the analysis of real exemples and of their typical context, we discuss the semantic properties of these different adverbs that are related in various ways to the expression of completion.

The aim of this study is to compare the function and use of French and Swedish concessive conjunctions (bien que / quoique / encore que vs. trots att / fast / fastän). The analysis is based on a translation corpus, comprising French and Swedish fiction and non-fiction texts, and their translations into Swedish and French, respectively. It is argued that the semantic variation observed in the data is the result of a general diachronic semantic change including the following steps: nonsubjective > subjective > intersubjective. This reconstructive approach makes it possible to suggest a probable evolutionary path of the French and Swedish conjunctions and to determine their degree of grammaticalisation. The study also investigates differences in the use of the concessive conjunctions in fiction and non-fiction texts.

El artículo se propone destacar la vigencia de la teoría ayaliana de la literatura ensayada, desde la perspectiva fenomenológica, en el ensayo Reflexiones sobre la estructura narrativa, publicado en 1970 y reeditado en otras ocasiones, por suministrar medios para la comprensión de la lógica interna de la obra literaria del centenario autor español y, en segundo término, por entender en qué consiste y qué supone el proceso de creación literaria en general y el de estructuras narrativas en particular desde el pensamiento ayaliano. Se estudia el lugar que ocupa este ensayo en el seno de la obra de Ayala, se expone el cuerpo argumental de sus reflexiones y se analiza qué aportan y dónde se asientan las mismas, cuáles son las correspondencias con las teorías literaturológicas de nuestro tiempo, qué relaciones mantienen con las reflexiones sociológicas sobre el arte del mismo autor y, finalmente, cuál es la vigencia de este pensamiento de orientación general sobre el arte literario.

This article, starting from an identification of key differences between realism and naturalism, develops an argument premised on the implicit metaphorical relationship between body and text expressed in Le Docteur Pascal, the last novel in Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series. It examines aspects of the metaphorical problematics surrounding the incorporation of documentary material into nineteenth-century French fiction, arguing that the documentary novel’s representation of the human body, and of medical practices concerned with the body’s ingestion of substances — specifically, Le Docteur Pascal’s representation of hypodermic injections — functions self-referentially as a way of representing the naturalist text and its incorporation of documentary, extraliterary material.

The cultural and religious phenomena of the convulsionaries of Saint-Médard, associated with the Parisian Jansenism, raises questions concerning the testimonial discourses and its procedures of validation and accreditation within the context of the Eighteenth Century in France. This essay explores the aesthetic and rhetoric strategies of the La Vérité des miracles, edited by Carré de Montgeron (1737). Its aim is to show how fictional procedures linked with poetics of horror and obscenity must be considerate as a part of a whole strategy of accessibility and popularization of the testimonial religious discourse. It highlights the complexity of the links between processes of writing testimony discourses and cultural changes concerning genders, sexuality, science and knowledge within the French society of this time.

Nostradamus’ Opusucle is characterized by a strong presence of coordinating conjunctions and punctuation marks, which give it a highly developed structure in both linguistic and typographical terms, in contrast with his Centuries. This study of the co-occurrence of these two phenomena demonstrates that different linguistic levels are bounded by different combinations of signs. Coordination alone is limited to the shortest segments of the text; when combined with a punctuation mark, it may mark superior units, including sentences. Moreover, although punctuation alone marks the levels of demarcation of the text, it is only in combination with a coordinating conjunction that it can mark the intermediate unit that is the sentence.