Cycnos | Numéros | Volume 28 n° spécial - Le Refus

Résumé :

This paper examines A. S. Byatt’s short story “Crocodile Tears” in its relation to the psychonanlytical notion of repression. This story about a middle-aged, middle class English woman fleeing to the South of France to avoid facing the death of her husband ideally illustrates the return of the repressed. Such perfection should arouse suspicions. Thus this paper proposes to envisage the ordinariness of the story’s subject and the predictability of its narrative (for which the short story has been criticized) as a means to compensate the inefficiency of this traditional psychoanalytical notion in our contemporary post-oedipian world.

Date de publication : 2012-05-31