Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

156The painting represents and reproduces the three whaling ships as well as the moment when thewhale chops off Ahab’s leg, indexing re-doubling in retrospect a narrative that is outside thenarrative. We should bear in mind the obvious phallic significance of the white whale and Ahab's"castration," the wooden leg being his phallic substitute. 52 It is worth noting that the painting, likethe wooden leg, is most often associated with a mirror, an index, a simulacrum, an allegory, anuncanny return, of the narrative of Moby-Dick. This is an uncanny moment in the narrative, anarrative moment that allows writing to fold back on itself and uncover the embedded text. Thisis the place where symbols meet, where a gap is created between the text and the crypts itcontains. Such delay suspends the reader in an identificatory relationship with the future,doubling the event to comethe death of Ahab. In all of these assorted functions in the economyof representation, the painting may be said to double. But to double suggests a single and singularrelation to repetition, whereas the paintingas ekphrasis!—sustains multiple resonances andrepetitions. Like the painting, Ishmael’s tale, the frame tale, comprises second-level narrativesestablishing thematic relations among the different groups of stories through flashbacks,foreshadowing, and digressions. Thus, it contributes to textual coherence and extends the work ofthe double to the thematics of the psyche. Indeed, at the end of the story, if ever we could use theword end, Ishmael remains suspended between the various narratives instances, at the crossroadsbetween the freedom of narration he proclaims and the affects of the double he is subject to.The continuous dream of fusion and confusion of the referent and the sign, the signifierand the signified, the dream that a word and sonority become one thingthis illusion exists as aparanoia. The fantasy of the double marks the various impossibilities that govern Melville’s text.There could be no pure double of realitybe it a copy or an inventionbecause the double by