Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

175who would pass on the story. During the last encounter with the whale, one of Ahab’s oarsmen“helplessly dropping astern, but still afloat and swimming” (532), much like a returning ghost,reappears in the epilogue as Ishmael, “escaped alone to tell thee.” “The drama’s done. Why thenhere does any one step forth?Because one did survive the wreck” (536). The survivor’s accountis a memoir and mourning, an attempt to restore the voices of the dead. The “epilogue,” Ishmaelexplains, stands outside the narrative and supplements it. In fact, the epilogue is not thetraditional conclusion towards which the narrative moves. Rather, it is a supplement to itasupplement that stages the anxiety of closing the narrative and the urge to tell the story. LikeHawthorne’s “The Custom House,” Melville’s epilogue is a sequel to the narrative and does notdo anything to the narration. As Ishmael says, “For the rest, blame not Stubb too hardly. Thething is common in that fishery; and in the sequel of the narrative, it will then be seenwhat like abandonment befell myself” (397) The propletic reference to the epilogue in thenarrative deconstructs the classical structure of the narrative.What we have in Moby-Dick is a circular economy of fluctuation between prolepsis andanalepsis, a fluctuation that structures modern and post modern narratives. It is Ishmael who willre-tell the events and make his own interpretations. All of his shipmates are dead and he is theonly one to survive the wreckage and mourn their death and narrate their untold story. Thetopographical representations in the chapter “the Chapel” and the inscriptions engraved on themarble reveal proleptically the destiny of the Pequod. The chapter “The Castaway” anticipatesthe epilogue of the narrative. The narration is very pre-figurative and anticipatory. When read inlight of the narrative sequel, Ishmael’s narration gains its intricacy prospectively. Prolepsisexceeds its traditional function of foretelling to overlap with the prophetic and visionary. “The