Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

179underpin the origins of traumaindeed the origin of everything. What is the aim of (reversed)prosopopeia? It requires no lengthy argument to stress the fact that it the dead that give voice tothe living.Melville’s narrative arrives at the unavoidable narrative impasse where catharsis is neededand considered as the purgation of the Imaginary through an image. Prosopopeia enters thenarrative to dissolve the impasse and postpone this imaginary purgation further. Prosopopeia doesthis, I shall argue, by presenting en abyme the encounter between the subjectquite oftenassociated with the abjectand its double, be it the lost object of desire, or the imaginary objectof desire. Such mise en scène requires Gothic tropics to be validated. The image that authorizescatharsis can only be a blinding Gothic imagean image that goes beyond (au-delà) thenarrative. The Gothic image conflates the traumatic, the melancholic, and of course themonstrous: all of these things come together in the prosopoetic figure of the White Whale. Wefind an illustration of this image when Ahab describes the White Whale in “The Quarter-Deck”:How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, thewhite whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes, I think there’s naught beyond.But ‘tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with aninscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be thewhite whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him …who’s over me? Truth has no confines. (167)Chapter 42 is devoted to the whiteness of the whale. Melville avows that it is not the size ofwhale nor its monstrous appearance that renders it appalling; rather, it is its whiteness that“strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood” (190). The image ofthe White Whale refers to another imagethe surplus of representation. How do we read this?