Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

313Freud’s theory of sexual instinct and departs from it when it touches upon the collective unconsciousand the occult.49 Here I am alluding to Robert K. Martin’s pioneering work on the work on the homosexuality ofand in Moby-Dick. (see Hero, Captain, and Stranger, especially chapter three).50 Plato talks about the impossibility of the double. There is only one world, and that world is theworld of wisdom and truth.51 As Derrida argues, mise en abyme is in fact a mise en scène within an abyss of infinite layers.Abyme which rhymes with abyss spirals representation into self referential staging. In other words,the main aspect of the mise en abyme is the relation of repetition and mirroring the embeddednarrative (second-level) harbors with the main narrative.52 This analysis would reveal Ahab as a repressed homosexual in contrast to Ishmael and Queequeg’scontinuum. This argument is not the focus of my thesis. However, it is very important to understandhow an author can distort his narrative structure in order to remain in the closet. For moreinformation on this topic, see Leslie Fiedler’s An End to Innocence (1948).53 Ahab who represents the obsession with and critique of the “absolute ego” reminds me ofFeuerbach who sees “manthis is the mystery of religionprojects his being into objectivity, andthen again makes himself object of this projected image of himself thus converted into a subject: hethinks of himself, is an object to himself, but as the object of an object, of another being than himself.