Examen corrigé Université de Montréal Thèse numérique Papyrus ...

58The question the letter brings into the narrative is a reminder of mortalitythe modalityof which delineates the nature of the relation between writing/reading and death. The reader ofThe Scarlet Letter traces the letter only to be handed his ineluctable letterdeath. Thus, the act ofreading which indexes the act of writing brings the shadow of death which is always already therein the narrative. The Derridean écriture reflects Hawthorne’s writing. The concluding words ofThe Scarlet Letter draw the temporal and the spatial together and attach the letter A to the domainof death. However, excavating the archive as a material object becomes the fulfillment of thejourney of the letter from grave to paper and back to grave again. 16 The material inscription: “allaround, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab ofslateas the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purportthereappeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon”(191). Such transformation of the indefiniteletter A into armorial bearings marks the authorial presence. Hawthorne’s attempt to undo theorigin of The Scarlet Letter takes on an uncanny dimension. At issue here is that the letter arisesfrom the grave (the dust and bones of the Puritan forefathers, transmitted through the “office” ofSurveyor Pue) and it returns to the grave of Hester Prynne. From death it arises and to it itreturns. This, of course, mirrors the unending hermeneutic circle that is staged in the narrativeitself as the letter passes from reader to reader. If the narrative is the impossible attempt toencipher the American Real into symbolization, the letter A becomes the uncanny material indexof that impossibility.While trauma is always a matter of the impossibility of adequate representation, Hester’strauma is not primarily discursive; rather, it has a ripple effect in the community, for it becomes aquestion of ethical reading and hermeneutics. The question is how can we do justice to this