L’écrivain français et le dictionnaire dans son oeuvre : objectivation, symbolisation, symbiose constante

Abstract

L’écrivain entretient une relation privilégiée avec le dictionnaire. Dans les circonstances, on ne s’étonne pas de rencontrer, au hasard d’un roman, une référence à ce proche et vaillant compagnon du processus d’écriture. Parfois simple figurant, élément d’un décor, parfois acteur de soutien de protagonistes de tous âges qui manient la plume, le dictionnaire se voit dépeint sous divers angles dans la littérature. L’écrivain lui réserve ainsi une variété de fonctions : il est ouvrage de référence, autorité, gagne-pain, oeuvre d’une vie. Il est aussi objet, tantôt parure, tantôt pied de lit, butin, projectile même. Gros ou petit, à l’occasion vétuste, il est image associée à l’intellectuel, au savant, au maître d’école, mais surtout à l’écolier. À partir d’extraits de romans provenant des bases de données Frantext et Gallica, nous avons dégagé ces images multiples du dictionnaire proposées par les écrivains français.Writers have a privileged relationship with the dictionary. Therefore, it is not surprising to come upon references to this close and gallant writing companion in novels written by French authors. Dictionaries are depicted from different points of view by the very characters writers create: as indispensible supporting material, as metaphor or simply as a decorative element in the scenes they occupy. For these characters, the dictionary enjoys a great variety of uses: it is a reference-work they cannot do without, an authority, a way of making a living, and, as the case may be, the work of a lifetime. It can be pure object, serving at times as an ornament, even as a pillow; it may be an object of theft and is especially useful as a projectile. Large or small, and often dilapidated, the dictionary is associated with the intellectual, the savant, the schoolteacher and especially the student. From excerpts of novels, as supplied by Frantext and Gallica databases, we have extracted multiple images of the dictionary provided by French authors

Book and Literary-Life Imaginaries: A Historical, Sociological and Socio-Critical Project

“…Aline Francoeur from the University of Ottawa is, for her part, interested in the presence of dictionaries in nineteenth-and twentieth-century French novels (working from the digitized body of work in the FRANTEXT and Gallica databases.) 7 She shows that the dictionary can play all sorts of functions: obviously, the dictionary can be a source of knowledge and references that come to the aid of the character; the dictionary can be an authority, a unifying norm, as n the case ofFlaubert's Littré; thirdly, the dictionary can appear as a book that one uses, leafs through, that one travels through within the contents of the novel; the dictionary can be the sole source of revenue and the main activity of a fictional author, as it is for d'Arthez in Balzac's Lost Illusions; finally, the dictionary can be an object that a character uses as a footrest, or as a writing desk.…”