The Sound Universe of Marivaux: Song, voice, cries
This work proposes to assess the universe of sound in the narrative fictions of Marivaux, a task even more delicate as materiality does not seem to have preoccupied their author unduly. The point is not so much to analyze the use of language in the various texts questioned, as to identify the occurrences of these sounds emitted by the voice in distinct semantic fields, the spoken voice and its murmur, the song, and the shout. The analysis finds that the sounds of the human voice evoke the harmony of sociability where the individual can be, speak, and build him/herself, while the shout, perhaps the reminder of an inner truth that remains foreign and which one cannot completely escape, interrupts. The article observes how the desire for communicability and the anxiety of what can interrupt it inscribes in the story an underlying tension between life and death, between belonging and abandonment, between sociability and loneliness. Contrary to readings of Marivaux's novels which emphasize their contradictions, this analysis curiously underlines their profound unity.