紀要論文

悪漢と英雄の変容 : パラダイム・チェンジの時代とピカレスク・ロマン

Transfiguration of Heroes and Villains : Age of Paradigm Conversion and Picaresque Novels

jpn

04412486

https://doi.org/10.15002/00014420

法政大学文学部

76

79

93

2018-03-13

Version of Record

Abbé Prévost’s novel, L’Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut（1731）, is constituted of three narrative viewpoints, i.e., that of the author, substantial narrator des Grieux and his friend, a listener of des Grieux’s confession. Because of the multiplex viewpoints, the multiplex structure of quotations and their intention to manipulate the readers, the novel succeeds in misleading the readers into interpreting the heroin, Manon as fémme fatale in a traditional sense. Employing a narratological and a historicist approach, this study reveals that it is proper to regard the novel as a picaresque novel/novella picaresca, and therefore the heroin, Manon not as fémme fatale, but as picaro/picara, hero/heroin in a picaresque novel. Manon functions as an outsider （outcast from a community）, i.e., a marginal man which a cultural anthropology defines. Set free from established notions or existing traditional values, she acts almost unrestrainedly with her free mind, wit, intelligence, and villainy in the complex relationships of the characters of the narrative. Through her tradition-unbound activity against a power or an authority and by a <companionship> and <a series of encounters> （R.W.B.Lewis）, she finally overcomes her social, sexual and economic inferiority and essentially plays a role of criticizing them and revealing their vice. Based on an analysis of the relationship between the <paradigm conversion/change>, which Thomas Kuhn has introduced and used as an explanatory notion to a scientific revolution subverting “the existing tradition of scientific practice” （Kuhn） and the era of picaresque novels, this study argues that the emergence of picaresque novels corresponds to the social, political, moral, economic and even scientific stagnation. At the same time, this study finds that a parallel between the <paradigm conversion/change> and picaresque novels exists not only in western literature, but also in Japanese literature in the 21st century.

Article

AN00226157