Michel Imbert :
Sur le papier : “The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids”
Abstract
The two-stranded story unfolds the manifold implications of producing sheets of paper. Even as the bodies of working women at the paper-mill are erased in the process, they seem to be raised to the stature of a Christ-like icon. Though the gullible narrator who has embarked on a latter-day errand into the wilderness is only too willing to subscribe to the shimmering apparition that looms up “on paper”;, his twice-told tale undercuts correspondences between filth and faith underwritten by Puritan typology and foregrounds the blankness of bible-leaves at cross-purposes with Scriptures.
Michel Imbert, « Sur le papier : “The Paradise of Bachelors and The Tartarus of Maids” », paru dans Cycnos, Volume 17 n°2, mis en ligne le 15 juillet 2008, URL : http://revel.unice.fr/cycnos/index.html?id=1652.
Auteurs
Michel Imbert
Université Paris VII.
Michel Imbert est maître de conférences à l’université Paris VII – Denis Diderot. Ses travaux portent essentiellement sur l’œuvre romanesque d’Herman Melville. Il a collaboré au premier volume des œuvres complètes publié sous la direction de Philippe Jaworski dans l’édition de la Pléiade.