L'ordre et le chaos / Chaos and Order

11 et 12 mars 2005

Invitée d'honneur: Patricia Waugh (Université de Durham, Grande-Bretagne)

Call for Papers:

The conference will deal with the interpretation of literary texts. We will concern ourselves with the twin concept of chaos and order. Chaos can be apprehended at the level of the content of a literary work, as an place or other dimension represented in that work; it can, however, also be analysed at a textual level as an essentiel component in the production of meaning. As a direct consequence, it would appear that the real question of chaos could precisely be that of meaning : what is meaning? is it order which cannot be separated from chaos? who produces it? and for whom? According to this logic, one additional consequence could be that chaos is linked not only to order, but also to identity. It could be tentatively proposed that chaos can be thought of as synonymous with the real, or as that which resists us, what cannot be predicted — complexity, novelty, pure immanence, time without beginning or end, etc. Papers will contain examples taken from literature written in English.

Abstract:

“Let us Space”: Chaos and Order in M. Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves

In Danielewski’s elaborately framed tale of a house which alters shape according to the actions of its inhabitants we find a large number of pages which are entirely devoted to the iconic representation of space. The quote from Derrida’s Glas, which recurs in my title, is also one of many epigraphs used in Danielewski’s book. It signifies a desire both on the part of the author to represent ordered space within a two-dimensional page in a book, and a parallel desire on the part of the reader to inhabit, understand, order, and eventually escape the claustrophobic and ultimately chaotic space Danielewski constructs for his readers.

This paper provides analyses of the representation of ordered and chaotic space in Danielewski’s novel, with a focus on how words on the printed page come to assume iconic functions, standing for ceilings, stairways, ropes, corridors and other spatial objects. The placement on the pages of these concrete prose icons is discussed and shown to be part of a larger aesthetic programme of causing specific emotions in the reader. The alternating feelings of vertigo and claustrophobia thus produced by the iconic pages contribute greatly to the totality of awe (at the psychotic, totalising vision of order) and horror (of the irreducible chaos) the reader must confront to read this demanding work.

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Sample pages: 119 120 140 277