著者

熊本 哲也

出版者

岩手県立大学

雑誌

岩手県立大学社会福祉学部紀要 (ISSN:13448528)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.5, no.1, pp.11-26, 2002-09-30

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"The Purloined Ribbon" at the end of the Livre second of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions is known for the possibilities of various readings. The two most outstanding readings are: psychoanalytic literary analysis and deconstruction literary analysis. The former does not differentiate the "narrator" from the "narrated" in the text. The latter denies finally the analysis of the unconscious level and neglects the importance of the first half of the text while it is bound for the speech-act theory. In short, the precedent analysis tends to rely on theories and lacks the careful textual analysis. In order to construct a more inclusive literary critique, this paper focuses upon the desire theme of "The Death of Mme Vercellis" for it allows us to see the complicated interactions in the text. The textual analysis reveals that the words place (position) and perte (loss for the death) in the first half of the text are used effectively to show the analogical relationship between Mme Vercellis and her servant Marion to whom Jean-Jacques makes a false accusation of the stolen ribbon. By doing so, the narrator extends the meaning of place and perte to signify the symbolic death of Marion and sees Marion identifying with Mme Vercellis. In other words, Marion has the necessity to suppleer (fulfill) the loss of Mrs. Vercellis and has a role as a substitution to morn the deaths of both Mme Vercellis and Marion. Therefore, the exceeding desire of the narrator shows the connection between the text of "death" in the first half and the text of Stolen Ribbon Incident in the latter half of the Episode. The ribbon Jean-Jacques purloined literally ties the two texts by representing his "desire" and "mourning" for Mme Vercellis and Marion. In this sense, the purloined ribbon is just like a Freud's "bobbin" in The Beyond of the Pleasure Principle.