Le Déluge et l'Arche revisités. Figures apocryphes du récit biblique dans cinq ouvrages contemporains de langue anglaise
Résumé
This article examines the modes of rewriting of the biblical myth of Noah's Ark and the Flood in five contemporary texts by Robert Coover, Timothy Findley, Jeanette Winterson, Michèle Roberts and Julian Barnes. The aim is to show how the content of the biblical metanarrative is defamiliarized, deconstructed, supplemented and/or displaced, in order to propose an apocryphal counternarrative which challenges the dominant cultural and sexual codes. The five texts thus articulate a resistance to the monological and patriarchal perspective of canonized history, and give voice to a series of marginalised groups whose discrepant narrations have been excluded from official discourse. These heterodox versions also destabilize the common modes of expression, reducing the verbal glow of the biblical ur-text by appropriating colloquial forms and exploiting various forms of humour and extravagance. These contemporary rewritings of the sacred text eventually invite the reader to ponder over the discriminatory and exclusive systems on which the myth of Noah's Ark and the Flood, but also more broadly the history of the world, are based.
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