Looking for Echo in George Du Maurier’s Trilby: An Intermedial Perspective
Résumé
This article deals with the figure of Echo in George Du Maurier’s Trilby (1894). The narrative is centred on the heroine’s voice, and contains numerous mythological references, and yet there is no mention of the nymph. I posit that Du Maurier is using a “latent allusion”, which attracts the reader’s attention through motifs like repetition, and the doubling/dismembering of the singer’s body. My analysis focuses both on the novel itself and its authorial illustrations. I will take my theoretical framework from a collection of essays by Roland Barthes, published in English as Image Music Text (1977), and especially from “The Grain of the Voice”. I will also compare the texts and images from the novel with a selection of pictorial works (paintings by Edgar Degas and Thomas Eakins, a photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, and a drawing by J.J. Grandville), in order to capture the mythical, social and cultural significance of the artist’s voice and body, as well as the notion of music as a superior art form, in which Echo emerges as a symbolic figure, representative of the ambivalent position of women in Victorian literature and society.
Domaines
LittératuresOrigine | Fichiers éditeurs autorisés sur une archive ouverte |
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