CONSTRUCTION DE L’IMAGE (SUBJECTIVE) DU NARRATEUR DANS LORSQUE J’ÉTAIS UNE OEUVRE D’ART D’ÉRIC-EMMANUEL SCHMITT

An original and disturbing novel, Lorsque j’étais une oeuvre d’art describes the traumatic experience of a man temporarily transformed into a living sculpture and raises the problem of the human condition in a contemporary consumerist society. In our article we tried to highlight some of Emmanuel Schmitt’s narrative techniques and linguistic processes in the construction of the (subjective) image of a homodiegetic narrator. Firstly, the reflection is centered on the genesis of the plural image, located at the intersection of the narrator’s self-centered point of view and the other characters’ points of view. Secondly, we study the subjectivemes through which the narrator expresses the evolution of the positive and negative judgments about himself as well as the contradictory points of view the other characters have on him.