L'apprentissage de la lecture dans Adam Bede

This paper tries to show how the initiation undergone by the eponymous hero in George Eliot's Adam Bede is akin to the experience of learning to read. Reading a text: it is a somewhat awkward task to try and pin down what this means. Adam Bede does just that, by offering an insight into the process of reading, notably with the help of three metaphors. Strategically positioned in the text, they serve to "write reading" (Barthes), while also trying to convey a clear definition of sympathy--a key notion in George Eliot's works. A careful analysis of the wording of the novel shows that sympathy and the act of reading fictional texts are one and the same thing. Proust thought so too. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]