Littérature et résistance morale: une lecture de Jean Rhys, Good Morning Midnight

Abstract

Traduit en italien par Miranda Boldrini.

International audience

Drawing from Mikhaïl Bakhtin's dialogism and Martha Nussbaum's moralparticularism, we propose to understand the ways in which literature canexpress and support moral resistance. The argument is the following: when aliterary work is written with an attention to particulars (comprising theelements of contextuality, incommensurability and surprise, followingNussbaum's analysis in Love's Knowledge (1990)), it is capable ofshowing what is denied by oppressive representations of human beings: namely,that each person constitutes a unique point of view and a unique voice,resisting the identity assignations necessary for political and socialoppression. Within this theoretical background, we propose an analysis ofJean Rhys' literary works, especially Good Morning Midnight (1939).