1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910780520103321

Autore

Perron Paul

Titolo

Semiotics and the modern Quebec novel : a Greimassian analysis of Thériault's Agaguk / / Paul Perron

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Toronto, [Ontario] ; ; Buffalo, [New York] ; ; London, [England] : , : University of Toronto Press, , 1996

©1996

ISBN

1-4426-8388-0

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (183 p.)

Collana

Toronto studies in semiotics

Disciplina

843

Soggetti

Semiotics and literature - Québec (Province)

Electronic books.

Québec (Province) Intellectual life 20th century

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

1. Introduction -- 2. The Semiotics of the Novel -- 3. Agaguk: A Synopsis -- 4. Segmentation -- 5. The Canonic Relation -- 6. Actantial Topology -- 7. System of Modalities -- 8. Actantial Transformations -- 9. System of Modalities and Sequential Order -- 10. Conclusion.

Sommario/riassunto

Perron distinguishes the operation of multiple signs in Agaguk and establishes a narrative grammar, based on an actional and cognitive semiotic theory, that can be applied to a text as complex as a novel. For this purpose he redefines the concept of the sign and introduces a semiotics of passions that conditions the characters' actions. All of this takes place within the context of a semiotics of the subject, where the value systems that motivate the collective must be overcome, negated, and even eradicated by the individual subject before a new moral and sexual identity can come into being, independent of the traditional body politic. Perron's Greimassian analysis of Agaguk functions as both a demonstration of the workings of that text and an example of socio-semiotic analysis, while situating literary semiotics within the larger framework of linguistic theory and literary studies.

The most popular novel in Quebec since the Second World War, Yves Theriault's Agaguk was published just before the Quiet Revolution, a period of major political and cultural transformation that radically



altered Quebec society at the beginning of the 1960s. In this original socio-semiotic reading of the novel in translation, inspired by A.J. Greimas and the Paris School of Semiotics, Paul Perron examines the Inuit setting and characters of Agaguk as metaphors for Quebec society. Semiotics and the Modern Quebec Novel is one of the few semiotic analyses to deal with an entire novel, and illustrates the heuristic value of this complex methodology with respect to long prose texts in English.