THE VOYAGE STEP BY STEP

Based, as a methodological prerequisite, on the protocols of statistical analysis applied to a corpus of twelve travel narratives that are among the most representative of the nineteenth century, and to a second corpus consisting of twelve works of fiction signed by the same writer-travellers and serving as a differential standard, Véronique Magri-Mourgues, in The Voyage step by step, proposes to demarcate, on quantitative bases henceforth rigorously established, the most obvious marks and practices of viaticum writing from Chateaubriand to Loti.

The challenge is formidable, since it consists of nothing less than giving oneself the means to go beyond an empirical description of a genre generally considered protean and elusive, in order to define the conditions and components of its poetics captured at the moment of its history when the writer comes to occupy the stage.

The stylistic study of Véronique Magri-Mourgues, while identifying the dominant and majority tendencies that make it possible to distinguish the praxis of the travelogue in its relation to the work of fiction, proceeds by fine and nuanced analyses, adjusted to a sensitive listening of the texts, and attentive to their particularities and atypical methods. We thus have here a reflection whose theoretical and critical contribution is essential for gaining a better knowledge of the genre.

† Roland Le Huenen (Victoria University, Toronto, Canada)

Véronique Magri is a professor of French language and stylistics at the University Côte d’Azur and a researcher at Bases, Corpus, Langage, CNRS. Her work is devoted to the linguistic and textometric study of literary corpora from the 19th century to the present day. She is the author of numerous articles that use quantitative methods and that observe, in particular, the discourse of travel.

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