Résumé de la thèse de doctorat

réalisée sous la direction de M. le Professeur F. CORNILLOT et soutenue le 12 décembre 2003 devant un jury composé de MM. Les Professeurs Jean-Claude Lanne, Michel Niqueux, Jean Breuillard et F. Cornillot.

THE REFUSAL OF FACING REALITY : A CHEKHOVIAN ATTITUDE

Marie MORISSEAU

How can we live in the world ? The Chekhovian characters hardly give an answer. They strive to avoid the real world, fleeing from it through alcoholic addiction, suppression of the time, yearning for an ideal city or committing suicide. As a last resort, individual insanity responds to the madness of the real world, which from that moment on no longer exists.

Chekhov, who was concerned with trying to help people, made an assessment of the different fates he had come across. They emphasized that human beings do not long for what is good, but for the release of sufferings, seen as essentially useless. The world is more than incoherent : it is shapeless. Therefore, events, deeds and thoughts no longer have to be organized with a view to a higher purpose. After his journey to Sakhalin and the terrible visions of the bagnio, Chekhov stated that the world was dead. As far as his successors are concerned, regarding either the narrative technique or his dreadful intuition,  we will  mention Woolf,  Kafka and Camus.