“THE MAP IS MORE INTERESTING THAN THE TERRITORY” THE CASE OF THE NOVEL THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY BY MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ

“THE MAP IS MORE INTERESTING THAN THE TERRITORY” THE CASE OF THE NOVEL THE MAP AND THE TERRITORY BY MICHEL HOUELLEBECQ

Šarić, Iva
Levačić, Patrick

In the novel The Map and the Territory (2011) by Michel Houellebecq the issue of merging the status of faction and fiction is present in all the poetic categories of the novel, i.e. in the plot and in the narration, the status of the narrator and characters, up to the narrative time-space continuum. The aim of this paper is to literary analyze and interpret this Houellebecq's work. Our approach is triple. First, we deal with the structure of the plot, the categories of characters and narrator, and then the narrative perspectives and spatial-temporal frame of the novel and its style. As a next step, our analysis is expanded to the interaction of mentioned narrative forms, i.e. their mutual relations are observed. Particular attention is put on the transformation of the metonymy to the metaphor. Finally, we complete this work observing the relations between the novel and ''the real'' in its sociological and historical meaning. In this way, the pragmatic level and the functioning of the novel outside of a strictly literary framework is problematized.

Article
PeerReviewed

International Burch University

2015-09

2912