Nous sommes tousjours au dela : a negação narrative do sujeito modern em Sur des vers de Virgile (ensaios III, cap.V) de Michel de Motaigne

Abstract

The present thesis is intended to demonstrate, grounded on the analysis of the contradictions founded in Sur des Vers de Virgile, how the ambiguous structure of this work in which everything is constantly denied through oppositions leads to a continuous state of confusion and perplexity. Thus, a logical determination of concepts happens to become impossible, which ends increasingly to a text that lacks of correspondence to its author in terms of meaning and coherence. Nevertheless, based on an hermeneutical perspective influenced by anatomy, the present research affirms that the permanent and original use of narrative elements such as author, narrator and signatory as well, as the presence of multiple Montaignes encountered in a unified text, as a result of the various editorial fases of the above-mentioned essay, pulverizes the very notion of self-identity of the author, consequently leading its division into many different and contradictional subjects, which jeopardizes the classical perception of the Essays as a founding stone of modern subjectivity.