The Language of the Narrator in Maurice Maeterlinck’s Onirologie

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze young Maeterlinck's literary use of French on the basis of the question about the narrator's language in his “nouvelle” Onirologie (1889), presupposing it is not a “silly question”. Firstly, we will establish the generic coordinates of the story and we will demonstrate one of its major intertextualities. Secondly, we will reflect on the fictio­nal representation of the foreign language, in order to understand, lastly, the Maeterlinckean bilingualism as a case of extraterritoriality