Construction de l’identité féminine romanesque à travers le discours rapporté : une étude à propos de La Modification de Michel Butor

This paper aims at emphasizing the part played by instances of reported speech in portraying the character of Cecile in Michel Butor’s novel, La Modification. To this regard, the reported speech insertions throughout the novel, pertaining to Cecile, have been identified. The condition is even more complex as the narrator (the telltale) is also one of the characters and therefore a part of the aforementioned instances are only imagined by the latter. Therefore, the portrayal of Cecile is realized by means of both retrospective and prospective projections made on the outline of another character. These reported speech-based projections are also employed by the author in the portrayal of the narrator-character.