« Cat ‘N’ Mouse » de Steven Millhauser : un cartoon linguistique.

Abstract

The short story “Cat ‘N’ Mouse” (Dangerous Laughter, 2008), by the American novelist and short story writer Steven Millhauser, is a literary transposition of the animated cartoon films Tom and Jerry. As he creates a “linguistic cartoon,” the author draws the reader's attention to the strangeness of the animated cartoon, revealing the violent, cathartic dimension of laughter at work in the films. Moreover, through the prism of words and through the process of intersemioticity, a mass cultural product is transformed into a unique experience on the ability of language to ascend to the realm of sounds, of images and of their animation.