La passion du secret dans The Human Stain de Philip Roth

Abstract

The Human Stain is a novel of secrets: the novel of a man’s secret—the secret of a literature professor, Coleman Silk. The secret which the narrative inquires about and discloses is not a mere, nor a unique reality, but an always already duplicated and complex one. Zuckerman’s novel, embedded in Roth’s, is the narrative of a passion that is not unrelated to what Jacques Derrida calls “the secret without secret” of literature. Nathan is a homodiegetic narrator whose witnessing and connection to the character of Coleman eventually takes on an unexpected and growing place in the narrative.