The Poetics of the Thing in M. Duras’s L’Amante Anglaise: From Evidence to Minus-device

The paper considers the structural and functional specifics of the portrayal of things in the novel “La menthe anglaise” by M. Duras. In the framework of the analysis it is stated that the traditional for criminal plot function of a thing as a clue is absorbed here by another, less obvious and related to the search for the “right question” about the true reason of the murder. The “getting rid” of things as traces of their presence in the everyday, purely material world takes place both at the narrative and plot scales. Having lost its external instantiation, having retained only its name in a few lists, the object is actually swallowed up by the word, by speech. The detected singularities give a fuller picture of the correlation of M. Duras’s novel with the traditions of criminal literature and the French “new novel”, namely with one of its basic principles, the detailed depiction of things (le chosisme) beyond semantic and symbolic connections, as identical to themselves.