La forme du conte et son influence sur la lecture des personnages de Curiosité d’Anne Terral

Published in 2009, Anne Terral’s novel Curiosité is a modern version of Bluebeard. Not only does the author use the story to write her own novel but, what is even more important, she also borrows certain formal elements from fairy tales, such as time and space treatment, unrealistic atmosphere and archetypal nature of characters. It seems crucial then to examine what poetic possibilities have come out of the union of a novel with a fairy tale. The assumption is that the presence of the elements listed above allows the author to tell the story of a murder in a symbolic manner. Those elements suspend the standard judgment of facts, typical for criminal, psychological or realistic novel. In consequence, the reader does not condemn the count of Furbach for killing his wives nor does he perceive Arian’s behavior as insane because of her feelings for the count. Thanks to the denial of verisimilitude Curiosité becomes a metaphoric novel of love and trust.