Yourcenar, Flaubert, ou l'empathie par la prose

In this article we analyse Flaubert’s and Yourcenar’s prose through an uttered-centered approach, in order to compare their similar stylistic devices (the use of free indirect discourse, as well as the abundance of the general “on”) that express the narrator’s empathy attitude in linguistic terms. By the application of Alain Rabatel’s theory about the PDV (point of view), we show the distance between Un cœur simple and Un homme obscur: in the latter, Yourcenar evoke an explicit, empathetic pact with her reader, by way of a range of continuous call to the extradiegetic universality.