Le point de vue animal dans "Dingo": l'inscription ambiguë de l'altérité

We would like to approach Octave Mirbeau’s last novel, Dingo, published in 1913, using Alain\r\nRabatel’s linguistic theory concerning the representation of the point of view (PDV) in fiction\r\nand Anne Simon’s approach about the “zoopoétique”. From a narrative perspective, the\r\nprotagonist of the novel, half-dog and half-wolf, is certainly Mirbeau’s mirror of the soul, that\r\nis to say the voice of his desires, his torments, his inadequacy. Nevertheless, some passages of\r\nthe novel evoke the total “alterity” of the animal in comparison to the human (cf. Derrida): his\r\nancestral instinct, as well as the abundance of his sense organs. After a short presentation of the\r\nPDV theory applied to animals in fiction, we will analyse Mirbeau’s use of some recurrent stylistic\r\ndevices to represent the dingo’s thoughts and words. If, on one hand, the anthropomorphism\r\nof the dog is excessive, and quite traditional indeed, on the other Mirbeau’s novel shows\r\nthe first steps of empathy: some of his literary constructions, conjuring the animal’s universe\r\nup, relate a non-human world. Only here the modernity of this novel is completely manifest.