Legal Macro- and Microstructural Devices as a Means of Representing French Bourgeoisie

The present article is devoted to the determination and analysis of the legal terms Marcel Proust uses to characterize different situations of bourgeoisie’s everyday life at the beginning of the second volume of his novel “In Search of Lost Time” (“À la recherche du temps perdu”) “In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower” (“À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs”). We shall apply the methods of lexical and semantic analysis as well as the methods used in stylistics, particularly in the theory of figures of speech (namely, Georges Molinié’s theory of macrostructural and microstructural figures of speech). We have identified a number of legal terms pertaining to the judicial process (“procès”, “juger la cause”, “erreur judiciaire”), the administrative (“notification”, “commissaire-priseur”) and civil law (“régime matrimonial”), the constitutional (“républicain”) and criminal law (“crime”, “criminel”) the author resorts to in order to describe different social situations. Thus, we have contributed to the studies of Marcel Proust’s language and style, the elements of his poetics being largely unexplored by the linguists despite a large number of books and papers on the writer and his works. We have analyzed special vocabulary through the theory of figures of speech, particularly legal terms that the author utilizes to represent the domains that are far away from those of law, such as art (theatre and literature) and all kinds of human and social relations in the bourgeois society. For example, the evaluation of Berma’s acting by the spectators and the estimation of Marcel’s literary aspirations are represented as a trial. Marquis Norpois’s aristocratic coldness and arrogance are described with the terms of administrative judicial procedure. In his pretentious speech, he uses a hyperbole based on a term of criminal law. His conservative political views are also represented through a term of constitutional law. Marcel’s attempts to get to know Gilberte’s family better are perceived by him as an unfair trial and, at the same time, as a crime. The term of the domain of the civil law indicates the importance of some types of social relations, particularly marriage, in the eyes of emerging bourgeoisie. Thereby, using legal terms from multiple branches of law as a part of different macrostructural and microstructural figures of speech, Marcel Proust in his novel describes different social relations, processes and phenomena.