ABSTRACT
Michel Butor’s proteiform body of work includes novels as well as essays and collaborations with artists. A former student of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Butor’s phenomenological understanding of space, combined with his propensity for travel, permeates his writing. Through concomitant readings of Butor’s novel La Modification, his essay “L’Espace du roman,” and Merleau-Ponty’s Phénoménologie de la perception, this chapter places the body of the reader at the centre of the reading experience and analyses instances of absolute and relative movements in Butor’s novel. The chapter argues that the linguistic movement of the reader, like Merleau-Ponty’s geste, is intentional and that, like travelling, reading requires an effort of projection on the part of the reader.
