ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the use of the tools in the exploration of textual communication in prose narrative, more specifically to look at the representation of the feminine in Zola’s Une Page d’Amour. The ‘actantial model’ is a Greimas-sian typology inspired by Sourian’s and Propp’s work on recurring character types in narrative. Greimas defines and classifies narrative performers or ‘actants’ according to the roles they perform in the action. Zola’s Une Page d’Amour is marked by striking dichotomies, and the text unites, juxtaposes and sets up parallel systems of opposites. There is a disparity and an interplay between these. The catamorphic structures within which these polarised stereotypes occur must manifest themselves within space. Zola exploits the binary function of the potential paradigm ‘above/below’ by semanticising it: one automatically associates this type of spatial hierarchy with the symbolism related to concepts of ‘high’ and ‘low’, various scenes in the text being divided according to these two symbolic levels.
