ABSTRACT
According to Roland Barthes, writers use reminiscences especially in order to construct the novelized object. Proper names in particular have this evocative potential. Alice's name, however, is not devoid of meaning, although it doubtless remains more hidden, ensconced in its interstices and unconscious. Romeo and Juliet, the Montagues and the Capulets: in the final analysis, it is the names that are the real protagonists of the Shakespearean tragedy. Romeo and Juliet were never able to take possession of their given names and to inscribe their own desire in them. Names thus acquire new meaning whenever they are incarnated in a singular subject, modelled by the person who offers them a blueprint to inhabit. The proper name acquires all its evocative power in M. Proust, acts as a crossroads, a condensation of associative chains that need to be expanded in order to access the nuances of reconstructive and constructive memory.
