Amélie au pays des mots : la réflexion métalinguistique dans l’œuvre d’Amélie Nothomb

Appearing on the literary scene in 1992 with Hygiene of the Assassin, Amélie Nothomb immediately enjoyed enormous media success, so that her works became bestsellers, read by thousands of readers and translated into 40 languages. And if literary critics do not accept it unanimously, several literary prizes have been awarded to her during these years while many studies have examined her work from several points of view. This study will examine a less considered aspect of her writing, the metalinguistic reflection, which seems to characterize the novel's universe of Amélie Nothomb. Many studies concentrate on the proper names present in the works of Nothomb. However, it is equally interesting to analyze the role of common names in her works, often studied and commented from the metalinguistic and etymological point of view. It will also lead to observe the role that these reflections have in the text and, more generally, in the novelistic construction of the author, which consists in a continuous and tight reflection on the language, of which Nothomb develops all the potentialities.