How do person deictics construct roles for the reader? : The unusual case of an "unratified reader" in Schnitzler's Leutnant Gustl and Fräulein Else

International audienceIn narratology, the grammatical category of person remains to be studied from the perspective of the reader. This article focuses on a particular type of first-person narrative, a type of " interior monologue " in the present tense, via Arthur Schnitzler's short stories Leutnant Gustl (1901) and Fräulein Else (1924). This type of monologue denies the reader's existence within the text (the reader is un-ratified, a reader-voyeur) yet forces the participation of the real reader (who becomes a reader-actor, the only vehicle that brings the silent " voice " of the protagonist to life). I propose to replace the notion of " cooperative reader " (Eco 1979) by that of " unratified/complicit reader ". The simulated immediacy of the deictic I functions as a powerful conveyor of projection and identification of the reader with the protagonist