Du bol de lait à la cosmogonie. L’analyse du motif laiteux dans les romans de Claude Simon

The article proposes to analyze the semantic network of the noun “milk” in the corpus comprised of seven novels by Claude Simon wrote after 1957, in a period of his fascination with formal experiments, and published by Editions de Minuit. Interest of the paper is focused on the representation of human being (especially of women) as an organism with milky traits which connects it closely to the aquatic element. The reflections on the watery character of man are based on the work of French philosopher Gaston Bachelard and his conception of the four elements.