La vision dysphorique de Michel Butor: la ville-personnage de L’Emploi du temps en tant que locus terribilis

The Dysphoric Vision of Michel Butor: the City of L’Emploi du temps as Locus Terribilis From biblical sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorrah to modern ones like the nightmarish Prague of Kafka, the melancholic Bruges of Rodenbach or the cursed Bleston of Butor, the evil urban areas have fascinated novelists of all ages. In L’Emploi du temps, Michel Butor presents a haunting and disturbing vision of an imaginary English town, personified and considered the second main character in Butor’s novel. In order to torture its inhabitants, Bleston controls the four elements of nature and reduces them to their negative aspect of dreadful, devastating forces, which challenges the positive imagery of the air, water, earth and fire created by 20th-century philosopher Gaston Bachelard. A hostile and malicious city inspired by Manchester, Bleston seems to sum up all the fears and misfortunes of the real world metropolises in their hostile and unlivable aspect.