Analysis of Sylvain Tesson's narrative about his encounter with a snow leopard in Tibet, highlighting the animal's dominance over the landscape.
Extract
[...] It is interesting to wonder how Sylvain Tesson retranscribes this particular encounter with the famous snow leopard. In the first movement from line 1 to line the narrator announces the appearance of the snow leopard. He will describe it more precisely in a second movement from lines 5 to 10. From line 11 to the end, Tesson highlights the importance that the wild animal takes on compared to the Tibetan mountain landscape. Linear Analysis In the first movement, Tesson presents the appearance of the panther. [...]
[...] To conclude, Sylvain Tesson describes through this text his particular encounter with the panther. This moment seems ephemeral but above all frozen in time. This encounter comes after a very long wait, which obviously reinforces the beauty of the moment. The grandiose landscape of the place where he is seems insignificant in front of the beauty of this apparition. His story highlights our world and especially the fauna and flora. It's not the only author to highlight nature, it's what Colette was already doing in The Vines of the Vine through his own celebration of the world and lyricism. [...]
[...] The personification continues again with the verb 'to clothe'. There is a metonymy to designate it 'spirit of the snows' and to insist on its sacred aspect, which he discusses in the first movement. Finally, in the third movement the panther seems to take the upper hand over the surrounding landscape. There is a repetition of 'landscape' to insist on the setting of this scene. There is subsequently a reification, that is, Sylvain Tesson attributes to himself the characteristics of an object which is here a camera. [...]
[...] He shows that the encounter occurred by chance with the use of the past conditional 'would have passed'. There is also the lexical field of sight repeated several times to emphasize the appearance: 'appearance', 'vision'. He hyperbolizes this appearance by comparing it to something divine 'religious', 'sacred character'. He makes a quick description using the imperfect tense 'was raising', 'was sniffing'. It appears as wild and distrustful, which reinforces the rarity of this encounter. He focuses particularly on its coat, which is related to the visual description he started at the beginning of the excerpt. [...]
