The alchemical work and the work of literature in Hubert Aquin's L''Antiphonaire'

L'antiphonaire mobilizes in the weaving of its diegetic content numerous fo rms of non-literary knowledge. Through an epistemocritical approach, this a rticle studies one of them: the alchemical knowledge. Not only does it spot the principal hermetic references in the novel, but it also analyses how t he borrowing of theories from alchemical philosophy influences Aquin's dieg esis and writing. It shows primarily how the novel's epigraph, taken from a n alchemical treatise attributed to Mary the Copt, structures the whole net work of characters who, far from being distinct individuals, appear as the various metamorphoses of a unique entity divided between the poles of the c onscious and of the unconscious. In that case, L'antiphonaire represents th e attempt to reunite both of these elements through a process in which the literary work coincides with the Great Work.