La présence et le fonctionnement de l’absence dans le Nouveau Roman

2011 ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Czesław Grzesiak
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Political Engagement ◽  
Marguerite Duras ◽  
Text Generation ◽  
Nathalie Sarraute ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Claude Simon ◽  
Michel Butor ◽  
Robert Pinget ◽  
Nouveau Roman

The French nouveau roman is characterised by lack of numerous elements typical of the traditional, commonly called Balzacian, novel. This lack involves the rejection of plot, omniscient narrator, psychological, moral and ideological factors, social and political engagement, the decomposition of character, the indeterminacy and gradual implosion of time and space as well as the text generation based on some lack or void. The aim of the article is to present these missing elements of the represented world and to discuss their functions in the works of leading practitioners of the nouveau roman, such as Samuel Beckett (predecessor), Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Robert Pinget, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute and Claude Simon.

scholarly journals Nouveau Roman

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Baetens ◽  
Christopher Langlois
Keyword(s):  
Marguerite Duras ◽  
Nathalie Sarraute ◽  
Claude Simon ◽  
Michel Butor ◽  
New Novel ◽  
André Breton ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Robert Pinget ◽  
Nouveau Roman ◽  
Critical Movement

The ‘Nouveau Roman’ or ‘New Novel’ is used to refer to a literary and critical movement in France during the 1950s and early 1960s. Later, more experimental developments in the late 1960s and early 1970s will be labeled the ‘New New Novel’. Although the Nouveau Roman quickly became associated with the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Marguerite Duras, Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor, Claude Simon, and Robert Pinget, to name only the most notable, it never crystallized into so dogmatic an ideology of literature and art as had the Surrealism of André Breton during the 1920s and 1930s.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Adam Guy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Marguerite Duras ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nathalie Sarraute ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Claude Simon ◽  
Michel Butor ◽  
Tel Quel ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nouveau Roman

The Introduction begins by detailing the emergence of the nouveau roman in its own place and time, looking at the political and cultural history of postwar France. The publisher Les Éditions de Minuit—the main sponsor of the nouveau roman—is introduced, and the earliest articulations of the nouveau roman are presented. Then, the works and signature styles of six writers are briefly surveyed, namely Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Robert Pinget, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon. The ends of the nouveau roman and the rise of Tel Quel are considered. Then the particular force of the nouveau roman in the British literary field is introduced, with modernism and the end of empire as key determinants. Finally, each of the book’s chapters is summarized.

The End and Afterlife of the Nouveau Roman, 1971–82

2020 ◽  
pp. 329-342
Author(s):  
Ann Jefferson
Keyword(s):  
Active Part ◽  
Short Paper ◽  
Nathalie Sarraute ◽  
Claude Simon ◽  
Robert Pinget ◽  
Nouveau Roman ◽  
Claude Ollier

This chapter talks about Nouveau Roman, which was once again given collective visibility in the form of a décade at the Château de Cerisy–la–Salle in July 1971. It details the event that was devoted to “Le Nouveau Roman: hier, aujourd'hui,” in which the organizers assembled five of the seven novelists who appeared on the famous photo of the Nouveau Roman: Robbe–Grillet, Claude Simon, Claude Ollier, Robert Pinget, and Nathalie Sarraute. It also recounts Nathalie's attendance at Gilbert Gadoffre's Rencontres in Loches, where she delivered a short paper titled “Is Proust Topical?” and took active part in the ensuing discussion. The chapter discusses the differences with the Nouveau Roman, structuralist theories of language, and the French left on the matter of Israel that revived Nathalie's long-standing resistance to arguments from authority. It mentions Nathalie's publication of “Fools Say” in 1976, which explores the politics of verbal categorisations.

The nouveau roman and Writing in Britain After Modernism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Guy
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Marguerite Duras ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
Claude Simon ◽  
Michel Butor ◽  
Muriel Spark ◽  
Nouveau Roman ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The Impact

This book shows the centrality of the nouveau roman to the literary culture of postwar Britain. Emerging in the mid–late 1950s in France, the nouveau roman grouped together a range of writers committed to innovation in the novel, such as Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Robert Pinget, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Nathalie Sarraute, and Claude Simon. Transferred to a different national context, the nouveau roman became a focal point for debates in Britain about realism, modernism, and the end of empire. The nouveau roman and the Novel in Britain After Modernism draws on extensive research into archival and periodical sources in order to tell the story of the nouveau roman’s dissemination and reception in Britain. It also looks at postwar writers working in Britain so as to gauge the impact of the nouveau roman in novels of the 1960s and 1970s. Whether in translations of Nathalie Sarraute’s writing by Maria Jolas (one of the founders of the interwar little magazine transition), or in the conservative critiques of the nouveau roman levelled by the circle around C. P. Snow, the question of the legacies of European high modernism is always in view. But equally, for writers like Brian W. Aldiss, Christine Brooke-Rose, Eva Figes, B. S. Johnson, Alan Sheridan, Muriel Spark, and Denis Williams, the nouveau roman also provided the source of aesthetic innovations that could exceed the modernist account of the new. This book uncovers a neglected history of the postwar British literary field, with continuing relevance for contemporary innovative writing.

La clé de l’incomprehénsible

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Stevenson
Keyword(s):  
Nous Avons ◽  
Claude Simon ◽  
Michel Butor ◽  
De Se ◽  
Nouveau Roman

À une époque où les habiletés de communication font partie des compétences de base du XXIe siècle, on se rend compte que l’obsession avec le langage dans les théories littéraires des années 50 et 60 est justifiée. La communication reste le rôle principal du langage, mais le contenu de cette communication a beaucoup changé. Presque chaque romancier appartenant au mouvement du nouveau roman utilise le langage de façon très différente de celle dont nous avons l’habitude en expérimentant avec le langage, en l’étirant de tous les côtés afin de lui donner une nouvelle dimension. Il ne s’agit plus de communiquer des idées et des sentiments, mais plutôt de se pencher sur le langage lui-même, de se réinventer pour que l’écrivain puisse mettre sur papier ce qu’il ressente : des sensations, des perceptions, des soupçons.Nathalie Sarraute, par exemple, perçoit le langage dans le sens mallarméen du terme, c’est-à-dire, « essentiel », complexe et qui produit du sens. En dehors du langage elle affirme l’existence d’une substance non-verbale qu’elle appelle « l’innommé » ou le « non-nommé » et le langage sert justement de médiateur entre les sensations que l’écrivain veut exprimer et son lecteur.Avec Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon et Michel Butor, le langage dans le roman joue un rôle important car il force le lecteur à changer sa façon de lire afin de comprendre le roman. Les jeux de mots et l’insistance sur les descriptions des objets font penser le lecteur qu’il doit absolument trouver la clé afin de comprendre l’incompréhensible.

Dissemination

2019 ◽  
pp. 29-63
Author(s):  
Adam Guy
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Visual Presentation ◽  
Marguerite Duras ◽  
Nathalie Sarraute ◽  
Pulp Fiction ◽  
British Publisher ◽  
Nouveau Roman

This chapter surveys the early dissemination of the nouveau roman in Britain, beginning around 1957. First, the nouveau roman’s main British publisher, Calder & Boyars, is introduced, with consideration of that publisher’s broader activities and ideals; particular attention is paid to its transnational contexts. There is mention too of the nouveau roman’s other British publishers, including Faber and Jonathan Cape. Then the different publishing formats used by Calder & Boyars for the nouveau roman are discussed, with analysis of visual presentation. The chapter then turns to the ways in which Calder & Boyars mediated the nouveau roman in promotional copy and in the search for new audiences; reference here is made to modernism, Existentialism, the notion of the literary ‘classic’, detective fiction, pulp fiction, cinema, theatre, television, and radio. The chapter concludes with two case studies that typify the nouveau roman’s complex status for British readers, first looking at Samuel Beckett’s relation to the nouveau roman, and then narrating Calder & Boyars’s ‘French Week’, in which the publisher organized a British speaking tour for Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Nathalie Sarraute.

Translation and transition

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-120
Author(s):  
Adam Guy
Keyword(s):  
Samuel Beckett ◽  
Nathalie Sarraute ◽  
Nouveau Roman

This chapter looks at the translation of the nouveau roman into English. The modernist precedent in the field of translation is considered. Then the nouveau roman’s various English translators are discussed. The chapter’s main focus is the work of Nathalie Sarraute, which was translated into English by Maria Jolas. Jolas’s central role in the modernist little magazine, transition, is introduced, and her postwar activities are also presented. In particular, the chapter looks at Jolas’s translations of two novels of what is named Sarraute’s ‘aesthetic turn’, Entre la vie et la mort (1968), and Vous les entendez? (1972). Jolas’s translations are shown to emphasize both inter- and intralingualism, as well as a deeper untranslatability that undergirds all translation. The chapter ends by contrasting Jolas’s translations from French with those of Barbara Wright and Samuel Beckett.

The Delvaux Mystery: Painting, the Nouveau Roman, and Art History

2012 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 298-313
Author(s):  
Gavin Parkinson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Art History ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
Detective Story ◽  
Claude Simon ◽  
Michel Butor ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Nouveau Roman ◽  
Twentieth Century Novel ◽  
Made In

Meant to signal in its parodic title both the causal, deductive conventions of academic art history and those of the detective story, this essay looks at the work of the Belgian artist Paul Delvaux (1897–1994), and discusses the uses to which that œuvre has been put by several of the pioneers of the twentieth-century novel, such as Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Julio Cortázar, and J.G. Ballard. It goes on to speculate as to why so many French novelists from the 1950s who interrogated specifically narrative form, together with those inspired by their example, responded to Delvaux's work in their writing. Asking whether any gain can be made in art history's knowledge and understanding of art by viewing it back through the fiction or poetry generated by it, the essay suggests that fiction and poetry might inflect academic art history at the level of style, asking what the genre implications of such writing might be for a discipline in which writing and style have had such well-defined boundaries and limitations.

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