1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910779903503321

Autore

Ellison David R

Titolo

Of words and the world : referential anxiety in contemporary French fiction / / David R. Ellison

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Princeton, N.J., : Princeton University Press, c1993

ISBN

1-282-75167-0

9786612751677

1-4008-2087-1

1-4008-1147-3

Edizione

[Course Book]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (211 pages)

Disciplina

843/.91409

Soggetti

French fiction - 20th century - History and criticism - Theory, etc

Experimental fiction, French - History and criticism

Reference (Philosophy) in literature

Mimesis in literature

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. [183]-192) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- NOTE ON TEXTS AND TRANSLATIONS -- INTRODUCTION -- PART ONE: METAMORPHOSES OF THE REFERENTIAL FUNCTION, 1956-1984 -- Chapter One. Vertiginous Storytelling: Camus's La Chute, 1956 -- Chapter Two. Reappearing Man in Robbe-Grillet's Topologie d'une cité fantôme, 1976 -- Chapter Three. Narrative Leveling and Performative Pathos in Claude Simon's Les Géorgiques, 1981 -- Chapter Four. The Self as Referent: Postmodern Autobiographies, 1983-1984 (Robbe-Grillet, Duras, Sarraute) -- PART TWO: "PURE FICTION" AND THE INEVITABILITY OF REFERENCE -- INTRODUCTION TO PART TWO -- Chapter Five. Blanchot and Narrative -- Chapter Six. Beckett and the Ethics of Fabulation -- CONCLUSION -- NOTES -- WORKS CITED -- INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

Here David Ellison explores the problems encountered by France's best experimental authors writing between 1956 and 1984, when faced with the question: "What should my writing be about?" These years are characterized by the rise of the "new novelists," who questioned the



representational function of writing as they created works of imagination that turned in upon themselves and away from exterior reality. It became fashionable at one point to affirm that literature was no longer about the world but uniquely about the words on a page, the signifying surface of the text. Ellison tests this assumption, showing that even in the most seemingly self-referential fictions the words point to the world from which they can never completely separate themselves. Through close readings Ellison examines the novels and theoretical writings of authors whose works are fundamental to our perception of contemporary French writing and thought: Camus, Robbe-Grillet, Simon, Duras, Sarraute, Blanchot, and Beckett. The result is a new understanding of the link between the referential function of literary language and the problematic of the ethics of fiction.