Experimentalism and literary dissent: the nouveau roman’s avantgardist engagement
Abstract
The use of the definition «nouveau roman» closely links to the activity of the French neo-avantgardist group of the école du regard. The group’s members draw their inspiration from a critical reflection on literature and its meaning, in opposition to tradition. The idea, which reunites as different writers as Alain Robbe-Grillet and Michel Butor, is the reliance on the novel as a form of critical elaboration of reality. The main objects of this collective experimentation are in the forms and the structures of the novel.
The present article focuses on the issue of the engagement as presented in Robbe-Grillet and Butor’s essays: the result of a retrospective consideration on their novels, combined to their ideas about literature and its possibilities, whose outcome is the opposition to «sclerotized» structures of traditional realism.
Downloads
References
Barilli, Renato, L'azione e l'estasi. Le neoavanguardie degli anni '60, Torino, Testo & Immagine editore, 1999.
Barilli, Renato, Robbe-Grillet e il romanzo postmoderno, Milano, Mursia, 1998.
Barthes, Roland, Essais critiques, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1964.
Bloch-Michel, Jean, Le présent de l'indicatif. Essai sur le Nouveau roman, Paris, Gallimard, 1963.
Butor, Michel, Essais sur le roman, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1964.
Butor, Michel, L’emploi de temps, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1956.
Butor, Michel, La modification, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1957.
Butor, Michel, Répertoire I, Éditions de minuit, Paris, 1960.
Chatman, Seymour, Story and discourse, Cornell University Press, 1978.
Croce, Mariano, Postcritica, Macerata, Quodlibet, 2019.
Eco, Umberto, Lector in fabula, Milano, Bompiani, 1979.
Gialloreto, Andrea, I cantieri dello sperimentalismo, Milano, Jaca Book, 2013.
Goldmann, Lucien, Pour une sociologie du roman, Paris, Éditions Gallimard, 1964.
Lodge, David, Consciousness and the novel, Harvard University Press, 2002.
Morrissette, Bruce, The novels of Robbe-Grillet, Cornell University Press, 1975.
Ricardou, Jean, Le Nouveau Roman, Paris, Éditions du seuil, 1976.
Ricardou, Jean, L’ordine e la disfatta e altri saggi di teoria del romanzo, Cosenza, Lerici, 1976.
Ricardou, Jean, Pour une théorie du Nouveau Roman, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1971.
Ricardou, Jean, Problèmes du Nouveau Roman, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1967.
Ricardou, Jean, Van Rossum-Guyon, Françoise, Nouveau roman : hier, aujourd'hui. Actes du colloque de Cerisy, Paris, UGE - Collection «10/18», 1972.
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, La Jalousie, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1957.
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, Le Voyeur, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1955.
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, Les Gommes, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1953.
Robbe-Grillet, Alain, Pour un nouveau roman, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1963.
Sarraute, Nathalie, L’ère du soupçon, Paris, Gallimard, 1956.
Sarraute, Nathalie, Tropismes, Paris, Robert Denoël, 1939.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Situations I, Paris, Gallimard, 1947.
Sartre, Jean-Paul, Situations IV, Paris, Gallimard, 1964.
Simon, Claude, La Route des Flandres, Paris, Éditions de minuit, 1960.
Sollers, Philippe, L’écriture et l’expérience des limites, Paris, Éditions du Seuil, 1968.
Weber, Luigi, Con onesto amore di degradazione, Il Mulino, Bologna, 2007.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
