Gilbert Sorrentino est souvent présenté comme un auteur postmoderniste. Pourtant, loin du nivellement postmoderniste, il privilégie des principes modernistes selon une posture moralisante et exclusive. Ce travail, qui porte sur la couleur et sur le visuel, s’appuie notamment sur cinq œuvres : The Sky Changes, Steelwork, Splendide-Hôtel, Aberration of Starlight, Crystal Vision. Les valeurs intermédiaires du gris impliquent une indécision qui renvoie à l’informe et au mal. Le poids d’une éducation religieuse est sensible dans l’opposition des valeurs sombres, qui sont associées au péché, et de l’éclair lumineux qui s’oppose à l’apathie grise pour redonner vie et forme à l’espace. La radicalité de Sorrentino s’exprime par un goût pour les contrastes colorés, notamment dans Splendide-Hôtel. Noir et blanc forgent un contraste plastique extrême, comme dans la peinture de Franz Kline. La posture élégiaque de l’auteur s’appuie sur l’opposition entre le rouge et le gris. Le goût pour la synthèse mène à une schématisation des formes et des couleurs, proche du Minimal Art. On note un tropisme vers l’abstraction immatérielle et immuable. L’auteur se limite aux termes génériques pour dire la couleur. Ce respect des spécificités du langage évoque le purisme de Clement Greenberg. Écrit à partir de sources disparates (le Rider deck conçu par A. E. Waite et Steelwork), Crystal Vision instaure une tension entre la symbolique noble du tarot et la réalité misérable du roman. En posant une dichotomie entre le visible profane et l’invisible sacré, la vision de Sorrentino rejoint la sensibilité platonicienne et médiévale. La transposition ironique des images participe d’un idéalisme déçu. / Gilbert Sorrentino is often presented as an emblematic postmodernist writer. This study focuses on colour and the visual in five works in particular : The Sky Changes, Steelwork, Splendide-Hôtel, Aberration of Starlight and Crystal Vision. Far from the egalitarianism of postmodernism, modernist principles go along with a moralizing and exclusive viewpoint. Intermediate values of grey imply uncertainty which refer to the amorphous and to evil. The burden of a religious education is felt in the opposition between dark values, which refer to sin, and flashing light which breaks into the mournful grey, giving life and form to space. The radicalism of Sorrentino’s aesthetic position shows in his taste for contrasts in colour, namely in Splendide-Hôtel. Black and white set up a sharp contrast, as in Franz Kline’s paintings. The elegiac stand of the author is asserted by the opposition between red and grey. A taste for synthesis leads to a simplification of shapes and colours which evokes the Minimal Art movement. A propensity for immaterial and immutable abstraction is noticed. Sorrentino expresses colour by using generic terms, thus taking account of the inability of language to encompass the real. This respect of the language idiosyncrasy matches Clement Greenberg’s purism. Crystal Vision is based on two ill-assorted sources (A. E. Waite’s Rider deck and Steelwork) which produces a tension between the high symbolism of the cards and the sordid reality of Steelwork. By setting a dichotomy between the secular visible and the sacred invisible, Sorrentino goes towards the platonic and medieval mind. The ironic transposition of images proceeds from a defeated idealism.

Using a number of structurally innovative novels from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as a basis for study, this dissertation examines the representation of communities in postmodernist American fiction. While novels have often been critically studied from the standpoint of the individual and society, here the often neglected category of community is put under scrutiny. Yet rather than considering it from a sociological point of view, which can potentially favour historical, economic or political grounds for community, this study focuses on the ontological binds formed between individual and community. On one level this study connects formal qualities of postmodernist novels to a representation of community – especially literary conventions from the past that are foregrounded in the present texts. On another level it interrogates the limits of the individual in relation to others – how we emerge from others, how we are discrete from others, how much we can actually share with others, at what cost we stay or break with the others who have most influenced us. The primary novels studied here, each of which is deeply invested in the community as a locus for ontological interrogation, are Robert Coover’s "Gerald’s Party" (1985) and "John’s Wife" (1996), Gilbert Sorrentino’s "Crystal Vision" (1981) and "Odd Number" (1985), Harry Mathews’s "Cigarettes" (1987), Joseph McElroy’s "Women and Men" (1987), and Toni Morrison’s "Paradise" (1997). Despite their varied representations of and attitudes toward the individual in community, these texts share a common spectre of American Romanticism that inflects how we read the possibility of community in the postmodernist period.

Using a number of structurally innovative novels from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as a basis for study, this dissertation examines the representation of communities in postmodernist American fiction. While novels have often been critically studied from the standpoint of the individual and society, here the often neglected category of community is put under scrutiny. Yet rather than considering it from a sociological point of view, which can potentially favour historical, economic or political grounds for community, this study focuses on the ontological binds formed between individual and community. On one level this study connects formal qualities of postmodernist novels to a representation of community – especially literary conventions from the past that are foregrounded in the present texts. On another level it interrogates the limits of the individual in relation to others – how we emerge from others, how we are discrete from others, how much we can actually share with others, at what cost we stay or break with the others who have most influenced us. The primary novels studied here, each of which is deeply invested in the community as a locus for ontological interrogation, are Robert Coover’s "Gerald’s Party" (1985) and "John’s Wife" (1996), Gilbert Sorrentino’s "Crystal Vision" (1981) and "Odd Number" (1985), Harry Mathews’s "Cigarettes" (1987), Joseph McElroy’s "Women and Men" (1987), and Toni Morrison’s "Paradise" (1997). Despite their varied representations of and attitudes toward the individual in community, these texts share a common spectre of American Romanticism that inflects how we read the possibility of community in the postmodernist period.

Using a number of structurally innovative novels from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as a basis for study, this dissertation examines the representation of communities in postmodernist American fiction. While novels have often been critically studied from the standpoint of the individual and society, here the often neglected category of community is put under scrutiny. Yet rather than considering it from a sociological point of view, which can potentially favour historical, economic or political grounds for community, this study focuses on the ontological binds formed between individual and community. On one level this study connects formal qualities of postmodernist novels to a representation of community – especially literary conventions from the past that are foregrounded in the present texts. On another level it interrogates the limits of the individual in relation to others – how we emerge from others, how we are discrete from others, how much we can actually share with others, at what cost we stay or break with the others who have most influenced us. The primary novels studied here, each of which is deeply invested in the community as a locus for ontological interrogation, are Robert Coover’s "Gerald’s Party" (1985) and "John’s Wife" (1996), Gilbert Sorrentino’s "Crystal Vision" (1981) and "Odd Number" (1985), Harry Mathews’s "Cigarettes" (1987), Joseph McElroy’s "Women and Men" (1987), and Toni Morrison’s "Paradise" (1997). Despite their varied representations of and attitudes toward the individual in community, these texts share a common spectre of American Romanticism that inflects how we read the possibility of community in the postmodernist period.

Using a number of structurally innovative novels from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as a basis for study, this dissertation examines the representation of communities in postmodernist American fiction. While novels have often been critically studied from the standpoint of the individual and society, here the often neglected category of community is put under scrutiny. Yet rather than considering it from a sociological point of view, which can potentially favour historical, economic or political grounds for community, this study focuses on the ontological binds formed between individual and community. On one level this study connects formal qualities of postmodernist novels to a representation of community – especially literary conventions from the past that are foregrounded in the present texts. On another level it interrogates the limits of the individual in relation to others – how we emerge from others, how we are discrete from others, how much we can actually share with others, at what cost we stay or break with the others who have most influenced us. The primary novels studied here, each of which is deeply invested in the community as a locus for ontological interrogation, are Robert Coover’s "Gerald’s Party" (1985) and "John’s Wife" (1996), Gilbert Sorrentino’s "Crystal Vision" (1981) and "Odd Number" (1985), Harry Mathews’s "Cigarettes" (1987), Joseph McElroy’s "Women and Men" (1987), and Toni Morrison’s "Paradise" (1997). Despite their varied representations of and attitudes toward the individual in community, these texts share a common spectre of American Romanticism that inflects how we read the possibility of community in the postmodernist period.