À l’origine de cette recherche se trouve un débat taxinomique opposant deux points de vue différents sur l’œuvre et l’appartenance ethnique de l’écrivain Marie NDiaye. Sa filiation franco-sénégalaise et sa couleur de peau ont poussé certains critiques à intégrer ses écrits à la littérature noire francophone, alors que la romancière a principalement vécu en Europe et se dit modelée par la mentalité et la culture occidentales. Pourtant, dans ses deux derniers romans, l’Afrique est un élément essentiel de la diégèse. Notre curiosité a été suscitée par ces différents positionnements. Afin de trancher entre la fascination pour un endroit exotique auquel la romancière est souvent associée et une appartenance sans équivoque au champ littéraire de l’Afrique francophone, nous avons mené une étude sur trois niveaux. Le point de départ a été de relever les influences les plus marquantes qui ont façonné les œuvres de Marie NDiaye et de situer les romans du corpus dans une tradition littéraire évidente. La deuxième partie interroge les dimensions narrative et descriptive de Trois femmes puissantes et Ladivine afin de déceler des signes de métissage. Le dernier fil conducteur creuse les figures de l’imaginaire et relie les deux œuvres étudiées surtout aux mythes et aux symboles issus de l’Antiquité gréco-romaine et du catholicisme. Au terme de notre thèse, nous pensons avoir réussi un travail rigoureux dont les conclusions prouvent que la filiation littéraire de Marie NDiaye est du côté de la littérature française. / At the origin of this research is a taxonomic debate between two different views on the work and the ethnicity of the writer Marie NDiaye. Her Franco-Senegalese descent and skin color have determined some critics to integrate her works within the Francophone black literature, while the novelist lived mainly in Europe and said she was shaped by the Western mentality and culture. Yet in her last two novels, Africa is essential for the diegesis. Our curiosity was aroused by these different positions. To distinguish between the fascination for an exotic location to which the novelist is often associated and an unequivocal belonging to the literary field of Francophone Africa, we conducted a study on three levels. To distinguish between the fascination for an exotic location to which the novelist is often associated and an unequivocal belonging to the literary field of Francophone Africa, we conducted a study on three levels. The starting point was to meet the most important influences that have shaped the works of Marie NDiaye and to find the place of the novels of the corpus in an obvious literary tradition. The second part examines the narrative and descriptive dimensions of Three Strong Women and Ladivine in order to detect signs of miscegenation. The last thread studies the figures of the imaginary and connects the two works with myths and symbols derived from the Greco-Roman antiquity and the Catholicism. At the end of our thesis, we think we have achieved a rigorous work which proves that the literary lineage of Marie NDiaye is on the side of the French literature.

L’histoire de la maison et celle du roman se croisent tout particulièrement au XIXe siècle alors que littérature et architecture engagent des chantiers dont Philippe Hamon souligne le parallélisme. La maison comme la maisonnée sont par ailleurs affectées par les évolutions sociétales. Objet privilégié de la description réaliste, la maison a depuis été ébranlée dans ses fondations d’autant que l’intérêt même de son exposition s’est trouvé remis en cause. La question de la représentation est au cœur des crises que traverse le roman. Le retour à la fiction initié au tournant des années 1980, en réactivant le romanesque, favorise-t-il la délivrance de nouveaux permis de construire et le réinvestissement d’un lieu redevenu fréquentable? Cette thèse se propose d’explorer le motif de la maison dans l’œuvre romanesque de quatre romanciers contemporains, J.M.G. Le Clézio, Pascal Quignard, Sylvie Germain et Marie NDiaye, à l’aune des changements sociologiques comme des problématiques du roman, afin de montrer que la maison offre des perspectives nouvelles pour la fiction. Nous envisagerons un «roman de maison» lequel, comme le roman d’aventure, aurait son espace, ses intrigues, ses personnages. En parcourant des espaces domestiques distincts, nous ferons ressortir un certain nombre d’enjeux esthétiques et poétiques liés au thème et nous nous demanderons si le roman ne serait pas, à notre époque, devenu le refuge le plus sûr et le lieu le plus hospitalier. / The history of home and that of the novel have crossed paths more than once, but hardly ever more so than in the nineteenth century, when literature and architecture began exploring new forms, the similarities of which were aptly pointed out by Philippe Hamon. At the time, both house and home were subjected to deep societal changes, and their worth as literary object was called into question: thus, home, which had long been a favourite topic of the realists, was shaken to its foundations. The very notion of representation lay at the crux of the crises the novel was going through. Around the 1980s, however, the novel began pivoting back towards fiction, thus reviving its core characteristic. Did this return to home promote new building permits, so to speak? Did it make home, as a literary trope, inhabitable once again ? This dissertation shall explore the motif of home in the complete works of four contemporary authors, namely J.M.G. Le Clézio, Pascal Quignard, Sylvie Germain and Marie NDiaye, as analyzed through the prism of sociological changes, as well as of novel-related problematics. By so doing, I hope to demonstrate that home still bears a slew of new perspectives for the fiction genre. I will put forward the notion of a ‘home novel’, which, just like the ‘adventure novel’, is endowed with its very own set of spaces, plots and characters. By delving into various domestic spaces, I shall bring out some of its key aspects, be they aesthetic or poetic, and wonder whether the novel might have become, in the times we live in, the safest and most hospitable haven at our disposal.

This thesis examines representations of the intimate as experienced by female protagonists, through expressions related to the heart, the soul and the body, in a comparative study of novels by French women writers from the 19th century and the present day. The corpus consists of seven novels : Ourika by Claire de Duras (1822), Lélia by George Sand (1833 & 1839), Monsieur Vénus. Roman matérialiste by Rachilde (1884), Femme nue, femme noire by Calixthe Beyala (2003), Vous parler d’elle by Claire Castillon (2004), Le Cœur cousu by Carole Martinez (2007), and Mon cœur à l’étroit by Marie NDiaye (2007). As a starting point, the thesis provides an extensive literature survey of existing research on the intimate as well as an introduction of the feminist and psychanalytic approaches underpinning the subsequent analyses, which are conducted in two parts, according to the personal and relational dimensions of the intimate. The theories of Beauvoir, Kristeva and Lacan offer perspectives on the intimate experience of women characters which is conveyed in literary imagery as the desire of the Other, and which is oppressed in a patriarchal symbolic order, although an aesthetic with specific narrative techniques related to women’s experience of the intimate is identified in most of the novels. These features include blurring and fragmentation of spatiotemporality, a marked intricacy of narrative voice, proximate first-person narrators, and the development of themes such as the writing of the body, sensed as a container. A discrepancy is noticed between the dominating androcentric posture of the heroines which is found in underlying discourse, and the sensorial dimension of their experience. This leads to a sublimation of body and sexuality in the romantic novels, a masochistic exaltation of the body and pain in the decadent novel and a psychotic and paranoid state in the novels from present day literature. The themes of female sacrifice and of death and denial of the body are very strong throughout the corpus. Relationships within the family are explored, including the mother-daughter relationships that are emphasised in the recent novels but not in those from the 19th century. Family structure, Christian culture and patriarchal, hierarchical social organisation are analysed as grounds for women’s alienation in the novels. The issue of perversion, which is striking in the novels on several different levels, is described as a transgression which involves the reader.

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