The aim of this study is to analyse the web of meaning underlying the presence of plots and images from paralitterature in the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet. This presence is explained by a transformation in the bookmarket, cultural environment and literary landscape, and corresponds to the malaise in the social discourse raised by the crisis. / The bookmarket changed rapidly in the years following the war. Its reorganization along industrial lines lead to recurrent periods of crisis. That part of the market consisting of mass produced books came under the influence of American popular fiction. This situation had repurcussions on the literary field. People no longer saw books and authors as special, and the readership of serious literature decreased markedly. The avant garde itself seemed exhausted. Works of paralitterature, on the other hand, entered in a process of legitimation. / The New Novelists, and especially Robbe-Grillet, find in paralitterature expressions of the social discourse more powerful than those available in canonical literature. Popular fictions, rife with violence and agression, capture the worries and pessimism about society and the alienation of the individual. In Robbe-Grillet's work, the world is conceived as containing a cancer, one that threatens the social order. Reality is distorted in his fiction, and the characters are fragmented and lost in their imaginary world. The image of a cancerous society is crystallized in the motif of the ritual sacrifice of a woman. For Robbe-Grillet, though, this motif also suggests the origin of fantasy, and in doing so might rejuvenate the creative impulse. Behind the violence and eroticism of his fiction, then, and behind the anomia contaminating literature, is the desire to retrace the lightening of fantasy in the hope of dealing with both the modern world and the predicament of the novel, and possibly find a catharsis through it.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.36544 |
| Date | January 1999 |
| Creators | Beaulé, Sophie. |
| Contributors | Angenot, Marc (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Département de langue et littérature françaises.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001762224, proquestno: NQ64514, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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