Ruth Cruickshank
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620672
- eISBN:
- 9781789629828
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620672.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
His first nouveau roman [‘new novel’], Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes [The Erasers] (1953) eschews conventional storytelling, anthropomorphizing meanings and psychological motivations, instead focussing ...
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His first nouveau roman [‘new novel’], Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes [The Erasers] (1953) eschews conventional storytelling, anthropomorphizing meanings and psychological motivations, instead focussing on ‘the adventure of language’. Food, drink and the places they are consumed are part of a strategy of subverting literary realism, noir conventions and classical tropes as Robbe-Grillet seeks to deny readers narrative satisfaction. However, the interpretative multiplicity of eating and drinking counters such intentions, notably in frequently food-premised mises en abyme (including and exceeding the famous tomato quarter), intended to encapsulate the narrative but full of leftover political, social, cultural and psychological meaning. Robbe-Grillet’s subversion of Oedipus Rex and its scenes of nourishment (and its withdrawal) along with references to hunger point to characters and a narrative fuelled by lack. Constructs of gender and of class distinction are revealed in Robbe-Grillet’s representations of food and drink, as are coercive and excessive effects of capitalism in everyday life. Descriptions of eating and drinking are shown to have ambivalent remainders of trauma (from the Second World War and the impact of consumer culture). Re-thinking the novel through its representations of eating and drinking shows how writing and reading – like feeding – are necessarily transformative, multiple and conflictual processes.Less
His first nouveau roman [‘new novel’], Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes [The Erasers] (1953) eschews conventional storytelling, anthropomorphizing meanings and psychological motivations, instead focussing on ‘the adventure of language’. Food, drink and the places they are consumed are part of a strategy of subverting literary realism, noir conventions and classical tropes as Robbe-Grillet seeks to deny readers narrative satisfaction. However, the interpretative multiplicity of eating and drinking counters such intentions, notably in frequently food-premised mises en abyme (including and exceeding the famous tomato quarter), intended to encapsulate the narrative but full of leftover political, social, cultural and psychological meaning. Robbe-Grillet’s subversion of Oedipus Rex and its scenes of nourishment (and its withdrawal) along with references to hunger point to characters and a narrative fuelled by lack. Constructs of gender and of class distinction are revealed in Robbe-Grillet’s representations of food and drink, as are coercive and excessive effects of capitalism in everyday life. Descriptions of eating and drinking are shown to have ambivalent remainders of trauma (from the Second World War and the impact of consumer culture). Re-thinking the novel through its representations of eating and drinking shows how writing and reading – like feeding – are necessarily transformative, multiple and conflictual processes.
Adam Guy
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198850007
- eISBN:
- 9780191884467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198850007.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter surveys the early dissemination of the nouveau roman in Britain, beginning around 1957. First, the nouveau roman’s main British publisher, Calder & Boyars, is introduced, with ...
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This chapter surveys the early dissemination of the nouveau roman in Britain, beginning around 1957. First, the nouveau roman’s main British publisher, Calder & Boyars, is introduced, with consideration of that publisher’s broader activities and ideals; particular attention is paid to its transnational contexts. There is mention too of the nouveau roman’s other British publishers, including Faber and Jonathan Cape. Then the different publishing formats used by Calder & Boyars for the nouveau roman are discussed, with analysis of visual presentation. The chapter then turns to the ways in which Calder & Boyars mediated the nouveau roman in promotional copy and in the search for new audiences; reference here is made to modernism, Existentialism, the notion of the literary ‘classic’, detective fiction, pulp fiction, cinema, theatre, television, and radio. The chapter concludes with two case studies that typify the nouveau roman’s complex status for British readers, first looking at Samuel Beckett’s relation to the nouveau roman, and then narrating Calder & Boyars’s ‘French Week’, in which the publisher organized a British speaking tour for Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Nathalie Sarraute.Less
This chapter surveys the early dissemination of the nouveau roman in Britain, beginning around 1957. First, the nouveau roman’s main British publisher, Calder & Boyars, is introduced, with consideration of that publisher’s broader activities and ideals; particular attention is paid to its transnational contexts. There is mention too of the nouveau roman’s other British publishers, including Faber and Jonathan Cape. Then the different publishing formats used by Calder & Boyars for the nouveau roman are discussed, with analysis of visual presentation. The chapter then turns to the ways in which Calder & Boyars mediated the nouveau roman in promotional copy and in the search for new audiences; reference here is made to modernism, Existentialism, the notion of the literary ‘classic’, detective fiction, pulp fiction, cinema, theatre, television, and radio. The chapter concludes with two case studies that typify the nouveau roman’s complex status for British readers, first looking at Samuel Beckett’s relation to the nouveau roman, and then narrating Calder & Boyars’s ‘French Week’, in which the publisher organized a British speaking tour for Marguerite Duras, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and Nathalie Sarraute.
Adam Guy
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198850007
- eISBN:
- 9780191884467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198850007.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
In surveying the reception of the nouveau roman in Britain from its initial emergence in the late 1950s, this chapter begins by looking at the various names given to the phenomenon of the nouveau ...
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In surveying the reception of the nouveau roman in Britain from its initial emergence in the late 1950s, this chapter begins by looking at the various names given to the phenomenon of the nouveau roman, and their significations. The predominance of Alain Robbe-Grillet and his notion of chosisme is considered. Then a number of vituperative conservative critiques are discussed. Existentialism, the nouvelle vague, and modernism are shown to be major points of reference in the reception of the nouveau roman. The chapter concludes with two codas. The first considers the edges of a reception history of the nouveau roman in Britain by looking to creative responses from the cinema (Tony Richardson, Peter Brook), visual media (Martin Vaughn-James, Ian Hamilton Finlay), life-writing (W. G. Sebald), and music (Harrison Birtwistle). The second looks at the adoption of the nouveau roman in British academe, and the rise of Theory.Less
In surveying the reception of the nouveau roman in Britain from its initial emergence in the late 1950s, this chapter begins by looking at the various names given to the phenomenon of the nouveau roman, and their significations. The predominance of Alain Robbe-Grillet and his notion of chosisme is considered. Then a number of vituperative conservative critiques are discussed. Existentialism, the nouvelle vague, and modernism are shown to be major points of reference in the reception of the nouveau roman. The chapter concludes with two codas. The first considers the edges of a reception history of the nouveau roman in Britain by looking to creative responses from the cinema (Tony Richardson, Peter Brook), visual media (Martin Vaughn-James, Ian Hamilton Finlay), life-writing (W. G. Sebald), and music (Harrison Birtwistle). The second looks at the adoption of the nouveau roman in British academe, and the rise of Theory.
Adam Guy
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198850007
- eISBN:
- 9780191884467
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198850007.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
This chapter shows how the narrative form and obsessive focus on objects of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s early fiction—his chosisme—was adopted in three novels published in Britain in the 1960s. In Brian W. ...
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This chapter shows how the narrative form and obsessive focus on objects of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s early fiction—his chosisme—was adopted in three novels published in Britain in the 1960s. In Brian W. Aldiss’s Report on Probability A (1968), Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out (1964), and Denis Williams’s The Third Temptation (1968), Robbe-Grillet’s literary innovations become a means of reflecting on the end of empire. First, Robbe-Grillet’s broader reception within the context of the end of empire is surveyed. Then the three novels in question are analysed in turn. The chapter concludes by considering how new literary forms and new world-historical forms might line up in the work of Aldiss, Brooke-Rose, and Williams.Less
This chapter shows how the narrative form and obsessive focus on objects of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s early fiction—his chosisme—was adopted in three novels published in Britain in the 1960s. In Brian W. Aldiss’s Report on Probability A (1968), Christine Brooke-Rose’s Out (1964), and Denis Williams’s The Third Temptation (1968), Robbe-Grillet’s literary innovations become a means of reflecting on the end of empire. First, Robbe-Grillet’s broader reception within the context of the end of empire is surveyed. Then the three novels in question are analysed in turn. The chapter concludes by considering how new literary forms and new world-historical forms might line up in the work of Aldiss, Brooke-Rose, and Williams.
James Bailey
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474475969
- eISBN:
- 9781474495837
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474475969.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Women's Literature
Concentrating on the development of her fiction during the decade spanning 1960 to 1970, this chapter traces the evolving relationship between Spark’s novels and the style and ethos of the nouveau ...
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Concentrating on the development of her fiction during the decade spanning 1960 to 1970, this chapter traces the evolving relationship between Spark’s novels and the style and ethos of the nouveau roman. It focuses in particular on Spark’s inventive appropriation of what she termed ‘the drama of exact observation,’ as derived from the meticulous, externalised narration characteristic of the work of one of the key practitioners of the nouveau roman, Alain Robbe-Grillet. Although critical analysis of Spark’s relationship with the anti-novel has largely been restricted to a small selection of overtly experimental novels written by the author during the early 1970s, this chapter demonstrates that the nouveau roman also served as a crucial influence on earlier works including 1960’s subversive social satire, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, as well the uncharacteristically expansive sociopolitical novel, The Mandelbaum Gate, published in 1965. Both texts, the chapter argues, reveal Spark actively interrogating the alternatively humorous and horrifying possibilities of the nouveau roman as a mode of writing. The chapter culminates with a discussion of The Driver’s Seat as Spark’s Spark’s most direct – and self-reflexive – encounter with the anti-novel.Less
Concentrating on the development of her fiction during the decade spanning 1960 to 1970, this chapter traces the evolving relationship between Spark’s novels and the style and ethos of the nouveau roman. It focuses in particular on Spark’s inventive appropriation of what she termed ‘the drama of exact observation,’ as derived from the meticulous, externalised narration characteristic of the work of one of the key practitioners of the nouveau roman, Alain Robbe-Grillet. Although critical analysis of Spark’s relationship with the anti-novel has largely been restricted to a small selection of overtly experimental novels written by the author during the early 1970s, this chapter demonstrates that the nouveau roman also served as a crucial influence on earlier works including 1960’s subversive social satire, The Ballad of Peckham Rye, as well the uncharacteristically expansive sociopolitical novel, The Mandelbaum Gate, published in 1965. Both texts, the chapter argues, reveal Spark actively interrogating the alternatively humorous and horrifying possibilities of the nouveau roman as a mode of writing. The chapter culminates with a discussion of The Driver’s Seat as Spark’s Spark’s most direct – and self-reflexive – encounter with the anti-novel.
Thomas Baldwin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620016
- eISBN:
- 9781789623734
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620016.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Chapter One engages with Barthes’s discussion of a classical distance from worldly objects and of a modern – nouveau roman-esque – chosisme (which is predicated, Barthes says, upon a certain ...
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Chapter One engages with Barthes’s discussion of a classical distance from worldly objects and of a modern – nouveau roman-esque – chosisme (which is predicated, Barthes says, upon a certain proximity between people and things) in order to bring the landscapes of Proust’s novel into relief. The chapter also reads Barthes’s paradoxical integration of Proustian elements within his own writing on the nouveau roman as a reflection – a rewriting – of the liminal (the simultaneously classical and modern) texture of À la recherche itself.Less
Chapter One engages with Barthes’s discussion of a classical distance from worldly objects and of a modern – nouveau roman-esque – chosisme (which is predicated, Barthes says, upon a certain proximity between people and things) in order to bring the landscapes of Proust’s novel into relief. The chapter also reads Barthes’s paradoxical integration of Proustian elements within his own writing on the nouveau roman as a reflection – a rewriting – of the liminal (the simultaneously classical and modern) texture of À la recherche itself.
William Cloonan
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781786941329
- eISBN:
- 9781789629101
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781786941329.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
This chapter addresses the widespread claim that Paul Auster is the most French of American novelists by demonstrating various ways in which he has borrowed from French literary and cultural ...
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This chapter addresses the widespread claim that Paul Auster is the most French of American novelists by demonstrating various ways in which he has borrowed from French literary and cultural practices. This is one of the first detailed attempts to give intellectual substance to the claim that Auster is really quite different from his American counterparts because of the strong Gallic influence on his work.Less
This chapter addresses the widespread claim that Paul Auster is the most French of American novelists by demonstrating various ways in which he has borrowed from French literary and cultural practices. This is one of the first detailed attempts to give intellectual substance to the claim that Auster is really quite different from his American counterparts because of the strong Gallic influence on his work.
Ruth Cruickshank
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620672
- eISBN:
- 9781789629828
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620672.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Eating and drinking are essential to survival. Yet for human animals, they are ambivalent, proliferating with ideological, historical and psychological leftovers. This study reveals and mobilizes the ...
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Eating and drinking are essential to survival. Yet for human animals, they are ambivalent, proliferating with ideological, historical and psychological leftovers. This study reveals and mobilizes the provisional meanings, repressed experiences and unacknowledged tensions bound up with representations of food, drink and their consumption. It creates a flexible critical framework by bringing together an unexploited convergence of post-war French thinkers who use – or whose thought is legible through – figures of eating and drinking, including Barthes, Bataille, Beauvoir, Bourdieu, Certeau, Cixous, Derrida, Fischler, Giard, Kristeva, Lacan, Lefebvre, Lévi-Strauss, Mayol and Sartre. New combinations emerge for elucidating the intersecting effects of: incorporation; constructs of class, gender and racial difference; bad faith; distinction; secondary ideological signifying systems; provisional meanings bound up with linguistic traces; economies of excess; everyday ‘making-do’; the ethics of consuming the other; the return of the repressed; lack; abjection; notions of ‘eating on the sly’, ‘mother’s milk’, the ‘omnivore’s paradox’ and ‘gastro-anomie’. Possibilities for re-thinking with eating and drinking are further exemplified in cases studies of novels in which – often beyond authorial intentions – food and drink are structurally important and interpretatively plural: Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes/The Erasers (1953); Ernaux’s Les Armoires vides/Cleaned Out (1974); Darrieussecq’s Truismes/Pig Tales (1996); and Houellebecq’sLa Carte et le territoire/The Map and the Territory (2010). New understandings of post-war French cultural production are revealed. But above all, the analyses demonstrate the potential – across genres, periods and places – for literary, comparative, cultural, film, gender and food studies of re-thinking with eating and drinking.Less
Eating and drinking are essential to survival. Yet for human animals, they are ambivalent, proliferating with ideological, historical and psychological leftovers. This study reveals and mobilizes the provisional meanings, repressed experiences and unacknowledged tensions bound up with representations of food, drink and their consumption. It creates a flexible critical framework by bringing together an unexploited convergence of post-war French thinkers who use – or whose thought is legible through – figures of eating and drinking, including Barthes, Bataille, Beauvoir, Bourdieu, Certeau, Cixous, Derrida, Fischler, Giard, Kristeva, Lacan, Lefebvre, Lévi-Strauss, Mayol and Sartre. New combinations emerge for elucidating the intersecting effects of: incorporation; constructs of class, gender and racial difference; bad faith; distinction; secondary ideological signifying systems; provisional meanings bound up with linguistic traces; economies of excess; everyday ‘making-do’; the ethics of consuming the other; the return of the repressed; lack; abjection; notions of ‘eating on the sly’, ‘mother’s milk’, the ‘omnivore’s paradox’ and ‘gastro-anomie’. Possibilities for re-thinking with eating and drinking are further exemplified in cases studies of novels in which – often beyond authorial intentions – food and drink are structurally important and interpretatively plural: Robbe-Grillet’s Les Gommes/The Erasers (1953); Ernaux’s Les Armoires vides/Cleaned Out (1974); Darrieussecq’s Truismes/Pig Tales (1996); and Houellebecq’sLa Carte et le territoire/The Map and the Territory (2010). New understandings of post-war French cultural production are revealed. But above all, the analyses demonstrate the potential – across genres, periods and places – for literary, comparative, cultural, film, gender and food studies of re-thinking with eating and drinking.