Negotiating the New in the French Novel Building Contexts for Fictional Worlds [Paperback]

In Negotiating the New in the French NovelTeresa Bridgeman applies insights from pragmatic theory to the French novel in order to examine its discourse conventions.
Focussing on texts by some of the greatest and most innovative French novelists - Diderot, Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Celine, Sarraute and Perec - Bridgeman analyses how these authors established their own conventions, challenged reader expectations and drew conventions from other literary and non-literary forms.
Negotiating the New in the French Novelshows the development of changing perceptions of genre, author and reader. This book will make fascinating reading for students of French literature - particularly of the nineteenth century novel, students of Stylistics and of Narratology.1. Thresholds 2. Dynamics of world-play between contexts, texts and participants: Diderot's Jacques le Fataliste3. 'The novel' as we know it?: Balzac's Le Pére Goriot4. The written artifact and the authority of absence: Flaubert's Madame Bovary5. The doubly-authorised text. Personal responsibility and social roles: Zola's L'Assommoir6. Self-assertion and the dynamics of power: Céline's Voyage au Bout de la Nuit7. The novel as mediation: Sarraute's Portrait D'un Inconnu8. Further dynamics of world-play: Perec's W ou le Souvenir D'Enfance Afterwoed: Genres, participants and territorial behaviour