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Thresholds of Meaning: Passage, Ritual and Liminality in Contemporary French Narrative

Online ISBN:
9781846316791
Print ISBN:
9781846316661
Publisher:
Liverpool University Press
Book

Thresholds of Meaning: Passage, Ritual and Liminality in Contemporary French Narrative

Published online:
20 June 2013
Published in print:
16 June 2011
Online ISBN:
9781846316791
Print ISBN:
9781846316661
Publisher:
Liverpool University Press

Abstract

This book examines contemporary French narrative and explores two related issues: the centrality within recent French fiction and autofiction of the themes of passage, ritual and liminality; and, the thematic continuity which links this work with its literary ancestors of the 1960s and 1970s. Through the close analysis of novels and recits by Pierre Bergounioux, Francois Bon, Marie Darrieussecq, Helene Lenoir, Laurent Mauvignier and Jean Rouaud, the book demonstrates the ways in which contemporary narrative, while capitalising on the formal lessons of the nouveau roman and drawing upon a shared repertoire of motifs and themes, engages with the complex processes by which meaning is produced in the referential world and, in particular, with the rituals and codes that social man brings into play in order to negotiate the various stages of the human life-cycle.

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