“Contemporary French and Francophone Narratology not only provides a broad and diverse range of work but it also illuminates various narrative aspects and narratological areas.” —Gerald J. Prince, author of Narrative as Theme: Studies in French Fiction
The essays included in this collection seek to take the pulse of recent developments in narratological research in the French-speaking countries. Theorists in these countries heavily participated in and shaped narratology, an outgrowth of the structuralist movement during the 1960s and 1970s. While US, German, and Scandinavian theorists took the forefront in the 1990s, narratology in France faded into the background. It was not until the turn of the century that a new interest in narratological issues among French researchers emerged. Activity in the field has since intensified, spurred on, in part, by the realization that narratology cannot be summed up by its formalist and structuralist origins.
Well-versed in French narrative theory, both classical and more recent, the authors in this collection also draw on scholarship coming from other research traditions. The result is that these contributions offer a number of syntheses and perspectives representative of recent French-language scholarship in the field that readers may not be familiar with or that provide them with further insight into subjects they may have encountered in other contexts. This volume will leave readers with a greater awareness of the directions taken by present-day French-language narratology as well as new and developing themes in narrative theory generally.
Contributors
Raphaël Baroni, Denis Bertrand, Olivier Caïra, Claude Calame, Benoît Hennaut, Françoise Lavocat, Sylvie Patron, John Pier, Françoise Revaz, and Richard Saint-Gelais
John Pier is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Tours and a statutory member of the Centre de recherches sur les arts et le langage (CNRS/EHESS) in Paris.
Contents
Introduction
John Pier
1 Pragmatics in Classical French Narratology and Beyond
Raphaël Baroni
2 No-Narrator Theories/Optional-Narrator Theories: Recent Proposals and Continuing Problems
Sylvie Patron
3 Narration outside Narrative
Richard Saint-Gelais
4 Narrator on Stage: Not a Condition but a Component for a Postdramatic Narrative Discourse
Benoît Hennaut
5 The Poetics of Suspended Narrative
Françoise Revaz
6 Discourse Analysis and Narrative Theory: A French Perspective
John Pier
7 Regimes of Immanence, between Narratology and Narrativity
Denis Bertrand
8 Fiction, Expanded and Updated
Olivier Caïra
9 Narratology and the Test of Greek Myths: The Poetic Birth of a Colonial City
Claude Calame
10 Policing Literary Theory: Toward a Collaborative Ethics of Research?
Françoise Lavocat
List of Contributors
Index
