Thresholds of Meaning
Passage, Ritual and Liminality in Contemporary French Narrative
Distributed for Liverpool University Press
Despite a number of broad surveys of contemporary French fiction that have appeared in the last decade or so, the question of the nouveau roman’s literary legacy remains an under-researched field. Thresholds of Meaning offers evidence not only of a reworking of certain traditional themes, but also of a reinstatement of meaning at the center of literary inquiry. Drawing on the fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology, Jean Duffy argues that this preoccupation with meaning concerns not only the processes of its production within a work, but also the processes by which it is produced in the real world, including the various linguistic and gestural codes by which a community communicates, the customs a community assumes, and the rituals that it observes.
Acknowledgements
List of illustrations
Introduction
1. At death’s door: illness, ritual and liminality in Darrieussecq, Lenoir, and Mauvignier
2. Suicide and saving face in Bon, Mauvignier and Bergounioux
3. Commemoration, monument and identity in Bergounioux, Darrieussecq and Rouaud
4. Retouching the past: family photographs and documents in Rouaud, Bon and Lenoir
Conclusion: Writing passage and the passage to writing
Notes
Select bibliography
Index
Literature and Literary Criticism: Romance Languages
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