Nouveau roman
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The Nouveau Roman (French pronunciation: [nuvo ʁɔmɑ̃], "new novel") is a type of French novel in the 1950s and 60s that diverged from traditional literary genres.[1] Émile Henriot coined the term in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957[2] to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new style each time. Most of the founding authors were published by Les Éditions de Minuit with the strong support of Jérôme Lindon.
Overview
[edit]Alain Robbe-Grillet, an influential theorist as well as writer of the Nouveau Roman, published a series of essays on the nature and future of the novel which were later collected in Pour un Nouveau Roman. Rejecting many of the established features of the novel to date, Robbe-Grillet regarded many earlier novelists as old-fashioned in their focus on plot, action, narrative, ideas, and character. Instead, he put forward a theory of the novel as focused on objects: the ideal nouveau roman would be an individual version and vision of things, subordinating plot and character to the details of the world rather than enlisting the world in their service.[3]
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A group of writers dubbed Nouveaux Romanciers, "new novelists", appeared in the mid-1950s: Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Robert Pinget. The style had different approaches but generally rejected the traditional use of chronology, plot and character in fiction, as well as the omniscient narrator. The Nouveau Roman authors were open to influences from writers such as William Faulkner and the cinema. Both Robbe-Grillet and Marguerite Duras, whose 1958 novel Moderato cantabile was in the style of the nouveau roman, also contributed to the French New Wave style of filmmaking.[4]
Alain Robbe-Grillet became an elected member of the Académie française on 25 March 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat No. 32. Claude Simon, the 1985 Nobel laureate in Literature, is often identified with the Nouveau Roman movement.
The Nouveau Roman literary movement and the novels themselves were mainly theorized by Jean Ricardou,[5] who, in addition to his well-known theoretical works – Problèmes du Nouveau Roman (1967), Pour une théorie du Nouveau Roman (1971), Le Nouveau Roman (1973), Nouveaux problèmes du roman (1978) – also published several nouveaux romans himself: L’Observatoire de Cannes (1961), La Prise de Constantinople (1965, Feneon prize for literature in 1966), Les Lieux-dits, petit guide d’un voyage dans le livre (1969). Besides his own writing, he organized, directed and published the acts of several conferences on the nouveau roman, including the famous 1971 conference and debate at Cerisy, published in two volumes: Nouveau roman : hier, aujourd’hui,[1] indispensable for an understanding of the history of that important period of French literature. Just before his death in 2016, he was working on a book of interviews with Amir Biglari,[2] in which he provides a complete, precise and objective account of the Nouveau Roman movement.
Authors in the style of the Nouveau Roman
[edit]Central writers and works
[edit]The following is based on the list from Les nouveaux romanciers : étude critique as well as La littérature française du XXe siècle.[6][7]
- Samuel Beckett: Molloy (1951), Malone Dies (1951), The Unnamable (1953)
- Maurice Blanchot: Thomas the Obscure (1941; revised 1950)
- Michel Butor: Passing Time (1956), Changing Track (1957)
- Jean Cayrol: Foreign Bodies (1959)
- Marguerite Duras: Moderato Cantabile (1958), The Ravishing of Lol Stein (1964)
- Louis-René des Forêts: The Bavard (1946)
- Claude Mauriac: The Dinner Party (1959), The Marquise Went Out at Five (1961)
- Claude Ollier: The Mise-en-Scène (1958), Law and Order (1961)
- Robert Pinget: Graal Flibuste (1956), Monsieur Levert (1959), The Inquisitory (1962)
- Alain Robbe-Grillet: The Erasers (1953), The Voyeur (1955), Jealousy (1957)
- Nathalie Sarraute: Martereau (1953), The Planetarium (1959), The Golden Fruits (1963)
- Claude Simon: The Wind (1957), The Grass (1958), The Flanders Road (1960)
Parallel and later figures (1960s)
[edit]France
[edit]- Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio: The Interrogation (1963)
- Georges Perec: Things: A Story of the Sixties (1965)
- Jean Ricardou: L'Observatoire de Cannes (1961), La Prise de Constantinople (1965)
- Philippe Sollers: The Park (1961)
- Monique Wittig: The Opoponax (1964)
Canada
[edit]- Hubert Aquin: Next Episode (1965)[8]
- Gérard Bessette: Not for Every Eye (1960), Incubation (1965)[8]
- Jacques Godbout: L'Aquarium (1962)[8]
United Kingdom
[edit]- Christine Brooke-Rose: Out (1964), Such (1966)[9][10][11]
- B. S. Johnson: Trawl (1966), The Unfortunates (1969)[12][11]
- Ann Quin: Berg (1964)[11]
Italy
[edit]- Italo Calvino: Cosmicomics (1965)[13]
Argentina
[edit]- Julio Cortázar: Cronopios and Famas (1962), 62: A Model Kit (1968)[13]
United States
[edit]The critic Benjamin Libman has argued that the Nouveau Roman exerted a profound influence upon Susan Sontag and the development of postmodern fiction in the United States.[14]
The Nouveau Roman and the Left Bank
[edit]The Nouveau Roman style also left its mark on the screen as writers Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet became involved with the Left Bank film movement (often labelled as part of the French New Wave). Their collaboration with director Alain Resnais resulted in critical successes such as Hiroshima mon amour (1958) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961). They would later go on to direct their own films.[15]
Influenced by these films, French courses in North America during the 1960s and 1970s often included works by Nouveau Roman authors such as Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie (1957), Michel Butor's La Modification (1957), Nathalie Sarraute's Le Planetarium (1957) and Marguerite Duras' Moderato Cantabile (1958).[citation needed]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Baldick, Chris (2015). "Nouveau roman, le". The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Online Version) (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191783234.
- ^ Henriot, Émile (May 1957). "La Jalousie, d'Alain Robbe-Grillet Tropismes, de Nathalie Sarraute". Le Monde.
- ^ Robbe-Grillet, Alain (1965). "A Future for the Novel". For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction. New York, NY: Grove Press, Inc. pp. 21–24.
- ^ French literature – Toward the nouveau roman Encyclopedia Britannica
- ^ Sirvent, Michel (2001). Jean Ricardou. De Tel Quel au Nouveau Roman textuel. Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-1591-3.
- ^ Thoraval, Jean (1976). Les nouveaux romanciers : etude critique, avec de nombreux extraits : pour les etudiants des universites et pour les eleves des classes preparatoires aux grandes ecoles. Internet Archive. Paris : Bordas. ISBN 978-2-04-009649-6.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link) - ^ Mitterand, Henri (1996). La littérature française du XXe siècle. Internet Archive. Paris : Nathan. p. 67. ISBN 978-2-09-190488-7.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link) - ^ a b c Macé, Suzanne (1971). "Le nouveau roman au Québec". In Ethier-Blais, Jean (ed.). Littératures: mélanges littéraires. Hurtubise. pp. 227–233.
- ^ Ferris, Natalie (2018-02-07). "'I think I preferred it abstract': Christine Brooke-Rose and visuality in the new novel". Textual Practice. 32 (2): 225–244. doi:10.1080/0950236X.2018.1413034. ISSN 0950-236X.
- ^ Darlington, Joseph (2017). "A Non-Euclidean Novel: Christine Brooke-Rose's Such and the Space-Age Sixties". Journal of Modern Literature. 40 (2): 147–164. doi:10.2979/jmodelite.40.2.09. ISSN 0022-281X. JSTOR 10.2979/jmodelite.40.2.09.
- ^ a b c Adam, Guy (2019-12-05). "The nouveau roman and Writing in Britain After Modernism". OUP Academic. doi:10.1093/o (inactive 1 July 2025).
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link) - ^ Guy, Adam (2014), Jordan, Julia; Ryle, Martin (eds.), "Johnson and the nouveau roman: Trawl and other Butorian Projects", B. S. Johnson and Post-War Literature: Possibilities of the Avant-Garde, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 35–53, doi:10.1057/9781137349552_3, ISBN 978-1-137-34955-2, retrieved 2025-06-26
- ^ a b Duran, Jèssica Pujol (2024-03-04), Hölter, Achim (ed.), "Italo Calvino, Julio Cortázar, and the Nouveau Roman", Volume 1 The Languages of World Literature, De Gruyter, pp. 579–590, doi:10.1515/9783110645033-040, ISBN 978-3-11-064503-3, retrieved 2025-03-03
- ^ Libman, Ben (2022-08-29). "Susan Sontag and the Americanization of the Nouveau Roman". Post45 Journal. ISSN 2168-8206.
- ^ Clouzot, Claire, Le cinéma français depuis la nouvelle vague, Fernand Nathan/Alliance Française, 1972
Bibliography
[edit]- Baldick, Chris (2015). "Nouveau roman, le". The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Online Version) (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191783234.
- Luscans, Bernard (2008). La représentation des objets dans le nouveau nouveau roman, Chapel Hill, Université de Caroline du Nord. [3]
- Pivato, Joseph. 'Nouveau Roman Canadien', Canadian Literature 58 (Autumn 1973) 51–60. [canlit.ca/article/nouveau-roman-canadien/]
- Pivato, Joseph. 'Nancy Huston Meets le Nouveau Roman, Athabasca University Canadian Writers Site. [canadian-writers.athabascau.ca/english/writers/nhuston/nouveau_roman.php.php]
