Claude Simon
A Retrospective
Published on 1. June 2002
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-0-85323-867-6 (ISBN)
Description
This collection of essays celebrates the work of the French Nobel prize-winning novelist Claude Simon. Scholars from France, Germany, the United States and the United Kingdom reconsider the fifty years of Simon's fiction in the light of his large-scale autobiographical novel Le Jardin des Plantes (1997). From a variety of perspectives - postmodernist, psychoanalytic, aesthetic - contributors reflect on the central paradox of Simon's work: his writing and rewriting of an experience of war so disruptive and traumatic that words can never be adequate to communicate it. The layers of artifice in Le Jardin des Plantes and the nature of Simon's aesthetic are analysed in essays which explore intertextual resonances between Simon and Proust, Flaubert, Borges and Poussin. A complementary view of Simon's Photographies 1937-1970 shows that it too can be seen as form of indirect autobiography.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Liverpool
United Kingdom
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
ISBN-13
978-0-85323-867-6 (9780853238676)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Jean Duffy is Emeritus of French at the University of Edinburgh.
Content
Acknowledgements
Message from Claude Simon to Participants at the Conference held in May 1999.
Introduction: The Critical Reception of Claude Simon since the 1960's - Jean H. Duffy and Alastair Duncan
1. Thinking History Otherwise: Fiction and the Sites of Memory in Claude Simon - David Carroll
2. (In) Commensurabilities: The Childhood of Events and the Shock of Encounter in Claude Simon - Maria Minich Brewer
3. Instant Replays: The Reintergration of Traumatic Experience in 'Le Jardin des Plantes - Celia Britton
4. The Dynamics of Conflict in the Novels of CLaude Simon - J.A. Loubere
5. Satire, Burlesque and Comedy in Claude Simon - Alastair Duncan
6. The Garden of Forking Paths: Intertextuality and 'Le Jardin des Plantes - Mary Orr
7. A partir du 'Jardin des plantes': Claude Simon's Recapitulations - David Ellison
8. Supplementary Organs: Media and Machinery in the Late Novels of Claude Simon - Wolfram Nitsch
9. One Step Further: Claude SImon's 'Photographies' 1937-1970 - Mireille Calle-Gruber
10. Truth, Verbiage and Ecriture in 'Le Jardin des Plantes' - Jean H. Duffy
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Message from Claude Simon to Participants at the Conference held in May 1999.
Introduction: The Critical Reception of Claude Simon since the 1960's - Jean H. Duffy and Alastair Duncan
1. Thinking History Otherwise: Fiction and the Sites of Memory in Claude Simon - David Carroll
2. (In) Commensurabilities: The Childhood of Events and the Shock of Encounter in Claude Simon - Maria Minich Brewer
3. Instant Replays: The Reintergration of Traumatic Experience in 'Le Jardin des Plantes - Celia Britton
4. The Dynamics of Conflict in the Novels of CLaude Simon - J.A. Loubere
5. Satire, Burlesque and Comedy in Claude Simon - Alastair Duncan
6. The Garden of Forking Paths: Intertextuality and 'Le Jardin des Plantes - Mary Orr
7. A partir du 'Jardin des plantes': Claude Simon's Recapitulations - David Ellison
8. Supplementary Organs: Media and Machinery in the Late Novels of Claude Simon - Wolfram Nitsch
9. One Step Further: Claude SImon's 'Photographies' 1937-1970 - Mireille Calle-Gruber
10. Truth, Verbiage and Ecriture in 'Le Jardin des Plantes' - Jean H. Duffy
Bibliography
Notes on Contributors