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

369 Pages·2011·3.601 MB·English

by  Jean Duffy

Thresholds of Meaning
Passage, Ritual and Liminality
in Contemporary French Narrative
Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures 18
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Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures
Series Editors
EDMUND SMYTH CHARLES FORSDICK
Manchester Metropolitan University University of Liverpool
Editorial Board
JACQUELINE DUTTON LYNN A. HIGGINS MIREILLE ROSELLO
University of Melbourne Dartmouth College University of Amsterdam
MICHAEL SHERINGHAM DAVID WALKER
University of Oxford University of Sheffield
This series aims to provide a forum for new research on modern and
contemporary French and francophone cultures and writing. The books
published in Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures reflect a wide
variety of critical practices and theoretical approaches, in harmony with the
intellectual, cultural and social developments which have taken place over the
past few decades. All manifestations of contemporary French and francophone
culture and expression are considered, including literature, cinema, popular
culture, theory. The volumes in the series will participate in the wider debate
on key aspects of contemporary culture.
1 Chris Tinker, Georges Brassens 9 Bill Marshall, The French Atlantic:
and Jacques Brel: Personal and Travels in Culture and History
Social Narratives in Post-war
10 Celia Britton, The Sense of
Chanson
Community in French Caribbean
2 Debra Kelly, Autobiography and Fiction
Independence: Selfhood and
11 Aedín Ní Loingsigh, Postcolonial
Creativity in Postcolonial African
Eyes: Intercontinental Travel in
Writing in French
Francophone African Literature
3 Matthew Screech, Masters of the
12 Lawrence R. Schehr, French
Ninth Art: Bandes dessinées and
Post-Modern Masculinities: From
Franco-Belgian Identity
Neuromatrices to Seropositivity
4 Akane Kawakami, Travellers’ 13 Mireille Rosello, The Reparative in
Visions. French Literary
Narratives: Works of Mourning in
Encounters with Japan, 1881–2004
Progress
5 Nicki Hitchcott, Calixthe Beyala: 14 Andy Stafford, Photo-texts:
Performances of Migration Contemporary French Writing of
6 Jane Hiddleston, Assia Djebar: the Photographic Image
Out of Africa 15 Kaiama L. Glover, Haiti Unbound:
A Spiralist Challenge to the
7 Martin Munro, Exile and
Postcolonial Canon
Post-1946 Haitian Literature:
Alexis, Depestre, Ollivier, 16 David Scott, Poetics of the Poster:
Laferrière, Danticat The Rhetoric of Image-Text
8 Maeve McCusker, Patrick 17 Mark McKinney, The Colonial
Chamoiseau: Recovering Memory Heritage of French Comics
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JEA N H . DUFFY
Thresholds of Meaning
Passage, Ritual and Liminality
in Contemporary French Narrative
LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS
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First published 2011 by
Liverpool University Press
4 Cambridge Street
Liverpool
L69 7ZU
Copyright © 2011 Jean H.Duffy
The right of Jean H.Duffy to be identified as the author of this book
has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
the prior written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A British Library CIP record is available
ISBN 978-1-84631-666-1
Web PDF eISBN ISBN 978-1-84631-679-1(cid:13)(cid:10)
Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster
Printed and bound by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
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For Paul Marshall
In memory of
Mary and Patrick Duffy
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Contents
Acknowledgements ix
List of illustrations xi
Introduction 1
1 At death’s door: illness, ritual and liminality in
Darrieussecq, Lenoir, and Mauvignier 29
2 Suicide and saving face in Bon, Mauvignier and
Bergounioux 72
3 Commemoration, monument and identity in
Bergounioux, Darrieussecq and Rouaud 131
4 Retouching the past: family photographs and
documents in Rouaud, Bon and Lenoir 191
Conclusion: Writing passage and the passage to writing 259
Notes 302
Select bibliography 320
Index 348
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Acknowledgements
For their support at various stages in the preparation of this
book, I thank Charles Forsdick, Susan Harrow, Ann Jefferson,
David Ellison, Mária Brewer, Marion Schmid, Philip Bennett and
Peter Graves. I am very grateful to François Bon for his helpful
responses to my questions. I am also indebted to the students who
have followed my classes on twentieth- and twenty-first century
fiction and who have, over many years, heartened me by their
lively engagement with some of the texts discussed here. I thank,
too, Anthony Cond for his invaluable editorial support, colleagues
at Liverpool University Press for their various contributions to the
making of this book, and the anonymous readers for their generous
and constructive comments. Thanks are also due to the following:
the University of Edinburgh for research funding and sabbatical
leave; the staff of the University of Edinburgh Library, the National
Library of Scotland, the British Library, the Bibliothèque Nationale
de France, the Bibliothèque publique d’information of the Centre
Pompidou. I thank the Musée du quai Branly, Scala Archives and
Mme Claire Moser of the Musée Labenche, Brive-la-Gaillarde for
providing reproductions of art works and for granting permission
to publish them. All reasonable attempts have been made to identify
and acknowledge other copyright owners.
Earlier versions of parts of chapter 4 appeared in Word & Image
(23.4, 2007, 381–90) and Yale French Studies (114, 2008, 67–79);
I should like to thank the editors and publishers of those journals
for permission to reproduce material in this book and Ari Blatt
and Jan Baetens for inviting me to contribute to the Yale French
Studies number on ‘Writing and the Image Today’. The Arts and
Humanities Research Council funded a period of extended research
leave that led to the completion of those earlier and related articles
and that allowed me to undertake research which subsequently
proved to be directly relevant to this project: I take this opportunity
to record again my thanks for that funding.
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