In the postwar literary culture of France, under the influence of Structuralism and its aftermath, deference to «the text in itself» meant that literary studies eschewed discussing narrators or characters as subjects and deriving social or political commentary from specific texts. In reaction to this trend, which also influenced the writing of novels, a new generation of authors have sought instead to focus on developing innovative ways of conceptualizing subjecthood, identity and agency.

Marie Nimier's writing abundantly exemplifies this «return of the subject» in the rich diversity of the fifteen novels she has published since Sirène in 1985, blending fiction and life-writing. Her narrators/protagonists typically strive to achieve forms of agency which are made possible, yet also threatened, by the ostensible «givens»: heritage, memory, gender, relationships, desire, social environment and, not least, language itself. This volume explores central aspects of self and subject in her oeuvre to date and includes two short stories which Nimier formally publishes here for the first time, one with an English translation.

Autorentext

David Gascoigne is Honorary Senior Lecturer in French at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. His publications have largely focused on French narrative of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, including books on Michel Tournier, and on Georges Perec and ludic fiction. After excursions into Oulipian paratext, Dadaist poetry and the writings of Pascal Bruckner, he has more recently been preoccupied with the writing of Marie Nimier: his contribution here is the fifth article he has published on her work.

Ana Maria Sousa Aguiar de Medeiros is Director of the Modern Language Centre at King's College London. She has published a number of volumes focusing on the writing of Francophone authors including Assia Djebar, Marie Nimier, Amélie Nothomb and Marguerite Yourcenar. Since 2016, she has been a co-investigator working with Language Acts and Worldmaking and a consultant for Memoirs, a Horizon 2020-funded project.

Inhalt

Contents: Marie Nimier: Un virgule six mètres carrés - La Filiation et ses complexes - Problematic Heritages - Adina Stroia: The Other Nimier: Paternal Hauntology and Queer Politics in Marie Nimier's Works - Marzia Caporale: À la recherche du père perdu : écriture du deuil et quête identitaire dans La Place d'Annie Ernaux et La Reine du silence de Marie Nimier - Sylvie Vignes: Récits de filiation ou comment défaire les noeuds et renouer le fil : La Reine du silence de Marie Nimier et Rien ne s'oppose à la nuit de Delphine de Vigan - Thierry Illouz: Je suis un homme ou l'édification du sujet - Écrire le moi sensible, sensuel - Writing Sentience and Sensuality - Carol J. Murphy: Marie- Marie : l'optique kaléidoscopique dans Photo- Photo -Marinella Termite: L'Odeur en papier : Anatomie d'un sens chez Marie Nimier - Christian Uwe: La Partition du désir - Le Sujet et la littérarité - The Subject in the Web of Literature - Patricia Hodges: Generic Ambiguity in Les Inséparables - Lorna Milne: « Le roi assis » and « la Reine du silence »: «Silent» Intra- Intertexts in Je suis un homme - Floriane Blanchot: La Plage de Marie Nimier, un nouveau T. Beach ? - Un sujet qui se cherche : l'exemple de La Plage - La Plage and the Search for Selfhood - Adrienne Angelo: Reparative Revisions: Writing and Self- Creation in La Plage - Jeanne- Sarah De Larquier: L'Histoire en partage dans La Plage de Marie Nimier - David Gascoigne: La Plage : l'abstrait, l'élémentaire, le charnel - Nimier : dialogue et mises en scène - Nimier in Dialogue and Performance - Ana De Medeiros: Confession as Theatre: Marie Nimier's Les Confidences - Florence Jou: Enquête#Bifurcations3 - Marie Nimier and John Fletcher: Le Compas - The Compass.