The Commitment to Scandal in French Post-War Fiction (1945-1950) Through the Works of Marcel Aymé, Jean Genet and Roger Nimier
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The Commitment to Scandal in French Post-War Fiction (1945-1950) Through The Works Of Marcel Aymé, Jean Genet And Roger Nimier by Anne-Célia Feutrie Submitted for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy School of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures, French Department, Royal Holloway, University of London October 2014 © Anne-Célia Feutrie 2014 2 Declaration of Authorship I Anne-Célia Feutrie hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: ____Anne-Célia Feutrie__________________ Date: ___10 October 2014_____________________ 3 ABSTRACT This thesis studies a period of historical transition (1945-1950) and proposes to use scandal as a critical tool to account for the ambiguity of the immediate post-war period in literature. As set out in pragmatic sociology, scandal is understood to involve a test to the stability of values through a public act of denunciation. While this research project makes a new contribution to the study of fiction as a powerful and reactive ‘vecteur de mémoire’ (Rousso 1987), its focus is on exploring the notion of fiction as an ethical space where disputes (controversies, violence, affairs and, importantly, scandals) are represented, organised, controlled and sometimes resolved within the space of the novel. This thesis reframes this question of the role of literature in a period of transition by revisiting the historiographical claim that some aspects of Vichy and the Occupation were rarely discussed in France before 1968. Instead, it suggests that the fictional production in the immediate post-war years attests to a readiness and commitment to narrate and organise dissent. To explore these issues, the thesis focuses on three major, contrasting writers – Marcel Aymé, Jean Genet and Roger Nimier – all of whom have in common to have explicitly, deliberately and problematically represented the Occupation and the Liberation in 1945-1950 novels. Chapter I reveals and explores the convergence of a popular and critical interest for scandal between 1945-1950 and the subsequent presence of scandal in historiographical discourse ever since. Chapter II identifies ‘scales of scandal’, namely the mechanism of narrative scandal at lexical, stylistic and structural levels. 4 Chapter III shows how time and space constitute the a priori conditions of scandal and how they become scandalised in the process. Chapter IV systematically analyses the thematic uncertainty and ethical undecidability brought about by scandal affecting notions of morality, authority and identity. The thesis concludes with reflections on the novel as ethical space and the critical potential of scandal in literary studies. 5 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Royal Holloway and the School of Modern Languages for awarding me a Teaching Fellowship and the Mary Slack award to allow me to pursue my postgraduate studies. I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Colin Davis, for introducing me to ethical criticism, and my adviser, Dr Ruth Cruickshank, for her support and guidance throughout. I would also like to offer my gratitude to all colleagues in the department, especially Professor Eric Robertson for his irreplaceable presence and Professor James Williams for knowing what a ‘genuine labour of love’ can be. Special thanks to Ann Hobbs, Sarah Midson and Helen Thomas who have been here for me day after day. I would also like to thank Dr James Brown for his invitation to the GUILT research group and Dr Sanja Perovic for her ideas and inspiration. There are also a number of people without whom this thesis might not have been written, and to whom I am greatly indebted. Claude Blanchard for offering me a ‘writer’s residence’, Dominique Frelon for teaching me how to read, Denis Marianelli for his intellectual generosity, Marie-José Louveaux for her intellectual brilliance, Lydia Gaborit for helping me find my own voice and Hélène Zajdela for opening up my horizons. I would like to thank my brother, Laurent, and my longtime and newer friends for the technical, intellectual and emotional support they provided. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my mother who will hopefully soon be able to read it. Unreserved thanks to Margaux Revol, my first reader and critic, Steve Russell and Emily Salines, thanks to whom I started and finished this project, and finally to Phoebe and Justine ‘qui se réservent tant de plaisirs de lecture’. 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................... 3 Introduction....................................................................................................................... 7 I. Cultures of scandal ................................................................................................... 23 1. Reading and writing in 1945-1950 ...................................................................... 24 A. The ethics, politics and aesthetics of literature: rebuilding the nation............ 24 B. The Sadian intertext: corpus, tradition and instruments.................................. 31 C. Noir as cultural practice .................................................................................. 35 2. Mapping out an historiographical obsession ....................................................... 40 A. Of paradigms and metaphors: a discussion of Henry Rousso’s Vichy Syndrome ................................................................................................................ 40 B. On narrative: truth, history and fiction............................................................ 52 3. The case for literature: reclaiming the post-war period....................................... 57 A. The blind spot of literature: between history and cinema............................... 57 B. Fiction and friction: the novel as ethical space ............................................... 63 C. Scandal as hermeneutic tool............................................................................ 65 II. Scales of scandal ..................................................................................................... 73 1. Presences. A lexical analysis ............................................................................... 77 A. Scandal en français dans le texte .................................................................... 78 B. Insults as ‘shifters of scandal’? ....................................................................... 87 2. Disseminations. Rhetorical strategies.................................................................. 92 A. At synctactic level........................................................................................... 93 B. At episodic level.............................................................................................. 98 3. Contaminations. A structural analysis. .............................................................. 113 III. Chronotopes of scandal........................................................................................ 123 1. Temporal indetermination: past, present and future .......................................... 125 A. Narrative structures....................................................................................... 126 B. ‘Grande histoire’ and ‘petite histoire’: dates, durations and experiences of time ....................................................................................................................... 130 2. ‘Des aîtres et des hôtes’: spatial reconfigurations ............................................. 139 A. Nature, wastelands, cities and streets: an exploration of outdoor spaces ..... 143 B. Between confinement and verticality: the relocation towards indoor spaces163 C. Miniatures: thematic extensions and narrative intentions............................. 169 IV. Scandals of morality, authority and identity........................................................ 179 1. The scandal of morality: turpitude and infamy.................................................. 180 A. ‘Un défi à dix mille ans de moralité’ ............................................................ 182 B. Axioms: locating the moral agent ................................................................. 190 2. The scandal of authority: domestic and social upheaval ................................... 197 A. Gender and generation .................................................................................. 198 B. Law and order ............................................................................................... 203 3. The scandal of identity: estrangement and the spectre of heteronomy.............. 208 A. Symmetries or the threat of the double ......................................................... 213 B. Palimpsestic reality and prismatic illusion.................................................... 219 C. Counterpoints of reality................................................................................. 225 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 238 Bibliography ................................................................................................................. 246 7 Introduction This thesis explores the fictional production of the immediate post-war period through the prism of scandal. The novels published by Marcel Aymé, Jean Genet and Roger Nimier in the years 1945-1950