Notes 1 Introduction 1. Robbe-Grillet, For a New Novel (henceforth FNN), 28–9. The name nou- veau roman was coined by Émile Henriot in a Le Monde article (May 22, 1957), which focused on Robbe-Grillet’s La Jalousie and Nathalie Sarraute’s Tropismes. Robbe-Grillet was the principal author who fervently embraced and theorized this notion; others, particularly Michel Butor and Marguerite Duras, felt uneasy about the term. 2. References to this notion include Kibédi Varga (1988: 30, 38, 1990), Korthals Altes (1992: 3, 7), Prince (1994: 988), Gratton (1997: 248), Davis and Fallaize (2000: 13–15), Viart and Vercier (2005: 353), Biermann and Coenen- Mennemeier (2006: 388), Godard (2006: 413–35), Kemp (2010). 3. Important contributions include MacIntyre (1984), Ricoeur (1984, 1985, 1988), Taylor (1989), Freeman (1993), Cavarero (2000), Brockmeier and Carbaugh (2001), Kearney (2002), Butler (2005), Allen (2008), Goldie (2012). 4. On the narrative turn, see Norris (1985: 21), Hinchman and Hinchman (2001), Punday (2003), Kreiswirth (2005), Fludernik (2006: 46–8), Herman (2007: 4–5), Alber and Fludernik (2010) and Hyvärinen (2010, 2013), who dis- cusses the broader cultural narrative turn (for example in media and politics). 5. On the concept of metanarrativity, see Neumann and Nünning (2012). For a narratological discussion of ‘narrative as theme’ in French fiction, with a focus on fictional views on the adequacy of narrative for truth, see Prince (1992). 6. On metamodernism, see Vermeulen and Akker (2010). As McHale (2013) observes, looking back, the modernism/postmodernism dichotomy is very US-centred and problematic in both European and global contexts. This is particularly true from the perspective of French literature. 7. For example, one of the ‘fathers’ of narratology, Genette (1976: 1), demands, as late as 1969, that it is necessary to pay greater attention to the ‘prob- lematic aspect of the narrative act’. On the poststructuralist suspicion of narrative, see for example Kellner (1987), Davis (2004: 103–28), Klepper (2013: 1–2). 8. It is still largely the case that, as Fludernik (2003: 331) notes, ‘there has been comparatively little interest on a theoretical level in the history of narrative forms and functions’. 9. Some scholars have also seen a rehabilitation of narrative in German and Anglophone novels of the 1980s; see Rimmon-Kenan (1996), Förster (1999: 3), Hörisch (2004). However, to my knowledge none of these ‘returns’ has been properly related to the narrative turn in critical discourse. 10. The ongoing scholarly interest in Robbe-Grillet’s work and the need to reevaluate his literary-historical significance is testified to by Allemand and Milat (2010), for example. Richardson (2012: 22) describes Robbe-Grillet’s 231 232 Notes work as part of an important antimimetic narrative tradition that ‘has not yet been properly accounted for by narrative theory’. 11. Tournier’s profound effect on international literary life is evidenced, for example, by his nomination, in 2007, as the only French author who was a contender for the Man Booker International Prize, which acknowledges a writer’s overall contribution to fiction on the world stage. 12. Dans le labyrinthe has been regarded as a ‘watershed novel’ between modern- ism and postmodernism – see for example McHale (1987: 13–15, 1992: 51), Smyth (1991: 66, 68) – whereas Le Roi des Aulnes has been interpreted vari- ously as a traditional realist novel or a postmodernist novel. 13. For an overview of this debate, see Clark (2004: 86–105). 14. Important landmarks in this development were MacIntyre’s After Virtue (1981), Ricoeur’s three-volume Time and Narrative (Temps et récit, 1983–85) and Bruner’s work in narrative psychology (1986, 1987, 1990). 15. See for example Ricoeur (1984), Polkinghorne (1988), Bruner (1990: 43), Freeman (1993, 2010), Widdershoven (1993), Cavarero (2000), Crossley (2000: 11), Ritivoi (2006), Phelan (2007), Boyd (2009), Brockmeier (2013) and Schiff (2013). 16. See for example Barthes (1982: 94), Cohn (1999: 12), Kafalenos (2006) and Ryan (2007: 29). For a discussion on the primacy of the notion of event in the narratological conception of narrative, see Rabinowitz (2005: 184). 17. On the distinction between ontological and epistemological/cognitive approaches, see Ritivoi (2005: 231) and Hinchman and Hinchman (2001: xix–xx). Thinkers who consider narrativity to be primarily an ontological concept include Taylor, Ricoeur, MacIntyre and Carr, whereas the episte- mological-cognitivist position is represented for example by White, Mink, Dennett, Herman and other cognitivists who see narrative as a ‘basic human strategy for coming to terms with time, process and change’ (Herman et al. 2005: ix). 18. Both these aspects are acknowledged by a range of thinkers including Cavarero (2000), Benhabib (2002), Bamberg and Andrews (2004), Butler (2005), Allen (2008) and Nünning (2009). 19. The notion of narrative identity is more widespread (for an insightful over- view of approaches that emphasize the social aspect of narrative identity, see Klepper 2013), but the notion of narrative subjectivity has also been used across disciplines (for example Ricoeur 1992, Rasmussen 1996, Worthington 1996, Benhabib 1999 and Clark 2010). 20. The differences and similarities between natural and unnatural narratology are informatively summarized in Fludernik (2012) and Alber et al. (2012). 21. ‘Unnatural narratology’ emphasizes the ‘playful and outrageous’ character of antimimetic texts (Richardson 2012: 25), but pays little attention to the epistemological, ontological or ethical reasons for the rejection of conven- tional narrativity and for privileging fragmentary, incoherent or otherwise ‘unnatural’ narrative structures. 22. For further discussion of ‘narrative hermeneutics’, see Brockmeier (2013), Meretoja (2013, 2014) and Brockmeier and Meretoja (forthcoming). 23. On the ‘move from found to constructed orders’, see Taylor (1989: 156, 161). Notes 233 24. As MacIntyre (1984: 121–30) reminds us, storytelling functioned as a major means of socialization in premodern societies. See also Taylor (1989: 178–9) and Ehrich-Haefeli (1998: 811–43). 25. On this novelistic tradition of ‘an artwork mirroring itself as it mirrors real- ity’, flaunting ‘its own condition of artifice’ as it explores ‘ways of going beyond words to the experiences words seek to indicate’, see Alter (1975: ix–xi). 26. According to Rousso (1991), the age of ‘repression’ lasted until 1971; in the light of this periodization, Tournier was ahead of his time in dealing with the issue of collaboration in Le Roi des Aulnes (1970). 27. On their ‘manifesto’ character, see Yanoshevsky (2006: 249, 258). 28. For an overview of this ethos, see Scholes (1980). Heidegger was one of the key thinkers whose criticism of subjectivity and representation influenced the postwar crisis of humanism (see Menke 2003; Vattimo 1988: 46; Renaut 1999: xvii). The Frankfurt School was also one of the important influences of the intellectual leaders of May 1968. 29. On critical hermeneutics, see Thompson (1995), Kögler (1999), Pappas and Cowling (2003), Vasterling (2003), Ritivoi (2006), Mootz and Taylor (2011) and Roberge (2011). 30. On the need to historicize narrative studies, see for example Fludernik (2003) and Nünning (2004, 2009). Philosophical approaches to narrative (for example Sartwell 2000; Carroll 2001; Currie 2010; Nussbaum 2010; Goldie 2012) tend to privilege philosophy at the expense of attentiveness to what is specific to literature. 31. Classics of this tradition include Auerbach (1946), Lukács (1971), Goldmann (1975), Bakhtin (1981, 1984b), Jameson (1991) and Barthes (1984: 14), who acknowledges that every choice of a literary form entails a ‘general choice of ethos’. Other studies that have been particularly important for my work include Davis (1988, 2000), Korthals Altes (1992), Saariluoma (1994, 1996, 2004) and Worthington (1996). 32. Twentieth-century hermeneutics has been a source of growing interest in the field of literary studies – see for example Clark (2006), Ritivoi (2006), Felski (2008), Davis (2010), Mootz and Taylor (2011) and Schaeffer (2013) – but this tradition is still subject to abundant misunderstandings. In France in particular a strong suspicion has prevailed towards hermeneutics, since many poststructuralists have conceived of it as a mode of thought directed at the decipherment of ‘hidden meanings’; see for example Foucault (1994: 373) and Badiou (2004: 43). On the French interpretation of hermeneutics, see Davis (2010: 32–3, 50, 63, 173). 33. The philosophical analyses of Robbe-Grillet’s work have tended to focus on his theoretical writings; for example Heath (1972) and Britton (1992). To my knowledge there are no sustained analyses of the different philosophical aspects of the nouveau roman’s rejection of storytelling. 34. Davis (1995b) delighted in the new, more strenuous quality of Tournier stud- ies, and a decade later Posthumus (2006) wrote about ‘un renouvellement de la critique tourniérienne’, but concluded that it remains for criticism to situate Tournier’s oeuvre in literary history. 234 Notes 2 Textual Labyrinths: Robbe-Grillet’s Antinarrative Aesthetics 1. The former line of interpretation was initiated by Genette’s Vertige fi xé (1962) and continues in contemporary ‘unnatural narratology’; the latter was launched by Morrissette’s Les romans de Robbe-Grillet (1963) and remains influential in contemporary Robbe-Grillet scholarship (for example several contributions in Allemand & Milat 2010).