Devenirs du romanesque: les écritures aventureuses de Jean Echenoz, Jean Rolin et Patrick Deville. Par Anne Sennhauser

Abstract

This study brings the much-analysed contemporary novelist Jean Echenoz together with two less fêted authors, Jean Rolin, the younger of the two writing Rolin brothers, and Patrick Deville, for a comparative analysis based around the topics of adventure and the romanesque. Anne Sennhauser defines the latter in opposition to familiar, everyday life, seeing it as the domain of the excessive, where the unlikely, the exotic, and the extreme can flourish. This links closely to the concept of adventure, which is examined not only in the literal sense of dramatic events and far-flung voyages, but also in a narratological mode, with reference to the openness and unpredictability of the unfolding storyline. The study focuses on the first decade of the twenty-first century, with the earliest novels receiving close attention dating from 2002 and the latest from 2011, although texts from before and after this period are drawn into discussion as...