Narratologies contemporaines: approches nouvelles pour la théorie et l’analyse du récit ed. by John Pier, Francis Berthelot

Abstract

l’enseignement philosophique (or GREPH) from 1974 through 1981, as the group sought to resituate the role of philosophy within the French education system, envisioning philosophy “as the place within a system of mass education for contestation and subversion” (51). The historical and political background of the group’s campaign is explored in depth and a version of Derrida emerges, far different than that both celebrated and dismissed in the American academy. Ultimately, the story of GREPH must be fully told for “deconstructive politics [to be] understood non-reductively” (79). Then, moving from “history” to “theory,” Orchard shows how the specific context of GREPH underlies what she calls deconstruction’s “double strategy,” whereby it “stage[s] oppositionality from within” (69) the very system it seeks to transform or disrupt. The strength of Orchard’s analysis lies in her fusion of the political with the theoretical as more than a banal and empty gesture, but this strength is also where the work’s limits lie. The historical accounts traced by Orchard should be of great interest to teachers and professors interested in rethinking what it means to teach philosophy and to teach philosophically, but readers are warned that this element of her work can often be obscured by her entrenchment within the complexities and apparent circumlocutions of deconstructive language. Towson University (MD) Jacob Hovind PIER, JOHN, et FRANCIS BERTHELOT, éd. Narratologies contemporaines: approches nouvelles pour la théorie et l’analyse du récit. Paris: Archives contemporaines, 2010. ISBN 9782 -8130-0020-0. Pp. 274. 28 a. It was no doubt inevitable that what was hailed in the 1960s and 1970s as ground-breaking research into the workings of narrative should come to be viewed as monolithic in nature and referred to, often dismissively, as ‘classical narratology.’ This collection provides a sampling of ongoing research in the field, developed largely within the framework of a seminar at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales that has encouraged interdisciplinary collaboration. The common editorial practice of previewing each contribution is particularly welcome in a case like this, where the specialized nature of the work—not to mention the terminology itself—can be intimidating; the capsule summaries should help prospective readers decide which studies might be of interest. The editors have also done well to open the volume proper with Ansgar Nünning’s état présent. Though a translation of an article originally published in 2003, his overview remains timely, and his presentation is clear, with extensive documentation for anyone who wishes to read more on a given topic. A number of the offerings are relevant to French studies, directly or in a more general sense. Jean-Pierre Camus’s Les décades historiques (1642), along with two tales by the Grimm brothers, allow Jean-Michel Adam and Ute Heidmann to illustrate their thesis that a given text “relève, à la fois, d’un mode de textualisation [...] et d’un ou plusieurs genres discursifs” (157). Working in a more modern period, Philippe Roussin traces the problematic distinction between récit and roman as those critical concepts evolved from the late nineteenth century on and eventually fed into the histoire/discours model of classical narratology, now seen as overly reductive. Klaus Meyer-Minnemann and Sabine Schlickers, in an effort to fine-tune the work of Lucien Dällenbach, review current critical theory on mise 1038 FRENCH REVIEW 86.5 en abyme, with examples from French, Spanish, and Brazilian literature. For Alain Rabatel (as for several other contributors, not surprisingly), it is especially Gérard Genette who epitomizes classical narratology and whose work needs reconsideration ; advocating “une articulation forte entre narratologie et linguistique” (110), Rabatel proposes a less simplistic treatment of point of view. Raphaël Baroni stresses the individual reader’s experience of a plot, as it unfolds, which was of little interest to structuralists. One of the co-editors, John Pier, uses Lolita to illustrate the possibilities of “une narratologie intertextuelle” (195), while his colleague, Francis Berthelot, focuses on a class of texts that he situates “entre mainstream et littératures de l’imaginaire” in “une zone frontalière qui possède sa logique propre : la zone des transfictions” (87). One of...