The Virtual Embedded Narratives in Butor’s La Modification

Abstract

While narrative embedding in Michel Butor’s La Modification (1957) as it relates to art objects, the train and the myths has been well examined, the virtual embedded narratives have not received due critical attention. This essay argues that the novel foregrounds virtual embedded narratives in the form of imaginary scenarios that contain the characters’ plans, expectations, wishes and fears. These scenarios, formulated as possibilities, but later negated or unrealized, constitute what Gerald Prince calls the disnarrated. The various functions of the disnarrated in the novel at the level of discourse as well as at the level of story are discussed in this study: the metafictional quality of the narrative; the intratextual relationships between the embedded and the embedding narratives; the relationship between the narrator and the narratee; and, the narrative’s tellability.