Play-write Poetry in Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist

L’article suivant propose d’explorer les fonctions du jeu littéraire dans le huitième roman de Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist, récit de métafiction mettant en scène un narrateur écrivain et poète qui, tentant de rédiger l’introduction d’une anthologie de poésie, est confronté à la page blanche. Alors que c’est la nature compétitive (agôn) de la création littéraire qui dans un premier temps coupe court au plaisir de la création, comme le montrera la première partie de l’analyse, c’est grâce aux vertus du jeu éducatif (paideia) et la création d’un monde alternatif que la créativité du narrateur se libère et produit les pages qui constituent ce livre. Se penchant sur le rôle de la liberté comme concept fondamental de la création de cet Ars Poetica contemporain, un troisième moment de l’étude met au jour la carnavalisation du langage et des formes comme manifestation riche et féconde du jeu littéraire.The following article focuses on the function of literary play in Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, a meta-fictional novel whose narrator Paul Chowder is a writer and poet who struggles to write the introduction of a forthcoming anthology of rhymed poetry. Whereas it is the competitive nature (agon) of literary creation that initially suspends the pleasure of creation, as will be reviewed in the first part of the analysis, it is through the virtues of educational play (paideia) and the creation of an alternative world that narrative creativity is released and produces the pages that constitute this book. Focusing on freedom as a pivotal concept in the creation of this contemporary Ars Poetica, the analysis then reviews the carnivalization of language and forms as a resourceful manifestation of literary play

Play-write Poetry in Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist

L’article suivant propose d’explorer les fonctions du jeu littéraire dans le huitième roman de Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist, récit de métafiction mettant en scène un narrateur écrivain et poète qui, tentant de rédiger l’introduction d’une anthologie de poésie, est confronté à la page blanche. Alors que c’est la nature compétitive (agôn) de la création littéraire qui dans un premier temps coupe court au plaisir de la création, comme le montrera la première partie de l’analyse, c’est grâce aux vertus du jeu éducatif (paideia) et la création d’un monde alternatif que la créativité du narrateur se libère et produit les pages qui constituent ce livre. Se penchant sur le rôle de la liberté comme concept fondamental de la création de cet Ars Poetica contemporain, un troisième moment de l’étude met au jour la carnavalisation du langage et des formes comme manifestation riche et féconde du jeu littéraire.The following article focuses on the function of literary play in Nicholson Baker’s The Anthologist, a meta-fictional novel whose narrator Paul Chowder is a writer and poet who struggles to write the introduction of a forthcoming anthology of rhymed poetry. Whereas it is the competitive nature (agon) of literary creation that initially suspends the pleasure of creation, as will be reviewed in the first part of the analysis, it is through the virtues of educational play (paideia) and the creation of an alternative world that narrative creativity is released and produces the pages that constitute this book. Focusing on freedom as a pivotal concept in the creation of this contemporary Ars Poetica, the analysis then reviews the carnivalization of language and forms as a resourceful manifestation of literary play

« Nymphets do not occur in polar regions » : lectures du stéréotype dans Lolita de Vladimir Nabokov

Le présent article se propose d'étudier la récurrence de stéréotypes sociaux et culturels dans Lolita, de s'interroger sur leur fonction dans la construction du sens et sur leurs enjeux dans l'établissement d'une relation avec le lecteur. Il s'intéresse ensuite au stéréotype verbal, c'est-à-dire au cliché, et met en évidence les moyens utilisés par Humbert pour le combattre, grâce à la pratique du second degré et de la réflexivité.The present article focuses on the use of social and cultural stereotypes in Lolita and studies how they contribute to the meaning of the text and to the relation between narrator and readers. It then focuses on verbal stereotypes, clichés and the various stylistic resources through which Humbert tries to neutralize them

Rachel Sykes, The Quiet Contemporary American Novel

In The Quiet Contemporary American Novel, Rachel Sykes boldly attempts to define and problematize what she identifies as a neglected area in the study of twenty-first-century American fiction and that she names “quiet novels.” Set within a large framework of two centuries of American culture, her well-researched monograph brings into focus nine contemporary novels by Teju Cole, Ben Lerner, Paul Harding, Richard Powers, Lynne Tillman and Marilynne Robinson as well as discussing the works of ma..

Hopper “lost in an artist’s dream”: Gas (1940)

While lost in an artist’s dream, I would stare at the honest brightness of the gasolineparaphernalia against the splendid green of oaks.(Nabokov, 153). Edward Hopper (1882-1967), Gas, 1940 New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Huile sur toile, 66.7 x 102.2 cm. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. 577.1943 © 2018. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence * In Nabokov’s Lolita, this oneiric evocation of a gas station on the American roadside follows European émigré Humbert’..

Introduction

It has been over sixty years since Lolita first appeared in its green-clad double volume in 1955 in Paris, published by Maurice Girodias (Olympia Press). During those six decades, the nymphet that Nabokov carved out of American poshlust has made her way through all the clichés of magazines and tabloids, but also through the history of literature and the history of language (one can now look up the noun “lolita” in dictionaries). Lolita has also shaped a very specific way of being a reader, ma..

« Nymphets do not occur in polar regions » : lectures du stéréotype dans Lolita de Vladimir Nabokov

The present article focuses on the use of social and cultural stereotypes in Lolita and studies how they contribute to the meaning of the text and to the relation between narrator and readers. It then focuses on verbal stereotypes, clichés and the various stylistic resources through which Humbert tries to neutralize them

L’écrivain déplacé dans Lolita et Pnin de Vladimir Nabokov

This article focuses on the figure of displaced writers in Vladimir Nabokov’s fiction, and more specifically in Lolita and Pnin. Living the life of exiles affected by permanent instability, the two heroes, Humbert and Pnin, find personal outlets in the writing process. The eccentric language used by both characters displays a form of inventiveness which derives from linguistic disjunction. This article aims at showing in which ways displacement is what sustains the linguistic creativity of these two intellectual exiles

Les « Variations Dolores » - 2010-2016

When creating a new version of Lolita in the 21st century, what do authors retain from Nabokov’s masterpiece? Is it the myth and the icon or is it the diegetic thread? Is it the extravagant prose or the transgression and taboo? After reviewing the feminist or political nuances that tinted many a rewriting of Lolita at the turn of the century, the following article seeks to examine the more recent perspectives offered by the rewriting of Nabokov’s masterpiece in the 21st century. The analysis focuses in particular on three novels that claim close affinities with Lolita. Alissa Nutting’s Tampa (2013) exploits the theme of transgression by creating a feminine Humbert craving for sex with teen boys, while Gaige excludes pedophilia to focus instead on the theme of European exile and of the illicit father-and-daughter roadtrip. Darling River, Les Variations Dolores (2011) by Swedish author Sara Stridsberg is an intensely personal and multilayered rewriting of Lolita that, along with Gaige and Nutting, powerfully illustrates how Lolita’s avatars still shed light on the complexity of their original

“A medley of voices”, polyphonie et discours rapportés dans Lolita de Nabokov

Using the notion of polyphony in literature, this article studies the function of reported speeches and voices in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. After showing the many ways through which the main characters’ voices are described and shown in the novel, the article analyses textual and stylistic devices used by the narrator to keep the other characters’ voices, words and syntax at a distance from his own speech. In spite of the narrator’s permanent control over the texture of his narrative, a final part shows how idioms and strongly-featured voices finally blend, thus accounting for the evolution of the hero’s relation to his environment and to the other characters