Thresholds of Meaning: Passage, Ritual and Liminality in Contemporary French Narrative
ISBN: 9781846316791
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Liverpool University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Language & Literature;

Thresholds of Meaning examines contemporary French narrative and explores two related issues: the centrality within recent French fiction and autofiction of the themes of passage, ritual and liminality; and the thematic continuity which links this work with its literary ancestors of the 1960s and 1970s. Through the close analysis of novels and r�cits by Pierre Bergounioux, Fran�ois Bon, Marie Darrieussecq, H�l�ne Lenoir, Laurent Mauvignier and Jean Rouaud, Duffy demonstrates the ways in which contemporary narrative, while capitalising on the formal lessons of the nouveau roman and drawing upon a shared repertoire of motifs and themes, engages with the complex processes by which meaning is produced in the referential world and, in particular, with the rituals and codes that social man brings into play in order to negotiate the various stages of the human life-cycle. By the application of concepts and models derived from ritual theory and from visual analysis, Thresholds of Meaning situates itself at the intersection of the developing field of literature and anthropology studies and research into word and image.


Jean Duffy is Professor of French, University of Edinburgh. General Editor of French Studies. Author of 'Reading Between the Lines: Claude Simon and the Visual Arts' (Liverpool University Press, 1998); 'Using French Vocabulary' (Cambridge University Press, 1999); 'Signs and Designs: Art and Architecture in the Work of Michel Butor' (Liverpool University Press, 2003).

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