French Literature Reviews - 2026
The Meaning of Narrative
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Added February 2007: book awaiting reviewer for the Acta Fabula journal
Marie-Pascale Huglo
Le sens du récit. Pour une approche esthétique de la narrativité contemporaine
Presses universitaires du Septentrion
Collection "Perspectives"
Villeneuve-d'Ascq, December 2006
ISBN: 2-85939-976-3
EAN 13: 9782859399764
18.00 €
Publisher's overview:
How should we approach contemporary narrative? While the variety of its formal structures and intertextual play are by now well recognized, the perceptual sensitivity inherent in storytelling remains underexplored. Yet every narrative subtly unfolds a discursive and perceptual universe steeped in collective imaginaries and memories that deserves close attention. Here, meaning is inextricably bound to the sensory experience that underpins it—hence the necessity of the aesthetic approach advocated in this essay.
In today's world, our senses are constantly stimulated not only by the diversity of reality but also by literary and audiovisual cultures spanning traditional genres and new media: what impact do these new modes of perception have on the art of storytelling? How is literature thereby transformed for us as readers?
The critical studies gathered here untangle the intricate relationship between meaning, sensory perception, and cultural memory across works by writers as diverse as Michel Leiris, Louis-René des Forêts, Witold Gombrowicz, Emmanuel Carrère, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Lydie Salvayre, Antoine Volodine, and Nathalie Sarraute, ultimately paving the way for a renewed approach to contemporary narrativity.
Marie-Pascale Huglo is a professor of contemporary literature at the University of Montreal. Author of Métamorphoses de l'insignifiant. Essai sur l'anecdote dans la modernité (Montreal, Balzac-le Griot, 1997), she serves on the editorial boards of the journals Protée and Cahiers littéraires Contre-jour, and co-edited with Sarah Rocheville the volume Raconter ? Les enjeux de la voix narrative dans le récit contemporain (Paris, L'Harmattan, 2004).
Opening lines:
The scene that opens in literature is first and foremost that of a story which, if only for the duration of a book (provided the "magic" works), draws us into a narrated world we believe in, or want to believe in. Within its own small circle, the narrative deploys a space-time distinct from ours, populated by characters who act, think, feel, live, and die. It is this particular carve-out that captures my attention—the unique ability of stories to detach themselves from everyday speech from within that very speech, to mark out thresholds and weave knots of meaning that define themselves independently of the incessant exchange of discourse. Distinct from what is sometimes called real life, the world opened up within and through narrative enters our "reality" as virtual memory or potential interpretation. Fable transforms into memory, which in turn mediates our perception and understanding of life.
This scene is familiar to us. It encompasses the eventfulness that narrative projects as a coherent whole. The self-evidence with which a story asserts itself often obscures the very mechanism that casts it as a unity both objective (the events recounted appear as an autonomous segment literally "placed before us") and virtual (this unity must, in order to emerge, pass through the singular process of reading capable of actualizing its object). The paradoxical movement that folds the seemingly constituted narrative back into the endlessly renewed process of its objectification already highlights the complexity of what allows it to appear simply as such: the narrative scene reveals itself only in the process of reading; the completion toward which the narrative strives (even when "open") can only occur within the incompleteness of its actualization. And amid this tension between scene and process, the process tends to recede so that the narrative scene may stand out and assert itself.
The study of narratology has long focused on formal structures and intertextuality. This work examines the perceptual sensitivity inherent in storytelling and the ways in which narrative constructs a discursive and perceptual universe. It investigates the intersection of literary and audiovisual cultures, questioning how these modes of perception influence the reader's experience. Through an analysis of authors such as Michel Leiris, Louis-René des Forêts, and Nathalie Sarraute, the text explores how narratives interact with collective imaginaries and cultural memory.
The book examines the tension between the narrative scene, which presents itself as an autonomous object, and the process of reading required to actualize it. This inquiry highlights how stories detach from everyday discourse to create distinct space-time configurations that function as virtual memories. By analyzing the relationship between meaning and sensory experience, the author proposes a framework for understanding contemporary narrativity. Readers interested in the intersection of aesthetics, memory, and the mechanics of modern storytelling may find this examination of contemporary narrativity relevant.