Nouveau roman

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The Nouveau Roman (French pronunciation: [nuvo ʁɔmɑ̃], "new novel") is a type of French novel in the 1950s and 60s that diverged from traditional literary genres.[1] Émile Henriot coined the term in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new style each time.[2]

Overview

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A group of writers dubbed Nouveaux Romanciers, "new novelists", emerged in the mid-1950s. Vivian Mercier considered Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Nathalie Sarraute to be the core of the group, becoming known through their theoretical writings about their writing practices in addition to their novels.[3][4] This group has commonly been expanded by critics to include other innovative writers who had published with Les Éditions de Minuit under Jérôme Lindon [fr], such as Samuel Beckett, Marguerite Duras, Claude Ollier, Robert Pinget and Claude Simon.[3]

The style had different approaches but generally rejected the traditional use of chronology, plot and character in fiction, as well as the omniscient narrator. The Nouveau Roman authors were open to influences from writers such as Dostoevsky, Joyce, Faulkner and Kafka, as well as the cinema.[3][5]

Theory

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The earliest theoretical writings about the Nouveau Roman were the four essays by Nathalie Sarraute compiled in 1956, L'Ère du soupçon (The Age of Suspicion).[6] Alain Robbe-Grillet and Michel Butor also published essays on the nature and future of the novel which were collected in Pour un Nouveau Roman (1963) and Essais sur le roman (1969), respectively.

Rejecting many of the established features of the novel to date, Robbe-Grillet regarded many earlier novelists as old-fashioned in their focus on plot, action, narrative, ideas, and character. Instead, he put forward a theory of the novel as focused on objects: the ideal nouveau roman would be an individual version and vision of things, subordinating plot and character to the details of the world rather than enlisting the world in their service.[7]

Seminar with Jean Ricardou and Claude Simon, Cerisy (France)
Contemporary literature workshop with Marc Avelot, Philippe Binant, Bernard Magné, Claudette Oriol-Boyer, Jean Ricardou, Cerisy (France), 1980

The Nouveau Roman literary movement and the novels themselves were further theorized by Jean Ricardou, who in addition to his theoretical works (e.g., Problèmes du Nouveau Roman) also published nouveaux romans himself, such as L'Observatoire de Cannes [fr] (1961), La Prise de Constantinople [fr] (1965), and Les Lieux-dits (1969). He also organized, directed and published the proceedings of several conferences on the nouveau roman, including the 1971 conference and debate at Cerisy, published in two volumes: Nouveau roman : hier, aujourd’hui, which added to an understanding of the history of that period.[8] Just before his death in 2016, he was working on a book of interviews with Amir Biglari, in which he provided an account of the Nouveau Roman movement.[9]

Nouveau Roman and cinema

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The Nouveau Roman style also left its mark on the screen as writers Marguerite Duras and Alain Robbe-Grillet became involved with the Left Bank film movement (often labelled as part of the French New Wave). Their collaboration with director Alain Resnais resulted in critical successes such as Hiroshima mon amour (1958) and Last Year at Marienbad (1961). They would later go on to direct their own films.[10]

Influenced by these films, French courses in North America during the 1960s and 1970s often included works by Nouveau Roman authors such as Alain Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie (1957), Michel Butor's La Modification (1957), Nathalie Sarraute's Le Planetarium (1957) and Marguerite Duras' Moderato Cantabile (1958).[citation needed]

List of central writers and later figures

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Central writers and works

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The following is based on the list from Les nouveaux romanciers : étude critique as well as La littérature française du XXe siècle.[11][12]

Parallel and later figures (1960s)

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France

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Canada

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United Kingdom

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Italy

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Argentina

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United States

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The critic Benjamin Libman has argued that the Nouveau Roman exerted a profound influence upon Susan Sontag and the development of postmodern fiction in the United States.[19]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ Baldick, Chris (2015). "Nouveau roman, le". The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Online Version) (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191783234.
  2. ^ Henriot, Émile (May 1957). "La Jalousie, d'Alain Robbe-Grillet Tropismes, de Nathalie Sarraute". Le Monde.
  3. ^ a b c Mercier, Vivian (1971). The new novel from Queneau to Pinget. Internet Archive. New York, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. pp. 3–42.
  4. ^ Unwin, Timothy (1997-10-28). The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel: From 1800 to the Present. Cambridge University Press. p. 243. ISBN 978-0-521-49914-9.
  5. ^ French literature – Toward the nouveau roman Encyclopedia Britannica
  6. ^ Yanoshevsky, Galia (2006), "Études particulières", Les discours du Nouveau Roman : Essais, entretiens, débats, Perspectives (in French), Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, pp. 41–72, ISBN 978-2-7574-2261-8, retrieved 2025-08-15
  7. ^ Robbe-Grillet, Alain (1965). "A Future for the Novel". For a New Novel: Essays on Fiction. New York, NY: Grove Press, Inc. pp. 21–24.
  8. ^ "Actes du colloque Nouveau Roman : hier, aujourd'hui de 1971". www.ccic-cerisy.asso.fr. Retrieved 2025-08-15.
  9. ^ Erica (2018-05-20). "Un aventurier de l'écriture - Entretiens avec Jean Ricardou". Le site du Fonds Jean Ricardou (in French). Retrieved 2025-08-15.
  10. ^ Clouzot, Claire, Le cinéma français depuis la nouvelle vague, Fernand Nathan/Alliance Française, 1972
  11. ^ Thoraval, Jean (1976). Les nouveaux romanciers : etude critique, avec de nombreux extraits : pour les etudiants des universites et pour les eleves des classes preparatoires aux grandes ecoles. Internet Archive. Paris : Bordas. ISBN 978-2-04-009649-6.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  12. ^ Mitterand, Henri (1996). La littérature française du XXe siècle. Internet Archive. Paris : Nathan. p. 67. ISBN 978-2-09-190488-7.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)
  13. ^ a b c Macé, Suzanne (1971). "Le nouveau roman au Québec". In Ethier-Blais, Jean (ed.). Littératures: mélanges littéraires. Hurtubise. pp. 227–233.
  14. ^ Ferris, Natalie (2018-02-07). "'I think I preferred it abstract': Christine Brooke-Rose and visuality in the new novel". Textual Practice. 32 (2): 225–244. doi:10.1080/0950236X.2018.1413034. ISSN 0950-236X.
  15. ^ Darlington, Joseph (2017). "A Non-Euclidean Novel: Christine Brooke-Rose's Such and the Space-Age Sixties". Journal of Modern Literature. 40 (2): 147–164. doi:10.2979/jmodelite.40.2.09. ISSN 0022-281X. JSTOR 10.2979/jmodelite.40.2.09.
  16. ^ a b c Adam, Guy (2019-12-05). "The nouveau roman and Writing in Britain After Modernism". OUP Academic. doi:10.1093/o (inactive 1 July 2025).{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of July 2025 (link)
  17. ^ Guy, Adam (2014), Jordan, Julia; Ryle, Martin (eds.), "Johnson and the nouveau roman: Trawl and other Butorian Projects", B. S. Johnson and Post-War Literature: Possibilities of the Avant-Garde, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 35–53, doi:10.1057/9781137349552_3, ISBN 978-1-137-34955-2, retrieved 2025-06-26
  18. ^ a b Duran, Jèssica Pujol (2024-03-04), Hölter, Achim (ed.), "Italo Calvino, Julio Cortázar, and the Nouveau Roman", Volume 1 The Languages of World Literature, De Gruyter, pp. 579–590, doi:10.1515/9783110645033-040, ISBN 978-3-11-064503-3, retrieved 2025-03-03
  19. ^ Libman, Ben (2022-08-29). "Susan Sontag and the Americanization of the Nouveau Roman". Post45 Journal. ISSN 2168-8206.

Bibliography

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  • Baldick, Chris (2015). "Nouveau roman, le". The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Online Version) (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780191783234.
  • Luscans, Bernard (2008). La représentation des objets dans le nouveau nouveau roman, Chapel Hill, Université de Caroline du Nord. [1]
  • Pivato, Joseph. 'Nouveau Roman Canadien', Canadian Literature 58 (Autumn 1973) 51–60. [canlit.ca/article/nouveau-roman-canadien/]
  • Pivato, Joseph. 'Nancy Huston Meets le Nouveau Roman, Athabasca University Canadian Writers Site. [canadian-writers.athabascau.ca/english/writers/nhuston/nouveau_roman.php.php]