Cathy JELLENIK, Rewriting rewriting. Marguerite Duras, Annie Ernaux, and Marie Redonnet, New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, Oxford, Wien, Peter Lang (Currents in Comparative Romance Languages and Literatures), 2007, 211 p.
ISBN 978-0-8204-9525-5
RÉSUMÉ
Although the storytelling of any time rewrites itself, rewriting becamea primary concern in the literature of the twentieth century, an eracharacterized as having quoted, reenacted, cannibalized, revised,redone, refurbished, and outright plagiarized the texts of earliertimes. The modern obsession with literary reiteration manifests itselfin a rather unique way in the narratives of Marguerite Duras, AnnieErnaux, and Marie Redonnet. These authors systematically and repeatedlyrewrite their own texts, and in so doing, give evidence of three of themore salient aspects of twentieth-century French literature: a trendtoward the representation of multifaceted selves, a desire toreevaluate the literary paradigm, and an acute concern for theunreliability of language. This book argues that the rewritingperformed by Duras, Ernaux, and Redonnet moves beyond the tacitrewriting that occurs in any text toward a renovation of variousfeatures of the literary arena within which they circulate. CathyJellenik argues that all writing contains rewriting - an argumentgrounded in the theoretical apparatuses of Saussure, Bakhtin,Benveniste, Barthes, Kristeva, and Derrida. She then examines andinterrogates the ways in which Duras, Ernaux, and Redonnet userewriting to question and rethink the literary traditions they inherit.Jellenik suggests that the rewriting projects of Duras, Ernaux, andRedonnet promise to lead them, and their readers, toward the creationof a new literary aesthetic capable of responding to the questions ofour times.
À PROPOS DE L'AUTEUR
Cathy Jellenik received her Ph.D. in twentieth-century Frenchliterature from The University of Colorado, Boulder, where she studiedwith Professor Warren Motte. She is the author of «Redonnet Redoes,»published in the Journal of Contemporary French and Francophone Literature,and is currently working on a manuscript addressing «minor literature»in twentieth-century France. She is Assistant Professor of French atThe Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina.