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  • Transports: les métaphores de Claude Simon
  • Jean H. Duffy
Transports: les métaphores de Claude Simon. Études réunies par Irène Albers and Wolfram Nitsch. Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2006. 337 pp. Pb £26.00; $44.95; €37.20.

This volume originated in a colloquium on metaphor in the work of Claude Simon (Cologne, 2004). The book has a tripartite structure, its eighteen essays grouped under the ambitious headings 'Épistémologie de la métaphore', 'Topographie de la métaphore' and 'Médiologie de la métaphore'. The theoretical references of the brief, but dense preface are impressively broad (Derrida, Deguy, Ricoeur, Blumenberg, Lakoff, Johnson, Caillois, Girard, Bataille, Genette, Leroi-Gourhan, Deleuze, Assmann, Luhmann, Paech), though engagement with these sources within the essays is variable. Given the lucidity of Nitsch's and Albers's own contributions, I would have welcomed a fuller introduction, offering a more sustained theoretical contextualization and a more detailed exposition of the criteria determining the distribution of the papers within the sections. One of the most interesting and rewarding features of the collection is its varied focus. Dominique Viart's well-placed opening essay is the most wide-ranging: examining the combination in Simon's fiction of metaphoric proliferation and metalinguistic critique, Viart shows how the dehierarchization which characterizes Simon's treatment of narrative motif extends to the relationship between tenor and vehicle. By contrast, several contributors conduct close linguistic analyses of the metaphor in context (Matei Chihaia's Lakoffian study of 'hedges' in Simon; Sté phane Bikialo's contribution on the 'métaphore accompagnée', Peter Blumenthal's analysis of the combinatory profiles of 'cheval' and 'immobile'; Alastair Duncan's Deguy-inspired analysis of Simon's suppression of the conjunction 'comme' in Triptyque). While a few essays explore the use of metaphor to evoke a specific phenomenon, such as war (Stefan Schreckenberg), lieu (Jean-Yves Laurichesse), disaster (Helmut Pfeiffer), or metamorphosis (Robert Buch), a relatively high proportion of contributions examine recurrent or structurally central metaphors within a single text or a small selection of related texts: metaphors of the fantastic (Didier Alexandre), the primordial (Jean Kaempfer), the underworld (Dunja Bialas), the crypt (Hermann Doetsch), the technological (Nitsch), the 'passant' (Mireille Calle-Gruber), the pictorial (Brigitte Ferrato-Combe). The collection closes with two complementary essays by Jochen Mecke and Irene Albers on metaphor, time and cinematographic technique in La Route des Flandres and [End Page 243] textual and cinematographic metaphors in Triptyque and Simon's 1975 short film, Die Sackgasse/L'Impasse. Of the collection's three sections, 'Médiologie de la métaphore', with its emphasis on the technical and visual, is the most cohesive, though the recurrence across the volume of a number of issues and themes — the tension between referent and language; knowledge and non-savoir; myth and archetype — creates a stimulating, occasionally explicit, more frequently implicit dialogue among contributors. This volume represents a well-crafted and often challenging contribution to Simon studies. It also does considerable service to Simon criticism by offering non-germanophone readers a high quality 'sampler' of work in French by researchers who more frequently publish in German. Given the oral origin of the volume, the standard of presentation and of editorial work is very high: essays are fully footnoted; diagrams and documents are well reproduced; the authors' name index permits easy tracking of the theoretical threads; the choice of Simon's own photograph 'Espagne' as cover-illustration provides a witty entry to and, indeed, exit from the book. [End Page 244]

Jean H. Duffy
University of Edinburgh
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