Narratives of French Modernity: Themes, Forms and Metamorphoses. Essays in Honour of David Gascoigne (review)

This Festschrift not only honours David Gascoigne, a colleague of the contributors and an inspiring teacher, but is intended, in the editors’ words, to ‘open a new landscape of debate’ (p. 32). The Introduction seeks to establish the formal similarities and common themes in the works of the writers examined and to outline the contributors’ shared approach. The word ‘modernity’ in the volume’s title is used in the text as a portmanteau term encompassing modernism, postmodernism, and ‘the apparently simpler notion of “most recent times”’ (pp. 4–5); the subtitle is designed to signal the fact that questions of form and content are considered together, and we learn that ‘metamorphosis’ is proposed as a model for rethinking the evolution of ‘narratives of French modernity’ in terms that embrace ‘the dynamics of stasis and change’ (p. 28). The overall focus of the collection is the ‘nouveau roman’s many Others’ (p. 26), that is, writers who, rather than engaging with the experimental for its own sake, deal with questions of literary practice within a ‘framework of a broader social and cultural critique’ (p. 9); the authors chosen range from Valéry and Apollinaire to contemporary novelists such as Michel Tournier, Michel Houellebecq, and Sylvie Germain. Although this focus risks reinforcing the polarization between experimental and formally more conventional literature, in other respects the volume succeeds in its endeavour to undermine such dichotomies and over-neat chronological taxonomies. For example, the essays show that features regarded as postmodern already characterize the work of Apollinaire and Céline and that formal concerns are crucial to many apparently conventional narratives. But one could also question whether the nouveaux romans were really only about ‘textual self-referentiality’ (p. 9), or did their formal experiments also involve ethical aspirations? The shared concerns of the writers discussed include the embodied self in relation to others, sex, violence, and language. Many of the texts under review are deeply marked by the Second World War and the hostilities that followed in France and its colonies. They replace grand narratives with subjective, partial ones dealing with pressing, often ambiguous, ethical issues. Few of the essays discuss directly the volume’s apparent key notions of ‘modernity’, ‘narrative’, or ‘metamorphosis’, but the contributions are of a generally high quality and display a good balance between original scholarly work and more personal elements (although Ian Higgins’s essay, in which the personal predominates, will remain cryptic to those unacquainted with the honorand). This carefully edited collection includes several subtle, insightful analyses, such as Michael Tilby on Céline, Mary Orr on Tournier and Fleutiaux, David Evans on Houellebecq, and Margaret-Anne Hutton on the ‘post post-war’. Overall, the volume is not only a fine tribute to Gascoigne’s work but also an important contribution to the current re-evaluation of twentieth-century French literary history, including the categories of modernism and postmodernism, and to our understanding of contemporary literature. In particular, by delineating what the editors call an ‘aesthetic of ongoing connection’ (p. 27), it provides valuable insights into the ongoing discussion on how to understand, after the heyday of the nouveau roman, the apparent return to old forms and the creative reuse of such forms in new contexts.