Names Proper and Improper in Richard Millet's Siom Novels

Since 1983 Richard Millet has published a considerable volume of fictional and critical writings, including short stories, récits, and twelve novels. This study concentrates on four key novels published between 1995 and 2003 that take place in the imaginary village of Siom in the Corrèze: La Gloire des Pythres, L'Amour des trois sœurs Piale, Lauve le pur, and Ma vie parmi les ombres. Names feature increasingly prominently in these novels, and the aim of this study is to describe the different ways in which they are present and to analyse the functions they perform. They are found to have extraordinarily powerful effects. Some names, predominantly those from France's literary heritage, act as tokens of a dreamed-of communion with the past. Others, names of fictional characters and places, are found to be so intensely meaningful that they determine destinies. Yet others, the names of the main families in the novels, provide fragile foundations. Their names, on the one hand, serve to root them in a village and a genealogy, but, on the other, embody forces that destroy all hope of enduring. In each case the proper noun expresses a dream of presence that remains unfulfilled.