Thresholds of Meaning: Passage, Ritual, and Liminality in Contemporary French Narrative (review)
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In Thresholds of Meaning, Jean H. Duffy proposes an original and insightful reading of contemporary French narrative, challenging some critics' recent accusations of a "current 'crisis' or even decline of the French novel" (1). Citing the difficulty of delineating a cohesive taxonomy of twentieth-century literary groups, rather than insist on a formal continuity, she seeks to highlight the thematic affinities that exist both among contemporary French authors and between this new generation and their nouveau roman predecessors. In effect, Duffy chooses to focus on the works of Pierre Bergounioux, François [End Page 969] Bon, Marie Darrieussecq, Hélène Lenoir, Laurent Mauvignier, and Jean Rouaud, in which one "particular thematic nexus" appears, that of a "shared preoccupation" with the "processes of meaning-production," both in textual content and linguistic form (18).
Although the focus of her study is not of a comparative nature (the attention she draws to the similarities between these works and the nouveau roman takes place largely within the notes), Duffy contends that this mise en scène of the "processes by which man extracts meaning from and imposes meaning on his experience" is of "fundamental importance" to both generations of writers (17). Furthermore, she underscores the role of passage ("those changes of place, state, occupation, social position and age" 18) and of the ritual activities associated with liminality in these operations of meaning production, for they continually pit the individual against his or her larger social group and its communicative and behavioral codes. Accordingly, Duffy frequently but perceptively turns to social theories pertaining to the negotiation of meaning inherent in ritual, liminality, and rites of passage, particularly the works of Arnold van Gannep, Victor Turner, and Ronald Grimes.
In the first chapter of her study, Duffy focuses on passage and liminality during moments of life crisis in Darrieussecq's Le Mal de mer, Lenoir's Le Répit, and Mauvignier's Appendre à finir, where "illness or injury is inextricably bound up with the account of marital breakdown" (32). She posits that these three texts constitute various forms of the "illness narrative," a notion recently developed by medical research referring to the salubrious creation of "new meanings" and of a "new cohesive self" for the ill, as well as supportive networks, via the interruption of normal routines and relations and the "impairment of [the subject's] [ . . . ] sense of identity" (30). In addition to illustrating the physical and marital in-between states, each text examined "engage[s] with a range of ritual activities" which structure the total experience (32). It is only from within the marginal position of illness or injury that each of the novels' protagonists is able to face and contend with their respective conjugal relationships, accomplishing the ritualistic activities (such as passing through thresholds—in both concrete and abstract terms—and partaking in or preparing festive meals) that both structure that experience and allow for eventual release from the liminal state.
The second chapter of Duffy's inquiry centers on the destabilization of "traditional frames of reference" and "sense of identity" following the occurrence of suicide within the social circles that figure in Bon's L'Enterrement, Mauvignier's Loin d'eux, and Bergounioux's La Maison rose (20). Following a long history of social, religious, and legal interdictions and taboos, Duffy argues that acts of suicide continue to be "seen as a threat to social cohesion," striking at the "heart of the notion of social solidarity" (75), and, accordingly, represent for each of the novels' protagonists more an "abortion of the normal passage from youth to maturity" than a "family calamity" (76). Because these texts expose the "issue of suicide primarily through the impact it has on a given community" Duffy focalizes chiefly on the intersubjective, communicative, [End Page 970] and ritualistic management of the transgression by each group of proches, relying notably on Erving Goffman's notion of facework and David Le Breton's development on formalized uses of silence (77). In effect, the thwarted passage to...
