New Novel, New Wave, New Politics: Fiction and the Representation of History in Postwar FranceUntil now, writings on the celebrated movements in literature and film that emerged in France in the mid-1950s - the New Novel and New Wave - have concentrated on their formal innovations, not on their engagement with history or politics. New Novel, New Wave, New Politics overturns this traditional approach. Lynn A. Higgins argues that the New Novelists (e.g., Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, Marguerite Duras) and New Wave filmmakers (e.g., Claude Chabrol, Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Alain Resnais) "engage in a kind of historiography.... They enact the conflicts, the double binds of postwar history and representation." Higgins claims that what art historian Serge Guilbaut has said of American Abstract Expressionism is equally true of the New Novel and New Wavethat its aesthetic innovations "provided a way for avant-garde artists to preserve their sense of social 'commitment'... while eschewing the art of propaganda and illustration. It was in a sense a political apoliticism." Higgins shows how the New Novel and New Wave are related developments. "While their individual styles and themes remain distinctive, " she writes, "they share an ecriture that can be described as alternately, or interconnectedly, filmic and novelistic." New Wave filmmakers borrowed novelistic devices and made frequent literary allusions, while the "vision of the novelists is distinctly cinematic." A lively account that takes us to the crossroads where culture and politics meet, New Novel, New Wave, New Politics dramatically revises our view of a whole generation of important, influential artists. |
Contents
Historiography in Hiroshima mon amour | 19 |
La Route des Flandres | 55 |
LAnnée dernière à Marienbad | 83 |
Fictions of May 1968 | 115 |
Truffauts Otohistoriography | 143 |
Durasian PreOccupations | 169 |
Louis Malles Portraits of Collaboration | 186 |
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Alain Alain Robbe-Grillet Algeria artists autobiographical Barthes Bernard censorship characters child cinema Claude Simon collaboration context Corinne critics cultural deafness death Dernier Métro describes discourse Douleur Duras Duras's Durasian essay fiction film's flashback France François Truffaut French woman Freud Gallimard Gaulle Gaullist Georges Georges's Godard Hiroshima mon amour historiography horse Jacques Japanese Jean Julien Lacombe Lucien Langlois language Le Dernier Métro loss Louis Malle Malle Malle's Marguerite Duras Marienbad means memory mise en abyme myth narration narrative Nathalie Granger Nevers Nouveau Roman Nouvelle Vague novel Novelists obsession Occupation Ophuls's Paris past pitié play plot political postwar present primal scene Quatre Cents Coups rape reading Reixach remember repetition representation repressed Resistance Resnais Resnais's revoir les enfants rhetorical Ricardou Robbe-Grillet role Route des Flandres Sartre says screen sexual situationists social spectacle spectator suggests takes tell tion Tout va bien trans trauma uncanny visual writing York