Sumários
Marguerite Duras, "L'amant"
13 Maio 2025, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
Continuation of "L'amant". The structure of the book: absence of a linear time; narration that progresses in fragments tending towards gradual expansion. The importance of a documentary imagination, based on the interplay between actual photographs mentioned in the text and mental images. The role of imagination in the writing of the self; the unreliability and instability of memory (cf. image of the river). Duras and provocation: love as radical and forbidden (cf. with Hiroshima mon amour). Setting in time and place: the treatment of French colonialism through the lens of personal history. The narrative voice and a split self: the switch from the first to the third person as a form of distancing; past/younger self vs. present/older self.
Marguerite Duras, "L'amant"
8 Maio 2025, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
Introduction to Marguerite Duras and her role in the three literary movements/philosophical orientations that we have considered so far (existentialism, Nouveau Roman, and the return of autobiographic writing in the 1980s). "L'amant" marks a renewed interest in the écriture du moi, but sets itself as an example of autoficiton. Difference between autobiography (definition by Lejeune) and autofiction (see Dubrovsky). Novel writing and the knowability of the self: the philosophical premises of "L'amant".
Hiroshima Mon Amour
6 Maio 2025, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
We dedicated today's session to Resnais' movie Hiroshima Mon Amour. We analyzed the style of the dialogue (récitatif) and underlined how the poeticality of language, enhanced by the use of repetitions and circularity, is a way to formally introduce the topic of memory, central to the elaboration of trauma at stake in the movie. We discussed the meaning of the love affair existing between the two protagonist in relation to the topic of atomic bombing (exceptionality; reflection on the ways in which the past still has repercussions on the present, both on an individual and collective level).
Sarraute / Hiroshima Mon Amour
29 Abril 2025, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
Today, we commented especially on the second part of Portrait d'un inconnu. During the discussion, we discussed the ways in which Sarraute manages to slowly construct her characters by revealing only bit by bit aspects of their individuality that counters what they show through their social persona (e.g., the scene of seduction between the old man and the young girls; the recollection of the episode of the daughter's childhood, when the father refuses to buy her a toy; the final confrontation between the two of them). These revelations build a climax that finds its peak in the passage where the narrator finally names what seems to be the rule that has regulated their life - a horror for "offhandedness" (and, thus, a horror for spontaneity, for giving in to pleasures, for any kind of attitude that shows carelessness). The rule that has regulated their life explains the doubleness of these characters, who are constantly torn between authenticity and restraint. Finally, characters' construction responds to Sarraute's idea of the novel as a privileged means to deconstruct and expose social conventions.
Nathalie Sarraute
24 Abril 2025, 14:00 • Chiara Nifosi
Today we analyzed some of the aspects that make Portrait d'un inconnu an "anti-novel" (definition by Sartre) and a model of novel writing for the nouveau roman. In particular, we talked about the critique of traditional round characters that Sarraute makes throughout the novel: the example of Prince Bolkonski in War and Peace vs. the "larvae" or "ghosts"that the narrator wishes to portray; round characters described as consistent but inauthentic; the idea (and recurring image) of the unmasking of characters seen as a new objective for novel writing, even if it compromises consistency and readability; the revelation of the portrait seen in a northern city, a liberation from the constraints of traditional portrayals. Discussion of the neurosis that the narrator goes through in his attempts to unmask his characters.