Dorota Czerkies
Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, Volume 14, Issue 3, 2019, pp. 139 - 150
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843933ST.19.013.10671The aim of the article is to prove that the novel Reticence (1991) by Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Belgian writer, director and visual artist, is a parody of the detective novel’s sub-genres: the mystery novel and the suspens novel. These references to popular literature, however, are not aimed only at producing the comical catharsis effect. On the contrary, they constitute especially the way of the revival of Gérard Genette’s category of narrative discourse. The enigma, the suspens and the investigation, the predominant features of detective novels, shape the unique fi ctional universe, in which the author plays with his readers. Toussaint revives the novelistic genre on three levels: of the story, the narration and the narrative text. The mystery becomes the dominant element of the book, as well as a metaphor of the literary creation. In Reticence, Toussaint, as the omnipotent author, depicts his self-portrait to be able to discuss even better his own writing and the complex relations the book – the reader.
Dorota Czerkies
Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, Volume 16, Issue 2, 2021, pp. 105 - 122
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843933ST.21.009.13653The article presents the function of reticence in Jean-Philippe Toussaint’s writing in the context of the return to the story in francophone literature, initiated in the 80s of the 20th c. Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a contemporary Belgian writer, photographer and film-maker. He has written twelve novels and short stories, as well as authored films and installations. Belonging to the generation of minimalist writers, Toussaint sets his use of reticence in the context of the tendency to return to Genette’s category of story (récit). Since the publication of his novel La Réticence (1991) reticence has become the key category of his écriture. In his books, it shapes the form, the narration and the plot, the construction of characters, temporality, and space. Thus, its function in Toussaint’s writing enables us to observe idiosyncratic aspects of his “infinitesimalist” texts which play with the canonical, realistic model of the novel.