From the publication of À Rebours, Huysmans’ books feature a solitary protagonist, dreaming of a situation outside society, time and space, and even the body and sex. To this desire corresponds the increasing modification of the novel formula: a reflection of life in anomaly, the novel is transformed, to become a reverse novel, sick, deformed, bizarre. The refusal of regularity hides another refusal, that of conforming to a reality that does not correspond to the depth of personal experience. The work of Huysmans, especially in its postnaturalist part, brings a constant questioning of the norm under its various aspects, and constitutes an attempt to create a universe made to measure, necessarily a universe in anomaly. The journey that leads, in the field of novel, from À Rebours to L’Oblat, allows us to trace the stages of this evolution.

The notion of anomaly encompasses a multitude of systemic, physical or psychic deviations and it can have a wide range of possible interpretations. Octave Mirbeau manages to capture all its nuances by presenting, in his novel Sébastien Roch, a vision of reality filled with anomalies. In our contribution, we will show the abundance of defects in the novelistic universe of Sébastien Roch, analyse their essence and then move on to the influence they have on the eponymous character. We will look at the corruption of the education system run by the clerics who denigrate the protagonist's rights in order to preserve their own power; at mental disorders caused by painful experiences as well as at psychological dysfunctions; finally at physical deformities that often reflect the character vices of those affected. Our contribution shall depict a corrupted world where the “normal” is no longer considered as such.

When we think of classic comedic novels, the names of male authors such as Rabelais, Cervantes, or Scarron often come to mind. However, the contributions of women writers to this genre have been overlooked as literary anomalies. Hélène du Taillis (1873-1961), a French journalist and writer, is a literary anomaly in the history of early 20th-century French literature. She wrote not one but two successful and critically acclaimed comedic novels, "Enterrons l’adultère" (1923) and "La Nouvelle Bovary" (1927), at a time when this genre was largely dominated by male writers and considered marginal literature (and still is today). This article aims to examine Taillis's two novels from the perspectives of Hamon and Saint-Gelais on irony and transfictionality. By doing so, highlighting the unique aspects of Taillis's comedic writing, demonstrating that a comical heritage also exists among women writers.

The concept of “constraint” is central to Oulipo’s work, yet the group has introduced this term into modern literary criticism without providing a consistent definition. The resulting ambiguities create challenges for researchers studying Oulipian constraints. This paper reviews Oulipo’s attempts to theorize constraint and legitimize its literature, examining these efforts through the lens of the group’s struggle for literary legitimacy. Indeed, the concept of constraint represents not only Oulipo’s poetic uniqueness, but also an important tool for the group to legitimize itself and gain power within the literary field. This paper argues that “constraint” has served as both an expression of Oulipo’s aesthetic singularity and a strategic lever in its bid for legitimacy.

Édouard Louis has published five novels since 2014, somewhere between autofiction and autosociobiography. In this work, the writer recounts his process of construction as a young gay intellectual. To achieve this, he has to confront the systems of norms he encounters as he traverses different social milieus: the poverty of his family in the countryside, the bourgeoisie of his friends in the provinces, the power of his lovers in Paris. Against this backdrop, this article aims to explore the forms of the sense of abnormality felt by É. Louis during these experiences. We'll see how renewed confrontation with a norm foreign to himself (a cleaved habitus) led the author to develop an original approach to literature: through an aesthetic of confrontation, the author pursues a political objective, namely to invite the reader to join a new form of class struggle.

The present study analyzes the representation of the anomaly in Oscar de profundis by Catherine Mavrikakis. This inexplicable event is paradoxically ever-present and completely absent in end of world literature. In particular, we will examine the role of ruins in the portrayal of the post-catastrophe scenario. This paper argues that the anomaly invites the reader to investigate further. However, they will only find ruins which are a constant reminder of what was lost and not an explanation of how these memories were erased from the collective conscience. The concept of depicting the anomaly through ruins will allow us to better understand how end of world literature may propose a critique of contemporary society.

This article looks at the representation of anomaly in Nicolas Diat's Ce qui manque à un clochard. We examine the character of Marcel Bascoulard, a marginal figure inspired by a real person with the same name. More specifically, we highlight his anomaly and the stances he takes towards those around him. Our work leads us to the idea that anomaly and literary and artistic creation go hand in hand in Bascoulard's case.

Charles Malato has gone down in posterity as the author of novels, memoirs and especially plays in which he castigates the excesses of power. Two events are at the origin of the birth of Malato’s vocation as an anarchist writer: the condemnation of his parents to banishment in New Caledonia and the meeting of the young Charles with Louise Michel. It is in this context that this article proposes to study the autobiographical text of the French author From the Commune to Anarchy which allows us to understand the inner evolution of the somewhat carefree adolescent towards destiny of a revolutionary able to use his pen as a formidable weapon. From then on, the analysis of the text accounts for Malato’s political awareness and his subsequent involvement in social issues, as well as highlighting the style of his language, as cruel as it is grotesque, which will upset the fragile minds of the bourgeois. In short, the exploration of the work constitutes a kind of propaedeutic to the subversive work of Malato whose universality attests to its undeniable topicality.

Paul Willems, 20th-century Belgian playwright, did not shy away from showing many female figures in his plays, and he did so with great attention to detail. Through a thorough analysis, of the following plays : Il pleut dans ma maison and Off et la lune, it is possible to draw analogies between the heroines he created, which might allow to identify the topoi most often used by the Belgian playwright. We used the historical method, notably the selection, fusion, interpretation and ordering of facts. In addition, the method of literature analysis with particular emphasis on the analysis of source texts and the comparative method were used. Based on the analysis carried out, we established that the following topoi of women appear in the two Willems’ plays selected for analysis: a woman as an incomprehensible being, a romantic woman, a traditional woman and a liberated woman.

Traduction de Pour un oui pour un non pour la création de la pièce en version anglaise par Simone Benmussa le 29 mai 1985 à New York. Nathalie Sarraute's theater is part of the attitude of suspicion towards language which marked her era, being part of a drama of speech which leaves a large part to the negative notions of silence, of doubt carried on the instance of speech, emptiness, even worry. However, there is some dramatic action in Le Silence and Pour un oui pour un non. Between her first and last piece, the characters weigh themselves down with flesh and develop a poetics of vertigo, which expresses the dissolution of the self, the presence-absence in the world, the enigma of otherness