Developments in narrative technique and the practice of writing in the later novels of Claude Simon.

This study is divided into two parts. The first part deals with three novels written in the 1960’s, the second part deals with the four novels written since then.

The first two chapters in Part 1 present an analysis of fundamental aspects of Simon1s narrative technique, namely narrative perspective and narrative voice. Ambiguities in point of view and mode of ’énonciation' undermine the conventions of the realist text and announce the emergence of a single discourse, that of a writing-in-process. In the two other chapters in Part 1, Simon’s practice of writing is analysed in terms of an association of textual elements through the dual mechanism of metaphor and metonymy. This practice, which guides the narration, determines the development of the fictional episodes of the text. Through this process, the linear narrative is transformed into a thematic and spatial stratification which re-establishes a hierarchy and coherence in the text through the production of a number of ’récits métaphoriques'.

The chapters in Part 2 trace the developments in narrative technique and the practice of -writing in the novels of the 1970's. A refinement of the techniques of the earlier texts and a mechanisation of the process of metaphor/metonymy transform the narration into a rigorous, formal play of elements which compose the fictional episodes. The thematic and spatial strands are no longer regrouped to constitute a ’composition unitaire' (as in the texts of the 1960’s). This disruption of narrative coherence liberates the ’signifiant’ from its attachment to a ’sens univoque' and institutes a plurality of meaning. Hence, the more recent novels break completely with the classic, realist novel by transforming the text into a space of signifying activity.