The Return of the Narrative: the Call for the Novel- Le retour la narration : le dsir du roman

This study focuses on the return of the narrative as applied by literary historians. Through the 1980s, criticism on the hermetic nature of many postmodern texts grew louder and louder: novelists expressed the wish to restore the bonds between the reader and the texts as well as between the texts and the extra-literary reality. Many fiction writers have grown tired of formalism and restore the conventions of realism, though not using them in a passive manner. Literary historians dealing with the post-postmodern or late postmodern European novel agree that conventional techniques are being adopted in new manners, and that all 20th century tendencies that criticized and tried to overcome 19th century realism do leave their traces on the contemporary novel: it might be a matter of hybrid forms combining realism and postmodernism. Cette tude porte sur la notion, souvent avance par des commentateurs du roman contemporain, du retour la narration. Le romancier contemporain sopposerait lhermtisme du roman postmoderne et dsirerait rtablir le lien entre le texte et son lecteur et entre la littrature et la ralit extralittraire. Les crivains se lassent du formalisme et reprennent les conventions du ralisme sans toutefois les appliquer passivement ; lauteur actuel nenvisage pas de restaurer une forme traditionnelle, mais de rcrire au second degr certains modles romanesques afin de mieux reprsenter le monde contemporain. Le roman contemporain serait donc une forme hybride qui combine des tendances ralistes et postmodernes.