Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Browse subjects
  3. Literature
  4. Literary texts
  5. Content listing

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

24327 results in Literary texts

Page 1070 of 1217

  • 2 - Photographic Writing

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 41-70

  • Summary

    In the texts studied in this chapter we shall see the story beginning to be engendered by photographs set alongside the text, first of all without any attempt at integration (Vice), then becoming integrated into the narrative (Suzanne et Louise). The writer then proceeds to another stage in the relationship between image and text in L'Image fantô me in which photography feeds the text while remaining absent from it. As for themes, they will be similar to those of La Mort propagande but worked out in a more polished way.

    LA PIQÛ RE D'AMOUR ET AUTRES TEXTES SUIVI DE LA CHAIR FRAÎCHE [TEXTS DATING TO 1980]

    The stories (eight in number, called ‘nouvelles’ [‘short stories’] on the back cover, though the text is not signed Hervé Guibert) that I shall be discussing were written between 1977 and 1980: ‘La Piqûre d'amour’; ‘Le Lanceur de couteaux’; ‘Copyright, cinéma’; ‘La mâchoire de l'Harski’; ‘Une petite bonne femme sans histoire’; ‘L'ami allemand’; ‘Le critique photo’; ‘Le trio mystérieux’ (‘The Love Injection’; ‘The Knife Thrower’; ‘Copyright, Cinema’; ‘The Harski's Jaw’; ‘A little Woman who did not make a fuss’; ‘The German Friend’; ‘The Photographic Critic’; ‘The Mysterious Trio’). As such, it would take too long to summarise them all. Most of them were first published in the review Minuit (see Bibliography). The narrator, referring to the one called ‘Une petite bonne femme sans histoire’, talks of a ‘récit’ (‘story’) (PA, p. 35). ‘La piqûre d'amour’, which gives its title to the collection, comes first and is the only eponymous text; everything points to Guibert having insisted on this order since the back cover indicates that all the stories were gathered ‘dans un dossier intitulé La piqûre d'amour’ (‘in a dossier called La piqûre d'amour’). Some stories are heterodiegetic (such as ‘La piqûre d'amour’) while others are autodiegetic (such as ‘Le lanceur de couteaux’); there are no homodiegetic stories, strictly speaking. In the autodiegetic stories the narrator sometimes says ‘je’ (‘I’) (as in ‘Le Lanceur de couteaux’) but also ‘il’ (‘he’) (as in ‘L'ami allemand’). Elements of a markedly autobiographical nature recur as in ‘Une petite bonne femme sans histoire’, where the little brother is described as ‘un garçon efféminé’ (p. 32) (‘an effeminate boy’) and the sister's story is told.

  • 9 - Thanatographical Writing

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 207-234

  • Summary

    A year–and–a–half elapsed between À l'ami and Le Protocole compassionnel. It is known from the ‘Ex–Libris’ broadcast that during this period Guibert was very poorly and that he did not write for a year. His survival he then will attribute in part to his readers, who had started writing to him. As the narrator of Le Protocole compassionnel tells us, the readers rallied round after he appeared on ‘Apostrophes’ to ‘[le] maintenir en vie’ (‘keep him alive’) in their own way. On ‘Ex–Libris’ Guibert will say that these letters helped him to keep going for a year without writing. A text signed ‘H.G.’ on the back cover of Le Protocole compassionnel informs us that this period was ‘le temps de la renonciation à l'écriture’ (‘the time of the renunciation of writing’). There were three reasons behind this renunciation: the first was Guibert's state of physical deterioration; the second was the reason mentioned in the conclusion to the previous chapter, that Guibert had sworn not to write another book about AIDS; and the third was the success of À l'ami and the attendant large sales which paralysed the writer (‘Après ce livre–là et son accueil, je ne pouvais pas écrire une pochade, je me sentais une responsabilité par rapport à ces inconnu(e)s que j'avais ému(e)s’, PC, p. 171) (‘After that book and its reception, I could not write a sketch, I felt a sense of responsibility towards those unknown men and women whom I had moved’). Let us try and understand Hervé Guibert's position as a writer. He wrote in À l'ami that he had AIDS, and he confirmed it in interviews and on ‘Apostrophes’. He had also said that he would not write anything else on AIDS, so what possibilities remained open to him? Could the ‘je’ (‘I’) narrator legitimately write that he no longer had AIDS, or had never had it, and still be believed? Could he write about anything other than the ravages of this disease threatening his very existence? Could he go on living without the support of writing? What possibilities were open to him other than writing ‘je’ (‘I’) and getting the narrator to take on the identity of Hervé Guibert and the weight of his work? In this chapter I will answer these questions indirectly, through a study of Guibert's production.

  • Introduction

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 1-12

  • Summary

    ‘Quelque part, j'avais écrit dans mon journal, avant de savoir que jétais malade: “Mort du sida. Indication superbe d'une biographie” ’ (‘Somewhere I had written in my diary, before knowing that I was ill, “Died of AIDS. Superb note to strike for a biography” ’). This sentence sums up perfectly the writer Hervé Guibert's complete attitude to the disease. In imagining himself dead he can already see the advantages held out to a biographer by the circumstances of his death. There is never any question of wallowing in self–pity over his own fate: in transcending his condition, in reaching towards the fictional enterprise which is what biography is all about, he rejoices in the idea of such an inscription. Hervé Guibert died on 27 December 1991. He had tried to commit suicide in the night of 12 to 13 December 1991. That date no doubt meant a lot to him. Having been born on 14 December 1955, he probably did not wish to see his thirty–sixth birthday. Fate decided otherwise; he survived another 14 days in hospital.

    Hervé Guibert had got AIDS. He had said so in a book called À l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie (Ami), published in 1990. This book made him famous and brought him to general public attention, especially after his appearance on television on 16 March 1990 in the books programme ‘Apostrophes’. A whiff of scandal surrounded the publication of À l'ami: Guibert had made ‘revelations’ about a certain ‘Muzil’ in whom everyone thought they recognised Michel Foucault, and his sales leapt from 5,000 to 150,000 copies. The same happened with Le Protocole compassionnel (PC), published in 1991, when he again appeared on television, this time as the only guest on the books programme ‘Ex Libris’ on 7 March 1991. Three other books appeared in his lifetime (including a new edition of a previously published work); they were followed by posthumous writings and by ‘La Pudeur ou l'Impudeur’ (‘Modesty or Immodesty’), a film shown on TF1, the main French television channel, on 30 January 1992.

    But there is more to Hervé Guibert thanÀ l'ami, which was after all his seventeenth book.

  • 7 - Towards the Roman Faux

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 159-190

  • Summary

    The books studied in this chapter vary from a collection of short stories (Mauve le vierge), a stage play (Vole mon dragon), two books without generic subtitle (Les Gangsters/Fou de Vincent), a novel (L'Incognito), and lastly a text between short story and novel (La chair fraîche). We can already see that between 1988 and 1990 Guibert uses a whole variety of genres. I shall therefore try to evaluate them with respect to the project of the voices of the self by concentrating on the identity of the narrator and on the narrative voices, and since the chapter is called ‘Towards the roman faux’, I shall also concentrate on the relationship between truth and falsehood.

    MAUVE LE VIERGE/VOLE MON DRAGON

    Published in 1988, Mauve le vierge bears the generic subtitle ‘nouvelles’ (‘short stories’). It was the first time a book of Guibert's bore the appellation ‘short stories’. But the question arises what generic differences there are between these short stories and the stories in Les Aventures singulières, especially when some of them like ‘Le désir d'imitation’ (‘The Desire to Imitate’) are called ‘nouvelles’ (‘short stories’) by Guibert. The only difference in my view between Les Aventures singulières and Mauve le vierge is that there is a thread running through Les Aventures singulières, the singularity of the adventures, whereas there is none in Mauve le vierge, which allows Guibert to juxtapose more freely short stories with different subjects in the same volume. So we will not be seeing in Mauve le vierge a fresh chapter in the enterprise of the voices of the self, but a chapter partially written already, especially since, although the book was actually published in 1988, everything indicates that some of the ten short stories were written several years before.

    Why lay such stress on the dating of the short stories? Because this information is of capital importance for my study. Instead of being confronted with a move by Guibert to compose short stories after writing and publishing three novels, then an ‘autobiographie de jeunesse’ (‘youthful autobiography’) which, as we have seen, is more like what I have dubbed a roman faux, eveything indicates that we are faced with a collection of short stories, some of which predate the writing of the novels.

  • 5 - The ‘Novel’

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 123-144

  • Summary

    The two books studied in this section are subtitled ‘novel’. Going by what has been said in the preceding four chapters, we can bet that a novel written by Guibert will deal with bodies and death and that it will be motivated by a sentiment of love. We can also wonder what role the image will play in this novel and what the relationship between truth and falsehood will be. It will also be interesting to see whether a ‘je’ (‘I’) narrator makes an appearance and, if so, under what identity(ies).

    DES AVEUGLES

    Des Aveugles was published by Gallimard in 1985. It tells the story of a sightless couple (Robert and Josette) who live in an institution, the calm of which will be disturbed the day the masseur ‘Taillegueur’ appears on the scene and becomes Josette's lover. The ‘récit d'épouvante’ (‘horror story’) announced on the back cover does not materialise; it could be said at a pinch that a roman noir is triggered from page 110 onwards, Josette having sworn to kill Robert if her coat is ruined. The murder plan will only be discussed on page 122 and Josette will quickly drop it once she finds out that Taillegueur has made love to a little boy (p. 128). It is Taillegueur who will die accidentally, trying to trap Robert, and Josette will be swallowed by the lagodon; the roman noir will have taken up only twenty pages or so. Love will lead to death.

    If one refers to what is written on the back cover (‘la femme, le mari, l'amant’), one has however to wait until page 82, more than halfway through the novel, for the Taillegueur character to appear. It will not be the last time that the back cover forms part of the deception (one thinks in particular of Mes parents and L'Incognito). Guibert gives the discrepancy a logical explanation: ‘Je me souviens d'avoir beaucoup lutté contre l'arrivée de ce personnage […] Àun certain moment, l'histoire policière, l'histoire d'épouvante à laquelle j'avais d'abord pensé, et qui représente un des aspects du livre, a cessé, au fond, de m'intéresser’ (‘I remember having put up quite a struggle against the arrival of this character […] At a certain point the detective story, the horror story that I had thought of at first and that represents one aspect of the book, basically stopped interesting me’).

  • 1 - Youthful Writings

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 13-40

  • Summary

    A particular status attaches to an author's ‘youthful writings’: critics respond to them in one of two ways, either as foreshadowing the works to come, or as having very little in common with them. Guibert's youthful works show him taking his first hesitant steps as a writer. Hervé Guibert is obviously their creator, but some of the early texts in La Mort propagande date from 1971, when the young Hervé was only sixteen, so they cannot be approached uncritically; and because the book consists of twelve sections written over a period of eight years, the reader of the present study can expect a multilayered approach rather than a linear argument.

    So each section will begin with a brief summary of the texts discussed and concentrate above all on the genre used by Guibert to map out the route that will in due course lead him to inscribe the self. Where similarities can be discerned either within a text or between several books, these will be noted, since they throw light both on Guibert's creative methods and on the way they evolve over time. Then I will analyse the themes of the different texts in the light of the statements to be found on the back cover of the 1977 edition but not reprinted in 1991.

    LA MORT PROPAGANDE

    La Mort propagande and other early texts was first published in 1977 and reissued in an enlarged edition in 1991. The various texts were all written between 1971 and 1978, even those added in 1991. The book therefore consists of twelve sections in total. To avoid the discussion becoming too diffuse, the various titles can conveniently be divided into six groups:

  • ‘Thèrèse et son crocodile ailé’ (1971); ‘Le Prince blond’ (1971); ‘Isabella’ (1972); ‘La Pièce d'OEdipe’ (1972) (‘Thérèse and her winged crocodile’; ‘The blond Prince’; ‘Isabella’; ‘OEdipus's Play’).

  • ‘Sans Titres’ (1971–1976) (‘No Titles’).

  • ‘Histoire d'une sainte’ (1976) (‘Story of a Saint’).

  • ‘La Mort propagande’ (1975–1976); ‘La Mort propagande no. 0’ (1976–1977) (‘Propaganda Death’).

  • ‘Machie moderne’ (1976); ‘Au Musée Grévin’ (1978); ‘Le Journal de l'onaniste’ (1978) (‘Modern Machy’; ‘At the Grévin Museum’; ‘The Onanist's Journal’).

  • 3 - Towards the Novel

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 71-100

  • Summary

    This chapter will study three books, all published in 1982, along with the texts of La Piqûre d'amour et autres textes suivi de La chair fraîche dating from 1981 and 1982. None of these books bears a generic subtitle. As will be seen, Les Aventures singulières is an attempt at fiction, and if Guibert does not resolve all the questions that preoccupy him with respect to the creation of a novel, narrative possibilities found here in embryonic form will be developed in other books. With the last text, ‘Le Désir d'imitation’ (‘The Desire to imitate’), Guibert will find a narrative method allowing him to refine further his approach to the novel. The texts of La Piqûre d'amour et autres textes suivi de La chair fraîche will pursue with renewed vigour the progression towards the novel and will also contain theoretical reflections about the genre. Les Chiens will offer a multiplicity of narrative points of view. Voyage avec deux enfants, a work in three parts, is very important from the standpoint of this chapter since it is the first book by Guibert in which there is (in the middle of part one) an attempt at fiction preceded by a dream of a journey, followed by the journey proper and ending with reflections arising from the narrator's return to Paris. So as can be seen, there is a progression towards the novel, albeit not a strictly linear one.

    LES AVENTURES SINGULIÈRES

    Published in 1982, Les Aventures singulières is made up of nine stories, six of which had already appeared in the journal Minuit. As we saw in the last chapter, the genre is not normally specified in books published by the Éditions de Minuit; nevertheless, in ‘Le roman fantôme’ (‘The Phantom Novel’) Guibert refers to one of the stories, ‘Le désir d'imitation’, in these terms: ‘[…] j'ai écrit une nouvelle qui était, il me semble, le rêve ramasséet avorté d'un roman […]’ (PA, p. 129) (‘[…] I have written a short story which was, it seems to me, the condensed and aborted dream of a novel […]’).

  • Conclusion

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 265-270

  • Summary

    The enterprise of the voices of the self is at an end. The word ‘enterprise’ reflects in my view the whole singularity of Guibert's work: an enterprise is a major project one carries out without knowing whether it will end one day or perhaps even prove impossible to finish, whence the entire theme of the work's incompletion. But an enterprise is also a constant tending to the construction of an edifice from compatible materials, a constant that emerges from the thematic I have been studying.

    A comparison between La Mort propagande, published in 1977, and ‘La Pudeur ou l'Impudeur’, broadcast on 30 January 1992, clearly shows that the baring of the body, and the body as driving force in the narrative, is present in the whole of the work. The body is brought into play in some narratives (for example Les Chiens), in situations (for example Vous m'avez fait former des fantômes), and in relationships (for example Mauve le vierge or Mes parents). The ageing body forms part of the thematic of some books (for example Mon valet et moi), the sick body too (for example Cytomé galovirus), and the reborn body as well (for example Le Protocole compassionnel). Betrayal is another important element in this work: betraying confidences, betraying friendship, betraying urges, betraying fantasies, betraying secrets and betraying despicable acts—not only those of others but one's own. ‘(Nous deux—le magazine—est plus obscène que Sade)’ (‘(Nous deux—the magazine—is more obscene than Sade)’). ‘Le fameux principe de dé licatesse de Sade. J'ai l'impression d'avoir fait une oeuvre barbare et délicate’ (‘The famous principle of delicacy in Sade. I have the feeling of having created a barbarous and delicate work’), the narrator of Le Protocole compassionnel tells us (PC, p. 113). ‘Trahir’ (‘to betray’) is, as we have seen in each chapter, a plea for love, to sort out the false friends from the genuine ones, to feel oneself truly loved. The seeming immodesty hides a very great modesty and writing sickness and death is another way of proclaiming life. Some of Guibert's works are hymns to love (love of friends: Le Seul visage;[…]

  • 4 - Image and Text

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 101-122

  • Summary

    Since L'Homme blessé served as point of departure for Guibert in his quest towards the novel, this chapter begins with a study of that experiment and links it with the text ‘Les escarpins rouges’, which tells the story of the writing of L'Homme blessé and provides us with important information about the process of literary creation. Les Lubies d'Arthur is the first of Guibert's books to bear the subtitle ‘roman’ (‘novel’), so I will be asking if this text, which was to have been issued in instalments with illustrations, is really a novel, and linking it to a text entitled ‘L'Ours’ (PA, pp. 139–48), which tells how Les Lubies d'Arthur came to be written. I will then turn to the texts in La Piqûre d'amour et autres textes suivi de La chair fraîche published in 1982 and 1983 to see if their analysis reflects the writer's preoccupations and tallies with the Guibertian thematic. Since in Le Seul Visage and Lettres d'Égypte we have two different ways of combining image and text, I shall be asking if these two projects lead Guibert away from the novel or whether, on the contrary, they share the same perspective as the other books. So as to make my study more synthetic, I will be analysing the last three works together.

    L'HOMME BLESSÉ

    L'Homme blessé is a film script written by Hervé Guibert and Patrice Chéreau and published by Minuit in 1983. The book is subtitled ‘Scénario et notes’ (‘Scenario and Notes’) and begins with the scenario (HB, pp. 9–150) which is then followed by notes (pp. 151–99). The film, which represented France at the Cannes film festival in 1984, is the story of a young man, Henri, who lives in a stifling family. One evening, he meets Jean in a station and becomes obsessed with him. It is not made clear whether Jean is involved with drugs or prostitution, but he drags Henri into some strange adventures.

  • 8 - The Roman Faux

  • Jean Pierre Boulé
  • Book:
    Hervé Guibert
    Published by:
    Liverpool University Press
    Published online:
    04 July 2017
    Print publication:
    01 May 1999, pp 191-206

  • Summary

    When À l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauvé la vie appeared in 1990, a scandal erupted in the press, a sort of trial by media, pointing the accusatory finger at Hervé Guibert and at his publisher because it was thought that behind some of the characters real people could be recognised, in particular Michel Foucault under the guise of ‘Muzil’. L'Événement du jeudi set the tone with a special report entitled ‘La littérature a–t–elle tous les droits?’ (‘Can literature do just as it pleases?’) with the suggestive subheading: ‘Hervé Guibert raconte l'agonie de Michel Foucault’ (‘Hervé Guibert's account of Michel Foucault's deathagony’). On the next page the summary heading reads: ‘Michel Foucault est mort en 1984, officiellement du cancer, en vérité du sida. Dans un livre d'un réalisme parfois insoutenable, Hervé Guibert raconte les derniers jours du philosophe. En a–t–il le droit? Était–ce àGallimard, éditeur du philosophe, de publier ce livre? Débat’ (‘Michel Foucault died in 1984, officially of cancer but in fact of AIDS. In a book of frequently unbearable realism, Hervé Guibert gives an account of the philosopher's last days. Does he have the right to do so? Was Gallimard, the philosopher's publisher, entitled to publish this book? We debate the issues’).

    On 16 March 1990 Guibert was one of the guests on ‘Apostrophes’, the book programme hosted on French television by Bernard Pivot. There too the accent was placed on the revelations about Foucault (‘Est–ce que vous aviez le droit de raconter l'agonie et la mort de Michel Foucault, qui était votre ami?’ ‘Did you have the right to give an account of the last moments and the death of Michel Foucault, who was your friend?’) This media exposure of Guibert's book and his appearance on television had the effect of catapulting his book into the best–seller lists, thereby confirming Régis Debray's analyses in his study Le Pouvoir intellectuel en France. From then on, Guibert was and remained firmly in the public eye until his death. Indeed, it is from this point onwards that the majority of people started to know of him and of his work.

Page 1070 of 1217