The Commitment to Scandal in French Post-War Fiction (1945-1950) through the Works of Marcel Aymé, Jean Genet and Roger Nimier

摘要

This thesis studies a period of historical transition (1945-1950) and proposes to usescandal as a critical tool to account for the ambiguity of the immediate post-war periodin literature. As set out in pragmatic sociology, scandal is understood to involve a test tothe stability of values through a public act of denunciation.While this research project makes a new contribution to the study of fiction as apowerful and reactive ‘vecteur de mémoire’ (Rousso 1987), its focus is on exploring thenotion of fiction as an ethical space where disputes (controversies, violence, affairs and,importantly, scandals) are represented, organised, controlled and sometimes resolvedwithin the space of the novel.This thesis reframes this question of the role of literature in a period of transitionby revisiting the historiographical claim that some aspects of Vichy and the Occupationwere rarely discussed in France before 1968. Instead, it suggests that the fictionalproduction in the immediate post-war years attests to a readiness and commitment tonarrate and organise dissent.To explore these issues, the thesis focuses on three major, contrasting writers –Marcel Aymé, Jean Genet and Roger Nimier – all of whom have in common to haveexplicitly, deliberately and problematically represented the Occupation and theLiberation in 1945-1950 novels.Chapter I reveals and explores the convergence of a popular and critical interestfor scandal between 1945-1950 and the subsequent presence of scandal inhistoriographical discourse ever since.Chapter II identifies ‘scales of scandal’, namely the mechanism of narrativescandal at lexical, stylistic and structural levels.4Chapter III shows how time and space constitute the a priori conditions ofscandal and how they become scandalised in the process.Chapter IV systematically analyses the thematic uncertainty and ethicalundecidability brought about by scandal affecting notions of morality, authority andidentity. The thesis concludes with reflections on the novel as ethical space and thecritical potential of scandal in literary studies.