La Jalousie

Last updated

La Jalousie (Jealousy) is a 1957 novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet. [1] The French title: "la jalousie" is a play on words that can be translated as "jealousy", but also as "the jalousie window".

La Jalousie is an example of the nouveau roman genre, for which Robbe-Grillet later explicitly advocated in his 1963 Pour un nouveau roman (For a New Novel). [2]

Robbe-Grillet argued that the novel was constructed along the lines of an "absent" third-person narrator. In that account of the novel, the narrator, a jealous husband, silently observes the interactions of his wife (referred to only as "A...") and a neighbour, Franck. The silent narrator, who never names himself (and whose presence is merely inferred, e.g. by the number of place settings at the dinner table or deck chairs on the verandah) is extremely suspicious that A... is having an affair with Franck. Throughout the novel, he continually replays his observations and suspicions (that is, created scenarios about A... and Franck), so much so that it becomes impossible to distinguish moments that are observed from those that are merely suspected.

Robbe-Grillet has noted that the setting is deliberately ambiguous and self-contradictory, with elements from a number of world regions. [3] [4]

La Jalousie was a critical success but commercially disappointing. [5] The novel was considered for television adaptations by the BBC but ultimately discounted. [6]

Related Research Articles

<i>Last Year at Marienbad</i> 1961 film by Alain Resnais

Last Year at Marienbad, released in the United Kingdom as Last Year in Marienbad, is a 1961 French New Wave film directed by Alain Resnais from a screenplay by Alain Robbe-Grillet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Claude Simon</span> French novelist (1913 – 2005)

Claude Simon was a French novelist and was awarded the 1985 Nobel Prize in Literature.

Les Éditions de Minuit is a French publishing house. It was founded in 1941, during the French Resistance of World War II, and is still publishing books today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathalie Sarraute</span> 20th century French writer and lawyer

Nathalie Sarraute was a French writer and lawyer. She was nominated in 1969 for the Nobel Prize in Literature by Nobel Committee member Lars Gyllensten.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alain Robbe-Grillet</span> French writer and film director (1922–2008)

Alain Robbe-Grillet was a French writer and filmmaker. He was one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend of the 1960s, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon. Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on 25 March 2004, succeeding Maurice Rheims at seat No. 32. He married Catherine Robbe-Grillet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nouveau roman</span> 1950s French literary movement

The Nouveau Roman is a type of 1950s French novel that diverged from classical literary genres. Émile Henriot coined the term in an article in the popular French newspaper Le Monde on May 22, 1957 to describe certain writers who experimented with style in each novel, creating an essentially new style each time. Most of the founding authors were published by Les Éditions de Minuit with the strong support of Jérôme Lindon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michel Butor</span> French poet, novelist, teacher, essayist, art critic and translator

Michel Butor was a French poet, novelist, teacher, essayist, art critic and translator.

La Reprise is a French novel in the Nouveau roman style by Alain Robbe-Grillet published in France in October 2001 by Les Éditions de Minuit. It was the first novel published by Robbe-Grillet in 20 years. An English version, translated by American poet and translator Richard Howard, was published as Repetition in 2003. It was also published as an audiobook.

Catherine Robbe-Grillet is a French writer, dominatrix, photographer, theatre and film actress of Armenian descent who has published sadomasochistic writings under the pseudonyms Jean de Berg and Jeanne de Berg.

<i>The Image</i> (novel) Book by Catherine Robbe-Grillet

The Image is a classic 1956 sadomasochistic erotic novel, written by Catherine Robbe-Grillet and published under the pseudonym of Jean de Berg by éditions de Minuit in 1956.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jealousy in art</span>

Jealousy in art deals with the way in which writers, musicians and graphic artists have approached the topic of jealousy in their works.

Jealousy is an emotion.

François Weyergans was a Belgian writer and director. His father, Franz Weyergans, was a Belgian and also a writer, while his mother was from Avignon in France. François Weyergans was elected to the Académie française on 26 March 2009, taking the 32nd seat which became vacant with the death of Alain Robbe-Grillet in 2008.

The death of the novel is the common name for the theoretical discussion of the declining importance of the novel as literary form. Many 20th century authors entered into the debate, often sharing their ideas in their own fiction and non-fiction writings.

The Manifesto of the 121, was an open letter signed by 121 intellectuals and published on 6 September 1960 in the magazine Vérité-Liberté. It called on the French government, then headed by the Gaullist Michel Debré, and public opinion to recognise the Algerian War as a legitimate struggle for independence, denouncing the use of torture by the French army, and calling for French conscientious objectors to the conflict to be respected by the authorities.

<i>Djinn</i> (novel) 1981 novel by Alain Robbe-Grillet

Djinn is a novel by French writer Alain Robbe-Grillet. It was written as a French textbook with California State University, Dominguez Hills professor Yvone Lenard using a process of grammatical progression. Each chapter covers a specific element of French grammar which becomes increasingly difficult over the course of the novel. The first five chapters are written in the present tense from the first person point of view. The sixth chapter is written partially in the third person past and partially in the first person present. The eighth chapter is written in the first person point of view, but the narrator has changed from the masculine Simon Lecoeur to an unknown female narrator.

Pour un nouveau roman is a 1963 collection of theoretical writings by French author Alain Robbe-Grillet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jean Ricardou</span>

Jean Ricardou was a French writer and theorist. He joined the Tel Quel editorial board in 1962, writing for the review until 1971. Between 1961 and 1984 he published three novels, a collection of short stories, four books of critical theory and a "mix" of fiction and theory, whilst being the main theorist of the French New Novel literary movement before devoting his work, as of 1985, almost exclusively to the invention and development of a new science of writing: textics.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Simon Zabell</span>

Simon Zabell is a British artist living and working in Spain.

<i>The Anxious City</i> Painting by Paul Delvaux

The Anxious City is a painting made by Paul Delvaux in 1940–1941. It depicts a large number of upset people, most of whom are nude or partially nude, in front of a lake and classical structures. Among the characters who stand out are a naked self-portrait of Delvaux, a man in a bowler hat and a group of bare-breasted women. The man with the bowler hat made his debut in The Anxious City and would appear in several other Delvaux paintings.

References

  1. Guy 2019, p. 10-11.
  2. Bray, Joe; Gibbons, Alison; McHale, Brian (2012). The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature. Routledge. p. 94. ISBN   978-0-415-57000-8.
  3. Robbe-Grillet : analyse, théorie : Centre culturel international de Cerisy-la-Salle. Paris: Union générale d'éditions. 1976. p. 69. ISBN   978-2-264-00085-9.
  4. Zarifopol-Johnston, Ilinca (1991). "The Parody of Influence: "The Heart of the Matter" in Robbe-Grillet's "La Jalousie"". The Comparatist. 15: 64–77. ISSN   0195-7678.
  5. Cruickshank, Ruth (2020-01-31). Leftovers: Eating, Drinking and Re-thinking with Case Studies from Post-war French Fiction. Liverpool University Press. p. 62. ISBN   978-1-78962-496-0.
  6. Guy 2019, p. 46-47.

Bibliography