Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I DIFFERENCE AND HUMAN RELATIONS
- Part II THE BODY AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
- Part III GENRE AND DIFFERENCE
- Chapter Six Criticism and ‘the terrible desire to establish contact’
- Chapter Seven Same difference: reprise and variation
- Part IV CONCLUSION
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH
Chapter Seven - Same difference: reprise and variation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part I DIFFERENCE AND HUMAN RELATIONS
- Part II THE BODY AND SEXUAL DIFFERENCE
- Part III GENRE AND DIFFERENCE
- Chapter Six Criticism and ‘the terrible desire to establish contact’
- Chapter Seven Same difference: reprise and variation
- Part IV CONCLUSION
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN FRENCH
Summary
The voyage of variations leads into
that other infinitude, into the infinite
diversity of the interior world lying
in all things.
Milan Kundera The Book of Laughter and ForgettingFiction and Autobiography
Unlike the critical works which we considered in the last chapter, the publication of Nathalie Sarraute's Enfance (in 1983) raised some teasing questions about its generic status. On the one hand it was treated simply as the latest addition to Sarraute's fictional output, its lack of any explicit generic marker making it no different from its similarly unmarked precursor, L'Usage de la parole. And yet on the other hand, the text's own embarrassed acknowledgement of its affiliation to the category of ‘childood memories’ invites a reading of it as an autobiographical record of its author's childhood – in other words, as a venture into a new and different genre.
- Type
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- Information
- Nathalie Sarraute, Fiction and TheoryQuestions of Difference, pp. 145 - 168Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2000