Extrême contemporain

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

French literature
By category
French literary history

Medieval
16th century · 17th century
18th century · 19th century
20th century · Contemporary
French writers

Chronological list
Writers by category
Novelists · Playwrights
Poets · Essayists
Short story writers
France portal
Literature portal
This box: view • talk • edit

The term extrême contemporain is a French expression used to indicate French literary production published in France in the last 10 years. The extrême contemporain is, then, an ever-shifting concept.

This term was used for the first time by French writer Michel Chaillou in 1989, in reference to an age. This simple and convenient definition hides a complex and chaotic literary situation, both from the chronological point of view (the temporal boundaries of the extrême contemporain are in continuous shifting) and for the hetereogeneity of present French literary production, which cannot be defined in a clear and homogeneous way. The term extrême contemporain, therefore, is all-inclusive. The literary production of this period is characterized by a transitory quality; because of the manifolded nature of such an immense corpus of texts, the identification of specific tendencies is inevitably partial and precarious.

Therefore, to qualify the extrême contemporain as a literary movement is improper: it is, rather, a term of convenience.

The extrême contemporain arranges itself as a "literary constellation" hardly organized in schemes; it has been often found that the extrême contemporain follows a sort of "aesthetics of fragments", brilliantly summed up by the metaphor of the mosaic: the narration is broken into pieces, with a preference for short sentences.

The "apportionment" of knowledge is also carried out by the use of a chaotic verbal stream, the interior monologue, tropisms, repetition and endophasy. The feeling of uncertainty experience by writers leads him to put in question the notion of novel and its very form, preferring the more general notion of récit. Then, a return to reality takes place: in Pierre Bergounioux's works, readers witness the cultural upsetting concerning generations which follow one another; François Bon describes the exclusion from social and industrial reality; many authors of crime stories, like Jean-Patrick Manchette and Didier Daeninckx, describe social and political reality, and so it does Maurice G. Dantec in his works halfway between spy stories and science fiction; on another side, Annie Ernaux's écriture plate ("flat writing") tries to demolish the distance between reality and its narration.

Subjects are shown in a persistent state of crisis. However, a return to everyday life and trivial habits also takes place: the attention is focused to the "outcasts of literature", like, for instance, old people. This use of triviality and everyday life expresses itself in a new sort of "minimalism": from Pierre Michon's Vies minuscules ("Tiny lives") fictional biografies of unknown people, to Philippe Delerm's Plaisirs minuscules ("Tiny pleasures"). The facets of this minimalism manifest themselves in many ways, through the triviality of the subject, through short forms, or through concise and bare phrases. On one hand, heroicized characters try to build up their own individual way against a senseless reality, so that emarginated or marginal people emerge through the building up of their own story; on the other hand, a "negative minimalism" takes place: characters stagnate in social and relational difficulties.

Contents

[edit] Some French authors of the extrême contemporain

[edit] Bibliography

  • Dominique Viart, Le roman français au XXe siècle, Paris, Hachette, 1999.
  • Matteo Majorano (ed.), Le goût du roman, Bari, B. A. Graphis, 2002.
  • Matteo Majorano (ed.), Le jeu des arts, Bari, B. A. Graphis, 2005.
  • Dominique Viart, Bruno Vercier, La littérature française au présent: Héritage, modernité, mutations, Paris, Bordas, 2005
  • Bibliographie. Études sur la prose française de l'extrême contemporain en Italie et en France (1984-2006), Bari, B. A. Graphis, 2007 (sous presse).

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Languages