Abstract

Alain Robbe-Grillet made his initial reputation among French writers not only through his controversial first novels, but also through a number of essays published collectively under the title of Pour un Nouveau Roman. In these essays, Robbe-Grillet pronounced an absolute condemnation of metaphor in the novel; this condemnation has since been prominently featured in theoretical arguments focusing on "zero-degree" writing. However, Robbe-Grillet has since written fictions which are hardly consistent with his earlier doctrine, and Topologie d'une cité fantôme appears, if anything, to embrace metaphor, and thus to point to a new direction in Robbe-Grillet's work, a direction closer to that of Simon and Ricardou.

Keywords: Alain Robbe-Grillet, nouveau roman, new novel, Topologie d'une cité fantôme

How to Cite:

O'Donnell, T. D., (1977) “Robbe-Grillet's métaphoricité fantôme”, Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature 2(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1046