Vers une nouvelle pratique romanesque « La Bataille de Pharsale » de Claude Simon

Abstract

Towards a new novelistic practice"The Battle of Pharsalus" by Claude Simon

One of the novelistic productions that caught our attention is “The Battle of Pharsalus”. With this novel, the text ceases to be considered as “the writing of adventure” to become “the adventure of writing”. “La Bataille de Pharsale” by Claude Simon presents itself as a story of which we know neither the beginning nor the end, like a puzzle; it often happens that we fail to put them in order because the novel is entirely situated in the impossibility of its accomplishment, henceforth the desire to carry out a comparative study of an easy, accessible novelistic language and that of the so-called conventional novel with an ambiguous, problematic language of the novel by Claude Simon. We will study the unusual structure of the sentence as well as the particular use of punctuation. On the narrative level, on the other hand, we will compare a linear, chronological narrative that of the so-called traditional novel to a fragmented dechronological or even atypical narrative that of "The Battle of Pharsalia".
Therefore, Claude Simon is among the reformers who agree with the condemnation of novelistic conventions. He begins with a demystification of the anecdote, the disintegration of the character, the destruction of romantic time, and the contestation of the sentence and of punctuation. Simon refuses, therefore, the traditional game of novelistic conventions. But refusing these conventions does not mean making them disappear completely: to make perceptible what the genre contains of artifice, it is necessary to leave the trace, even ghostly, of the usual functioning of the narration.

contains of artifice, it is necessary to leave the trace, even ghostly, of the usual functioning of the narration.