Dire et lire le corps. Le corps et ses fictions chez quelques écrivains de Minuit des années 80 - 90
Spelling out the Body: the Body and its Fictions in the Work of Some Minuit Writers in the 80s and the 90s

Summary/Abstract: Against a floating literary background, free from the constraints of normativity, with no axis or centre, the French literary output of the 80s and 90s supports the notion of renewing the novel, a notion first broached by Les Éditions de Minuit; in line with their long tradition of flouting the literary canon, they decided to publish a series of authors known as minimalists, impassible and resisting classification, writing in an altogether original manner, detached but not without humour, about an illusion-free re-enchantment of the world. Such writers are Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Marie Redonnet and Éric Chevillard, whose view of the body is the subject matter of this paper. Their view of the body develops out of countless instances of interrogation and displacement which also trace the evolution of their writing. Their view of the body is arguably indebted to their world view: in the writing of the said authors, despite the differences between them, the body is always at the centre of a tension that characterises the relation between the characters and the world. The constant difficulty of “spelling out” the body is explained by the even greater difficulty of “spelling out” the world – a world which is becoming increasingly impersonal and problematic.

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