Academic literature on the topic 'Simon, Claude (1913-2005) – Et le cinéma'

The digital revolution has been characterized by the overlapping of different media technologies and platforms which reshaped both traditional forms of audiovisual consumption and older conceptions of place and space. John Agnew claims that, traditionally, the notion of place has been associated with two different meanings: ‘the first is a geometric conception of place as a mere part of space and the second is a phenomenological understanding of a place as a distinctive coming together in space’ (317). Both of the dominant meanings have been challenged by the idea that the world itself is increasingly “placeless” as space-spanning connections and flows of information, things, and people undermine the rootedness of a wide range of processes anywhere in particular (Friedman). On the one hand, by obliterating physical distance, new technologies such as the Internet and the cell phone are making places obsolete, on the other hand, the proliferation of media representations favoured by these technologies are making places more relevant than ever. These increasing mediatisation processes, in fact, generate what Urry and Larsen call ‘imaginative geographies’, namely the conflation of representational spaces and physical spaces that substitute and enhance each other in contingent ways (116). The smartphone as a new hybrid media platform that combines different technological features such as digital screens, complex software applications, cameras, tools for online communication and GPS devices, has played a crucial role in the construction of new notions of place. This article examines a specific type of phone applications: mobile, digital mapping tools that allow users to identify film-locations. In doing so it will assess how new media platforms can potentially reconfigure notions of both media consumption, and (physical and imagined) mobility. Furthermore, the analysis of digital movie maps and their mediation of film locations will shed light on the way in which contemporary leisure activities reshape the cultural, social and geographic meaning of place. Digital, Mobile Movie MapsDigital movie maps can be defined as software applications, conceived for smart phones or other mobile devices, which enable users to identify the geographical position of film locations. These applications rely on geotagging which is the process of adding geospatial metadata (usually latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates) to texts or images. From this point of view these phone apps belong to a broader category of media that Tristan Thielmann calls geomedia: converging applications of interactive, digital, mapping tools and mobile and networked media technologies. According to Hjorth, recent studies on mobile media practices show a trend toward “re-enacting the importance of place and home as both a geo-imaginary and socio-cultural precept” (Hjorth 371). In 2008 Google announced that Google Maps and Google Earth will become the basic platform for any information search. Similarly, in 2010 Flickr started georeferencing their complete image stock (Thielmann 8). Based on these current developments media scholars such as Thielmann claim that geomedia will emerge in the future as one of the most pervasive forms of digital technology (8).In my research I identified 44 phone geomedia apps that offered content variously related to film locations. In every case the main functionality of the apps consisted in matching geographic data concerning the locations with visual and written information about the corresponding film production. ‘Scene Seekers’, the first app able to match the title of a film with the GPS map of its locations, was released in 2009. Gradually, subsequent film-location apps incorporated a number of other functions including:Trivia and background information about films and locationsSubmission forms which allow users to share information about their favourite film locatiosLocation photosLinks to film downloadFilm-themed itinerariesAudio guidesOnline discussion groupsCamera/video function which allow users to take photos of the locations and share them on social mediaFilm stills and film clipsAfter identifying the movie map apps, I focused on the examination of the secondary functions they offered and categorized the applications based on both their main purpose and their main target users (as explicitly described in the app store). Four different categories of smart phone applications emerged. Apps conceived for:Business (for location scouts and producers)Entertainment (for trivia and quiz buffs)Education (for students and film history lovers)Travel (for tourists)‘Screen New South Wales Film Location Scout’, an app designed for location scouts requiring location contact information across the state of New South Wales, is an example of the first category. The app provides lists, maps and images of locations used in films shot in the region as well as contact details for local government offices. Most of these types of apps are available for free download and are commissioned by local authorities in the hope of attracting major film productions, which in turn might bring social and economic benefits to the region.A small number of the apps examined target movie fans and quiz buffs. ‘James Bond and Friends’, for example, focuses on real life locations where spy/thriller movies have been shot in London. Interactive maps and photos of the locations show their geographical position. The app also offers a wealth of trivia on spy/thriller movies and tests users’ knowledge of James Bond films with quizzes about the locations. While some of these apps provide information on how to reach particular film locations, the emphasis is on trivia and quizzes rather than travel itself.Some of the apps are explicitly conceived for educational purposes and target film students, film scholars and users interested in the history of film more broadly. The Italian Ministry for Cultural Affairs, for example, developed a number of smartphone apps designed to promote knowledge about Italian Cinema. Each application focuses on one Italian city, and was designed for users wishing to acquire more information about the movie industry in that urban area. The ‘Cinema Roma’ app, for example, contains a selection of geo-referenced film sets from a number of famous films shot in Rome. The film spots are presented via a rich collection of historical images and texts from the Italian National Photographic Archive.Finally, the majority of the apps analysed (around 60%) explicitly targets tourists. One of the most popular film-tourist applications is the ‘British Film Locations’ app with over 100,000 downloads since its launch in 2011. ‘British Film Locations’ was commissioned by VisitBritain, the British tourism agency. Visit Britain has attempted to capitalize on tourists’ enthusiasm around film blockbusters since the early 2000s as their research indicated that 40% of potential visitors would be very likely to visit the place they had seen in films or on TV (VisitBritain). British Film Locations enables users to discover and photograph the most iconic British film locations in cinematic history. Film tourists can search by film title, each film is accompanied by a detailed synopsis and list of locations so users can plan an entire British film tour. The app also allows users to take photos of the location and automatically share them on social networks such as Facebook or Twitter.Movie Maps and Film-TourismAs already mentioned, the majority of the film-location phone apps are designed for travel purposes and include functionalities that cater for the needs of the so called ‘post-tourists’. Maxine Feifer employed this term to describe the new type of tourist arising out of the shift from mass to post-Fordist consumption. The post-tourist crosses physical and virtual boundaries and shifts between experiences of everyday life, either through the actual or the simulated mobility allowed by the omnipresence of signs and electronic images in the contemporary age (Leotta). According to Campbell the post-tourist constructs his or her own tourist experience and destination, combining these into a package of overlapping and disjunctive elements: the imagined (dreams and screen cultures), the real (actual travels and guides) and the virtual (myths and internet) (203). More recently a number of scholars (Guttentag, Huang et al., Neuhofer et al.) have engaged with the application and implications of virtual reality on the planning, management and marketing of post-tourist experiences. Film-induced tourism is an expression of post-tourism. Since the mid-1990s a growing number of scholars (Riley and Van Doren, Tooke and Baker, Hudson and Ritchie, Leotta) have engaged with the study of this phenomenon, which Sue Beeton defined as “visitation to sites where movies and TV programmes have been filmed as well as to tours to production studios, including film-related theme parks” (11). Tourists’ fascination with film sets and locations is a perfect example of Baudrillard’s theory of hyperreality. Such places are simulacra which embody the blurred boundaries between reality and representation in a world in which unmediated access to reality is impossible (Baudrillard).Some scholars have focused on the role of mediated discourse in preparing both the site and the traveller for the process of tourist consumption (Friedberg, Crouch et al.). In particular, John Urry highlights the interdependence between tourism and the media with the concept of the ‘tourist gaze’. Urry argues that the gaze dominates tourism, which is primarily concerned with the commodification of images and visual consumption. According to Urry, movies and television play a crucial role in shaping the tourist gaze as the tourist compares what is gazed at with the familiar image of the object of the gaze. The tourist tries to reproduce his or her own expectations, which have been “constructed and sustained through a variety of non-tourist practices, such as film, TV, literature, records, and videos” (Urry 3). The inclusion of the camera functionality in digital movie maps such as ‘British Film Locations’ fulfils the need to actually reproduce the film images that the tourist has seen at home.Film and MapsThe convergence between film and (virtual) travel is also apparent in the prominent role that cartography plays in movies. Films often allude to maps in their opening sequences to situate their stories in time and space. In turn, the presence of detailed geographical descriptions of space at the narrative level often contributes to establish a stronger connection between film and viewers (Conley). Tom Conley notes that a number of British novels and their cinematic adaptations including Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings (LOTR) and Stevenson’s Treasure Island belong to the so called ‘cartographic fiction’ genre. In these stories, maps are deployed to undo the narrative thread and inspire alternative itineraries to the extent of legitimising an interactive relation between text and reader or viewer (Conley 225).The popularity of LOTR locations as film-tourist destinations within New Zealand may be, in part, explained by the prominence of maps as both aesthetic and narrative devices (Leotta). The authenticity of the LOTR geography (both the novel and the film trilogy) is reinforced, in fact, by the reoccurring presence of the map. Tolkien designed very detailed maps of Middle Earth that were usually published in the first pages of the books. These maps play a crucial role in the immersion into the imaginary geography of Middle Earth, which represents one of the most important pleasures of reading LOTR (Simmons). The map also features extensively in the cinematic versions of both LOTR and The Hobbit. The Fellowship of the Ring opens with several shots of a map of Middle Earth, anticipating the narrative of displacement that characterizes LOTR. Throughout the trilogy the physical dimensions of the protagonists’ journey are emphasized by the foregrounding of the landscape as a map.The prominence of maps and geographical exploration as a narrative trope in ‘cartographic fiction’ such as LOTR may be responsible for activating the ‘tourist imagination’ of film viewers (Crouch et al.). The ‘tourist imagination’ is a construct that explains the sense of global mobility engendered by the daily consumption of the media, as well as actual travel. As Crouch, Jackson and Thompson put it, “the activity of tourism itself makes sense only as an imaginative process which involves a certain comprehension of the world and enthuses a distinctive emotional engagement with it” (Crouch et al. 1).The use of movie maps, the quest for film locations in real life may reproduce some of the cognitive and emotional pleasures that were activated while watching the movie, particularly if maps, travel and geographic exploration are prominent narrative elements. Several scholars (Couldry, Hills, Beeton) consider film-induced tourism as a contemporary form of pilgrimage and movie maps are becoming an inextricable part of this media ritual. Hudson and Ritchie note that maps produced by local stakeholders to promote the locations of films such as Sideways and LOTR proved to be extremely popular among tourists (391-392). In their study about the impact of paper movie maps on tourist behaviour in the UK, O’Connor and Pratt found that movie maps are an essential component in the marketing mix of a film location. For example, the map of Pride and Prejudice Country developed by the Derbyshire and Lincolnshire tourist boards significantly helped converting potential visitors into tourists as almost two in five visitors stated it ‘definitely’ turned a possible visit into a certainty (O’Connor and Pratt).Media Consumption and PlaceDigital movie maps have the potential to further reconfigure traditional understandings of media consumption and place. According to Nana Verhoeff digital mapping tools encourage a performative cartographic practice in the sense that the dynamic map emerges and changes during the users’ journey. The various functionalities of digital movie maps favour the hybridization between film reception and space navigation as by clicking on the movie map the user could potentially watch a clip of the film, read about both the film and the location, produce his/her own images and comments of the location and share it with other fans online.Furthermore, digital movie maps facilitate and enhance what Nick Couldry, drawing upon Claude Levi Strauss, calls “parcelling out”: the marking out as significant of differences in ritual space (83). According to Couldry, media pilgrimages, the visitation of TV or film locations are rituals that are based from the outset on an act of comparison between the cinematic depiction of place and its physical counterpart. Digital movie maps have the potential to facilitate this comparison by immediately retrieving images of the location as portrayed in the film. Media locations are rife with the marking of differences between the media world and the real locations as according to Couldry some film tourists seek precisely these differences (83).The development of smart phone movie maps, may also contribute to redefine the notion of audiovisual consumption. According to Nanna Verhoeff, mobile screens of navigation fundamentally revise the spatial coordinates of previously dominant, fixed and distancing cinematic screens. One of the main differences between mobile digital screens and larger, cinematic screens is that rather than being surfaces of projection or transmission, they are interfaces of software applications that combine different technological properties of the hybrid screen device: a camera, an interface for online communication, a GPS device (Verhoeff). Because of these characteristics of hybridity and intimate closeness, mobile screens involve practices of mobile and haptic engagement that turn the classical screen as distanced window on the world, into an interactive, hybrid navigation device that repositions the viewer as central within the media world (Verhoeff).In their discussion of the relocation of cinema into the iPhone, Francesco Casetti and Sara Sampietro reached similar conclusions as they define the iPhone as both a visual device and an interactive interface that mobilizes the eye as well as the hand (Casetti and Sampietro 23). The iPhone constructs an ‘existential bubble’ in which the spectator can find refuge while remaining exposed to the surrounding environment. When the surrounding environment is the real life film location, the consumption or re-consumption of the film text allowed by the digital movie map is informed by multi-sensorial and cognitive stimuli that are drastically different from traditional viewing experiences.The increasing popularity of digital movie maps is a phenomenon that could be read in conjunction with the emergence of innovative locative media such as the Google glasses and other applications of Augmented Reality (A.R.). Current smart phones available in the market are already capable to support A.R. applications and it appears likely that this will become a standard feature of movie apps within the next few years (Sakr). Augmented reality refers to the use of data overlays on real-time camera view of a location which make possible to show virtual objects within their spatial context. The camera eye on the device registers physical objects on location, and transmits these images in real time on the screen. On-screen this image is combined with different layers of data: still image, text and moving image.In a film-tourism application of augmented reality tourists would be able to point their phone camera at the location. As the camera identifies the location images from the film will overlay the image of the ‘real location’. The user, therefore, will be able to simultaneously see and walk in both the real location and the virtual film set. The notion of A.R. is related to the haptic aspect of engagement which in turn brings together the doing, the seeing and the feeling (Verhoeff). In film theory the idea of the haptic has come to stand for an engaged look that involves, and is aware of, the body – primarily that of the viewer (Marx, Sobchack). The future convergence between cinematic and mobile technologies is likely to redefine both perspectives on haptic perception of cinema and theories of film spectatorship.The application of A.R. to digital, mobile maps of film-locations will, in part, fulfill the prophecies of René Barjavel. In 1944, before Bazin’s seminal essay on the myth of total cinema, French critic Barjavel, asserted in his book Le Cinema Total that the technological evolution of the cinematic apparatus will eventually result in the total enveloppement (envelopment or immersion) of the film-viewer. This enveloppement will be characterised by the multi-sensorial experience and the full interactivity of the spectator within the movie itself. More recently, Thielmann has claimed that geomedia such as movie maps constitute a first step toward the vision that one day it might be possible to establish 3-D spaces as a medial interface (Thielmann).Film-Tourism, Augmented Reality and digital movie maps will produce a complex immersive and inter-textual media system which is at odds with Walter Benjamin’s famous thesis on the loss of ‘aura’ in the age of mechanical reproduction (Benjamin), as one of the pleasures of film-tourism is precisely the interaction with the auratic place, the actual film location or movie set. According to Nick Couldry, film tourists are interested in the aura of the place and filming itself. The notion of aura is associated here with both the material history of the location and the authentic experience of it (104).Film locations, as mediated by digital movie maps, are places in which people have a complex sensorial, emotional, cognitive and imaginative involvement. The intricate process of remediation of the film-locations can be understood as a symptom of what Lash and Urry have called the ‘re-subjectification of space’ in which ‘locality’ is re-weighted with a more subjective and affective charge of place (56). According to Lash and Urry the aesthetic-expressive dimensions of the experience of place have become as important as the cognitive ones. By providing new layers of cultural meaning and alternative modes of affective engagement, digital movie maps will contribute to redefine both the notion of tourist destination and the construction of place identity. These processes can potentially be highly problematic as within this context the identity and meanings of place are shaped and controlled by the capital forces that finance and distribute the digital movie maps. Future critical investigations of digital cartography will need to address the way in which issues of power and control are deeply enmeshed within new tourist practices. ReferencesAgnew, John, “Space and Place.” Handbook of Geographical Knowledge. Eds. John Agnew and David Livingstone. London: Sage, 2011. 316-330Barjavel, René. Cinema Total. Paris: Denoel, 1944.Baudrillard, Jean. Simulations. Trans. Paul Foss et al. New York: Semiotext(e), 1983.Beeton, Sue. Film Induced Tourism. Buffalo: Channel View Publications, 2005.Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn. Glasgow: Fontana, 1979.Campbell, Nick. “Producing America.” The Media and the Tourist Imagination. Eds. David Crouch et al. London: Routledge, 2005. 198-214.Casetti, Francesco, and Sara Sampietro. “With Eyes, with Hands: The Relocation of Cinema into the iPhone.” Moving Data: The iPhone and the Future of Media. Eds. Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. 19-30.Claudell, Tom, and David Mizell. “Augmented Reality: An Application of Heads-Up Display Technology to Manual Manufacturing Processes.” Proceedings of 1992 IEEE Hawaii International Conference, 1992.Conley, Tom. “The Lord of the Rings and The Fellowship of the Map.” From Hobbits to Hollywood. Ed. Ernst Mathijs and Matthew Pomerance. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2006. 215–30.Couldry, Nick. “The View from inside the 'Simulacrum‘: Visitors’ Tales from the Set of Coronation Street.” Leisure Studies 17.2 (1998): 94-107.Couldry, Nick. Media Rituals: A Critical Approach. London: Routledge, 2003. 75-94.Crouch, David, Rhona Jackson, and Felix Thompson. The Media and the Tourist Imagination. London: Routledge, 2005Feifer, Maxine. Going Places: The Ways of the Tourist from Imperial Rome to the Present Day. London: Macmillan, 1985.Friedberg, Anne. Window Shopping: Cinema and the Postmodern. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.Friedman, Thomas. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twentieth Century. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2005.Guttentag, Daniel. “Virtual Reality: Applications and Implications for Tourism.” Tourism Management 31.5 (2010): 637-651.Hill, Matt. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. 2002.Huang, Yu Chih, et al. “Exploring User Acceptance of 3D Virtual Worlds in Tourism Marketing”. Tourism Management 36 (2013): 490-501.Hjorth, Larissa. “The Game of Being Mobile. One Media History of Gaming and Mobile Technologies in Asia-Pacific.” Convergence 13.4 (2007): 369–381.Hudson, Simon, and Brent Ritchie. “Film Tourism and Destination Marketing: The Case of Captain Corelli’s Mandolin.” Journal of Vacation Marketing 12.3 (2006): 256–268.Jackson, Rhona. “Converging Cultures; Converging Gazes; Contextualizing Perspectives.” The Media and the Tourist Imagination. Eds. David Crouch et al. 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Kerry, Ireland. 2008.Riley, Roger, and Carlton Van Doren. “Films as Tourism Promotion: A “Pull” Factor in a “Push” Location.” Tourism Management 13.3 (1992): 267-274.Sakr, Sharif. “Augmented Reality App Concept Conjures Movie Scenes Shot in Your Location”. Engadget 2011. 1 Feb. 2016 <http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/22/augmented-reality-app-concept-conjures-movie-scenes-shot-in-your/>.Simmons, Laurence. “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand. Eds. Geoff Mayer and Keith Beattie. London: Wallflower, 2007. 223–32.Sobchack, Vivian. Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture. Berkeley: University of California. 2004.Thielmann, Tristan. “Locative Media and Mediated Localities: An Introduction to Media Geography.” Aether 5a Special Issue on Locative Media (Spring 2010): 1-17.Tooke, Nichola, and Michael Baker. “Seeing Is Believing: The Effect of Film on Visitor Numbers to Screened Location.” Tourism Management 17.2 (1996): 87-94.Tzanelli, Rodanthi. The Cinematic Tourist. New York: Routledge, 2007.Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage, 2002.Urry, John, and Jonas Larsen. The Tourist Gaze 3.0. London: Sage, 2011.Verhoeff, Nana. Mobile Screens: The Visual Regime of Navigation. Amsterdam University Press, 2012.VisitBritain. “Films Continue to Draw Tourists to Britain.” 2010. 20 Oct. 2012 <http://www.visitbritain.org/mediaroom/archive/2011/filmtourism.aspx>.

La critique simonienne s’est déjà penchée sur les rapports de l’œuvre de Claude Simon à l’image, peinture ou photographie, mais le lien au cinéma n’a jamais donné lieu à une étude approfondie. Ma recherche met donc au jour les liens complexes de Claude Simon à l’image cinématographique et je fais porter mon effort d’analyse sur ce dialogue toujours renouvelé entre écriture et réalisation filmique, afin de montrer dans quelle mesure le passage d’un langage à une autre influence notablement le processus créatif chez Claude Simon. L’écrivain a commencé, on le sait, à écrire un découpage pour l’adaptation de La Route des Flandres dès 1961, mais le projet a échoué. Ce que, dès lors, je tente de mettre en évidence, c’est l’histoire d’un rendez-vous manqué dont la dynamique va pourtant enrichir toute une œuvre littéraire. J’étudie ainsi, dans un premier temps, comment l’influence du dispositif cinématographique transparaît dans bien des aspects de l’écriture simonienne : importance de la vision, cadre, lumière ou montage, qui ont tous marqué cette écriture, l’ont inspirée, modifiée, structurée ou déconstruite. Puis, un voyage, opéré dans la géographie cinématographique du spectateur-Claude Simon, met en évidence un auteur imprégné de cinéma, un véritable « enfant de cinéma ». J’ai pu déceler dans l’œuvre la trace des expériences de l’écrivain en tant que spectateur. Ainsi a-t-il été marqué par les débuts du cinéma, le burlesque, les films surréalistes, la mythologie hollywoodienne, la dynamique pornographique et le western. Enfin, l’observation des deux seules tentatives concrètes d’adaptation cinématographique par l’écrivain, le découpage de La Route des Flandres et le court-métrage inspiré de Triptyque, pleines à la fois d’enthousiasme et de déception, permettent d’éclairer les relations ambiguës qu’entretient Claude Simon avec cet art et ses choix en tant que réalisateur potentiel. . .
Critics of Claude Simon have already studied the relation of his work to the image, whether photographic or pictorial, but the links with cinema have never been seriously studied. This is why my own research intends to explore the complex links between his work and the cinematographic image, and why I focus my analysis on the endlessly recycled dialogue between writing and film production, in order to show how the transition from one medium to another influences in particular Claude Simon’s creative procedures. It is well known that the writer started to devise a film scenario for his novel La route des Flandres as early as 1961, but that this project floundered. What I hope to demonstrate is that this failed encounter did however engender and enrich the dynamics of a whole literary enterprise. I also undertake in the first instance a study of the way in which the machinery of the cinema sometimes quite transparently influences several aspects of the style of Simon’s writing : notably in terms of viewing, framing, lighting and montage, which have all left their mark on his writing, and have indeed inspired, inflected, structured or deconstructed it. I then proceed to explore the cinematographic geography of Claude Simon, seen as spectator, in order to throw new light on an author born and bathed in the cinema. I follow the author’s progress as writer and cinema viewer. I show how he was marked by encounters with cinema, from the birth of the movies, the burlesque and surrealist film, to the mythical age of Hollywood, including the Western, through to the explosion of porn. And finally, observing the writer’s two concrete proposals for film adaptation of his novels, the montage for La route des Flandres and the documentary inspired by Triptyique, both brimming with enthusiasm and disappointment, I am able to throw new light on the ambiguous relations elaborated between Claude Simon as writer and artist and Claude Simon faced with the choices of a potential film director

Il s'agit d'une restitution à la fois de ce qu'a pu être le chemin de cet écrivain contemporain et des éléments de sa personnalité. En partant de cette hypothèse, suggérée par la tonalité particulière de "L'acacia", que le travail accompli dans l'écriture a permis aussi une élaboration psychologique, on a voulu montrer comment l'ensemble de l'œuvre enregistrait ces progrès. Après une introduction caractérisant la spécificité de l'écriture simonienne, une première partie pose les relations avec les instances familiales qui structurent l'univers romanesque autour de quelques figures sans cesse interrogées. Mais une deuxième partie montre que ce besoin de boucher les trous masque en fait une angoisse archaïque, qui parsème le texte de ses signes spécifiques, images d'un monde morcelé que l'on peut décrire. Enfin, une troisième partie étudie la maîtrise de l'écriture, en examinant notamment le rôle de la métaphore, ou en explorant la forme susceptible de représenter le chaos. Une conclusion cherche à dégager une perspective d'ensemble sur l'œuvre, un éclairage sur la personnalité de l'écrivain, sa situation parmi les romanciers de son temps
This thesis is about a restitution of what could have been the way of this contemporary righter, together with some elements of his personality. Starting from the hypothesis, suggested by the distinctive tone of "L'acacia", that the mental work performed in the righting of the novels also allowed a psychological elaboration, this dissertation aims at showing how the novels, as a whole, are evidence of this progress. After an introduction, characterizing the specificity of the Simonian righting, a first part states the relationship with the family authorities, who structure the universe of the novels around some figures incessantly questioned. Then a second part shows that this need to stop the hole ; conceals in fact an archaic feeling of anguish which strews the text with his specific signs, i. E. The images of a splintered world which can be described. At last, a third part studies the mastery of style, notably by examining the part played by the metaphor, or by exploring the form likely to represent chaos. A conclusion tries to draw a general viewpoint on the complete works, and to cast a particular light on the personality of the righter and his position among the novelists of his time

La thèse interroge la relation entre écriture et photographie dans l'œuvre de Claude Simon. Bien que ce dernier ait publié deux albums de photographie, l'objet de ce travail n'est pas d'en faire un photographe mais de lire son œuvre comme l'activité d'un appareil photographique d'un genre particulier -le chronophotographe. L'être simonien, en effet, rejette la montre du père pour lui préférer l'appareil photographique de la mère. Dans le monde de claude Simon, toute tentative de construire une image de soi doit donc se confronter à la fois à la maîtrise paternelle du temps et à la nature fragmentaire de l'héritage photographique maternel. L'écriture chronophotographique de claude Simon est le produit de cette union pornographique entre temps et photographie, histoire et arts visuels, histoire des sciences et philosophie.

La filiation proustienne de Claude Simon s'enracine d'abord au cœur de la mémoire involontaire qui confère un rôle inédit à la description et bouleverse en profondeur le genre romanesque. Puis elle reçoit l'influence du contexte littéraire du "nouveau nouveau roman". Proust est alors vidé de son contenu psychologique et assimilé à la théorie des ensembles. Il devient un générateur textuel, un modèle de composition scripturale. Enfin, renouant avec la référentialité (la voix lyrique, le récit herméneutique, la métatextualité) c'est encore Proust que Claude Simon rencontre en chemin, ce "grand révolutionnaire", selon le mot même de Claude Simon
The proustian filiation of Claude Simon takes root first into the involuntary memory which gives a new role to the description and upset in depth the romantic kind. Then, it recieves the literary context influence of the "new new novel". Proust is deprived of his psychological content and likened to the set theory. He becomes a textual generator, a scriptural conposition's model. Finally, reviving with the referentiality (the lyric voice, the hermeneutic story, the metatextuality) it's again Proust that Claude Simon comes across, this "great revolutionist", in the words of Claude Simon

L'attention portee par claude simon aux souvenirs, puis a leur mode d'apparition va guider son travail du langage et de l'expression. La presence de la memoire dans son oeuvre tient a quelques experiences radicales de la violence. Le monde les codes, le sens, s'en trouvent mis en doute et la langue de l'ecrivain est faconnee par un scrupule generalise a l'egard de ses constituants. L'auteur ecoute son materiau et progresse en relation a diverses formes d'alterites en fonction desquelles il compose ses romans. Dans un souci devenu necessaire devant toute forme d'expression. Claude simon reconstitue des trajets rememorateurs sous l'influence de la langue qui se presente pour les ecrire. Le desordre mental de la memoire interdit les formes classiques du recit et stimule une vigilance a l'oeuvre qui s'imprime dans les recits comme un souffle continu. Ce desordre amene l'auteur a des juxtapositions, des ruptures, des analogies qui s'agencent a l'instar des elements d'une composition baroque. Cette esthetique est fondee sur une ethique de la gravite, deja decrite en d'autres temps : la melancolie. Devant les restes d'un substrat mythique, avec les pieces d'un puzzle dont l'image totalisante est perdue, le texte agence des elements discrets dans une continuite vocale. L'espace dont il donne la representation, melange d'espace, de temps et d'etre, correspond aux figures les plus elaborees de son epoque, celles inventees par les chercheurs confrontes a toute forme de complexite
The mind given by c simon to recollections, then to their mode of appearance, is going to guide his way of working the languege. The presence of memory in his works derives from some radical experiences of violence. The world, the codes, the meaning turn out to be questionned and the writer's language is figured by a general doubt-with reference to his constituents. The author listens to his material and progresses in connection with diverse forms of alterity. Through which he composes his novels. In a care becomed necessary in front of any way of expression c. Simon reconstitutes some reminding ways or rides, under the influence of the languege that appears to write them. The mental disorder of memory forbids classical modes pf narration and stimulates an active vigilance that impresses itself in the narrations as a continuous breath. This disorder brings the writer at some juxtapositions, ruptures, analogies that dispose themselves like baroque elements. This esthetic is founded on an ethic of deepness, gravity : the melancoly. In front of a substratum mythical's traces, with the pieces of a puzzle of whom the totalizing image is lost, the text disposes discrete elements in a vocal continuity. The space of which it gives a representation, mixt of space, time and being, square with the most studied figures of our time, those discovered by the enquiring minds in front of any form of complexity

Le probleme du sens et de son articulation est-il le noyau de cruaute des oeuvres de claude simon ? en analysant tout d'abord le jeu ironique des recits et des discours, cette etude cerne la cruaute dans les ruptures du reel et de son evenement. La mort, la guerre, la douleur, l'amour l'autre, peuvent-ils faire l'objet d'une reprise dans la conscience et l'ecriture? nature et histoire, interrogees dans leurs dimensions dramatiques et tragiques, mettent egalement la langue a l'epreuve ironique du feminin et du masculin, de l'impassible et de la loi, des forces et des formes. Echouant a soutenir l'authenticite d'une verite, l'evenement simonien du sens se deporte vers le lecteur pour le soumettre sans cesse aux effets de reel d'une cruaute mimologique. En s'inscrivant a chaque temps de l'oeuvre - poietique, semantique, stucturel et esthetique - le scheme de la cruaute revele son origine trgique et transporte dans la reflexion litteraire contemporaine et la curaute des interpretations, les plus anciennes interrogations ontologique et metaphysique. L'epreuve de toute lecture s'y revele comme proces ethique, ou le rire tragique renverse tout nihilisme au profit d'une fete baroque de l'instant. Dans cet espace republicain, les chemins ne menent nulle part, mais chaque pas d'orion aveugle est l'occasion d'une approbation joyeuse au hasard
Is the problem of meaning and its articulation the center of cruelty in claude simon's oeuvre? this study, by primarily focussing on the ironic play of narratives and discursives, aims at defining curelty in the ruptures between the real and its event. It seeks to answer the question : can death, war, pain, love, and the other, be the object of a representation in consciousness and in writing? nature and history, in their dramatic and tragic dimensions, also put language to the ironic test of the feminine and the masculin, the impassible and the law, the forces and the froms. Failing to maintain the authenticity of a truth, the simonain meaning event brings it self towards the reader on order to submit him to the effects of a minological cruelty. Cruelty's schema by inscribing itself in poietic, semantic, structural, and aesthetic stages, reveals its tragic origins. It places the ontological and metaphysical problems of interpretations into the realm of contemporary literary analysis. The reading schows itself to be an ethical process, between nihilims and tragic langhter. In this republican space, where all roads lead nowhere, blind orion makes of each event the occasion of a joyfull approbation

L'objectif principal de ce travail, soutenu en arrière-plan par l'existence de ce que l'on pourrait nommer un devenir-archive ainsi que par ce désir lectoral sans cesse reconduit au fil du corpus, de pourvoir d'une bonne forme les traces, les bribes et autres fragments d'écriture qu'elle génère, consiste à explorer les modes particuliers d'expression de l'archive simonienne. Il importe ici de retenir l'idée d'une spécificité littéraire ne la ramenant pas sur un mode irrévocable ou injonctif à cette compréhension originelle, coutumière et institutionnelle léguée par l'archivistique ou par l'histoire. Ainsi animée d'une démarche locale au sein des romans tout comme des albums photographiques, l'argumentation qui se déroule tout au long de l'étude s'applique à un objet archivique certes profus, discontinu, désarçonant tant dans sa matière que par sa structure, mais dont l'intelligence insoupçonnée au fil du récit apporte sa cohésion à l'ensemble de l'oeuvre.

L'oeuvre simonienne constitue une immense mémoire que chaque roman semble activer à sa manière. En ce sens, le phénomène de la répétition apparaît essentiel. La recherche se donne pour objet l'observation du fontionnement, des manifestations et des senjeux de ce procédé itératif, à tous les niveaux de l'écriture. Dans un premier temps, l'itération est analysée à l'échelle microtextuelle ; les questions de la ponctuation, de la référence, du rythme sont privilégiées pour leurs relations significatives à cette forme de reprise. Dans un deuxième temps, la thématique et la structure romanesques révèlent l'importance de la répétition tant dans l'imaginaire simonien que dans la construction textuelle : l'itération s'impose comme constituant incontournable du macrotecte ; l'abondance des récurrences de scènes ou de passages clé, de romans en romans, invite dès lors à dresser une typologie des variations. Enfin dans un dernier temps, c'est l'oeuvre entière qu'embrasse l'étude : elle interroge la dimension cyclique de l'écriture et envisage le retour des personnages. .
In each novel, Claude Simon resumes the same manner as his past writing. This phenomenon of repetition, its structures, its emergences, its functions are analysed. At first in the microtexte, we observe the relationship between iteration and punctuation. The pronouns, the question of reference and the rythm are also examined for they involve repetition. Subsequently in the macrotexte, the set of themes and the novelistic composition show the importance of iterative process : the Simon's vision as well as the structure are based on it. The analyse of rewriting leads to a typology of variations. Lastly, we encompass the whole works where the same characters reappear : this characteristic confronts us with the question of novelistic cycle. .

Lauréat du prix Nobel de Littérature, distinction majeure qui le place aux côtés de Thomas Mann, Luigi Pirandello, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Isaac Bashevis Singer, ou encore, plus près de nous, d’Imre Kertész et Orhan Pamuk, Claude Simon a en commun avec ces écrivains d’horizons et de registres divers d’avoir édifié une oeuvre qui pose de façon marquante les questions qui hantent l’époque contemporaine. Contrairement à Jean-Paul Sartre, qui avait, rappelons-le, choisi de refuser ce même prix, Claude Simon s’interdit d’imposer des réponses jugées définitives, se limitant à narrer, à décrire, à restituer modestement un pan de l’histoire des Hommes. Modestie, prudence, qui l’ont fait longtemps considérer comme un écrivain purement formaliste, radicalement désengagé ; opinion du reste conforme à l’orthodoxie des années soixante-dix, aux prises de position d’Alain Robbe-Grillet, chef de file du Nouveau Roman, et à sa condamnation des dogmatisme et didactisme sartriens. Mais à qui lit ses textes aujourd’hui ; il paraît difficile de rester insensible à la façon dont ils portent profondément la marque des drames et des conflits du vingtième siècle ; oeuvre en cela éminemment politique : elle se fait espace de réfraction, de réflexion, recomposition patiente et passionnée d’un destin collectif, des répercussions singulières, infimes quoique tragiques, de la marche inexorable de l’Histoire
Laureate of the Nobel prize of literature, a major honour which ranks him among Thomas Mann, Luigi Pirandello, Albert Camus, Samuel Beckett, Isaac Bashevis Singer, or also, closer to us, Imre Kertész and Orhan Pamuk, Claude Simon, like all these writers of various horizons and styles, built his work upon questions haunting the contemporary period. Unlike Jean-Paul Sartre, who, as we remember, refused to accept the prize in question, Claude Simon forbade himself from imposing seemingly definitive answers and limited himself to narrating, to describing, to rendering with modesty a monumental part of Man’s history. His modesty and his prudence caused him for a long time to appear to be a purely formalist writer, radically “désengagé” ; this opinion was in keeping with the orthodoxy of the seventies and with the attitudes adopted by Alain Robbe-Grillet, leader of the Nouveau Roman movement, and with his strong disapproval of Sartre dogmatism and didactism. However, to the present day reader of his work, it seems difficult to remain unmoved by the way in which his texts reflect the dramas and conflicts of the 20th century ; his work is enimently political : it is an area of refraction, of reflection, a patient and passionate recomposition of a collective destiny, of the singular repercussions, minimal though often tragical, of History’s inexorable progression

L’objectif de ce travail est de déterminer le fonctionnement et l'évolution du personnage dans l'œuvre romanesque de Claude Simon. Nous utilisons un appareil critique fonde sur la sémiologie et la narratologie; nous considérons le personnage comme un ensemble sémantique cohérent réparti tout au long du texte, manifeste par des désignateurs, intégré dans l'architecture générale du roman et y jouant un rôle structurant. De Gulliver aux géorgiques, le personnage, avec l'œuvre, traverse plusieurs périodes. D’abord, il est aux prises avec les influences et la tradition, et à déjà perçu sa stabilité psychologique ou sociale. Ensuite, il éclate, pris dans le discours d'un narrateur ou le point de vue d'un personnage qui tente en vain d'atteindre le réel avec le langage. La désignation ne permet plus de le cerner et il est structuré par des métaphores et des scènes récurrentes. Dans les romans suivants, avec la disparition du nom propre, il devient une constellation de signifies qui entre en jeu avec un texte construit sur le mode musical ou pictural. Comme point de vue, il reste un élément central qui apporte les informations et les focalise, donnant ainsi sa richesse au texte. Dans les géorgiques, le personnage resurgit comme "héros" : il agit, écrit, se souvient. . . Et redevient donc l'un des éléments essentiels d'une œuvre focalisée sur ses acteurs. Sensible a certaines influences, rétif au modèle balzacien, ou a l'analyse grelmasienne,. . . Cohérence sémantique qui lui confèrent son équilibre interne et le mettent en relation avec les autres acteurs et les autres données romanesques. N’étant plus manifeste par une désignation classique et univoque, il demeure un motif qui apporte sa particularité et sa richesse a l'ensemble de l'œuvre
In this publication, we have intended to make out how the characters in the fiction of Claude Simon may function and develop. We have made use of a critical apparatus based on semiology and narratology; we have studied the characters as consistent semantic wholes, spread out all along the text, conveyed by designators, built in the overall architecture of the novel, with a structuring role. From Gulliver to les géorgiques the characters with the work move through several periods. First, they strive with influences and tradition and have already lost their psychological or social balance. Then, they break up, caught in the discourse of a narrator or in the point of view of a character, who vainly try to reach reality through language. Designation is no longer sufficient to define them and them ara outlined through metaphors and recurring meaning units. In the following novels, as proper nouns disappear, they evolve into numerous signifies, which become harmoniously integrated into a text built in a musical or pictorial way. As a point of view, they remain a basic element bringing information and focusing on them, and thus, making the text rich. In les géorgiques the characters reappear as "heroes»: they act, writ, remember. . . And so, become once again one of the essential elements in a work focused on its actors. Sensitive to some influences, refusing to cope with the balzacian standard or the greimasian analysis, the characters of Simon are framed through metaphors a semantic consistency prodiding them with an internal balance and connecting them with the other actors and novelistic features. No longer appearing through a classical and univocal designation, they remain a pattern bringing their specificity and richness to the whole work