"To Know if There Is Something or Nothing": The Relationship Between Fiction and Reality in the Works of Stephane Mallarme, Samuel Beckett, Louis -Rene Des Forets and J. M. G. Le Clezio

259 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2001.Through the work of Stephane Mallarme, Samuel Beckett, Louis-Rene des Forets and J. M. G. Le Clezio, this dissertation offers a reflection on the relationship between fiction and reality. The first chapter explores how Mallarme deconstructs fiction and analyses its effects on the readers to convey reality. It also shows the poet's efforts to prove that the mind possesses a power of fiction that can represent an absolute and objective reality. The second chapter compares the similarities between Mallarme's and Beckett's ideas on theater. It analyses the role of the spectators and how they use their power of fiction in order to create meanings and subjective realities. The third chapter investigates how des Forets uses fiction to dismantle the illusions that the mind constructs. In his self-reflexive fictions, he reveals the tension between reality and language and how language transforms reality and is an obstacle to objectivity. Consequently, his work is a mise en abime of the writer who writes to find his identity and his place in the world but constructs only fiction. The fourth chapter is about Le Clezio and his questioning of the role of fiction. I argue that his perception of the interaction between fiction and reality is increasingly similar to that of Creole writers. He therefore writes about the forgotten reality of a peoples who had been denied a voice. His fictions also show a constant attention to the multiple expressions of the world. Reality, in turn, is fictive, plural, moving and constantly in evolution. The conclusion articulates that while we can never reach an objective reality, we will never exhaust our power of fiction. This condition brings us the promise of continual blossoming of literature.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD