They count nothing French foreign to them - (dangerous) liaisons between British postmodernism and French literałure

Zdigitalizowano i udostępniono w ramach projektu pn. Rozbudowa otwartych zasobów naukowych Repozytorium Uniwersytetu w Białymstoku, dofinansowanego z programu „Społeczna odpowiedzialność nauki” Ministra Edukacji i Nauki na podstawie umowy SONB/SP/512497/2021.This text is concerned with links and connections between French literature and philosophy of the post-Second-World-War period, and the British experimental novel of the 1950s and 1960s which, drawing on John Barth's diagnosis, is called here the 'literature of exhaustion' and represents the first phase of development of postmodern fiction. Its main claim is that once again in the history of the British novel, French influence saved it from parochialism resulting from a dedication to the naive realism of social observation which, according to Bernard Bergonzi and David Lodge, is a distinguishing feature of the British 'literary mind'. As a result, British fiction became capable of confronting the problems and dilemmas of the novel in the age of the fundamental crisis of all systems of authority and knowledge. Some works by such writers as Samuel Beckett, Nigel Dennis, Christina Brooke-Rose, Rayner Happenstall, Iris Murdoch, Giles Gordon, John Fowles, B. S. Johnson, Andrew Sinclair, Julian Mitchell, David Caute and John Berger are unquestionable examples of this trend. The first seven novelists in this list demonstrate and explore openly their 'French connections', finding intellectual and formal inspiration in French contemporary philosophy and literature. The essential part of this essay discusses briefly Beckett's so-called trilogy (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnameable) and Fowles's The French Lieutenant's Woman in the context of French existentialism and theoretical assumptions of the nouveau roman. In the former case, Beckett's decision to write his three novels originally in French and to translate them later 'back' into English is given special attention, and the stress is put on how this helps demonstrate the existential and linguistic crisis of the novel as such. In the latter case, Fowles's original and successfuI attempt to re-write the Victorian noveI from the position of the narrator belonging to the age of Alain Robbe-Grillet and Roland Barthes is analysed. As a result Fowles's novel can be perceived as an archetypal text in the debate, which had been going on from the Victorian era to the late 1960s when The French Lieutenant's Woman was written, between the specifically British dedication to a realistic mode of writing and French experimentaI 'disruptions'.Barth J., Literatura wyczerpania, przeł. J. Wiśniewski, [w:] Nowa proza amerykańska: Szkice krytyczne, pod red. Z. Lewickiego, Warszawa 1983, s. 37-54.Barth J., Postmodernizm: literatura odnowy, przeł. J. Wiśniewski, "Literatura na Świecie" 1982, nr 5-6, s. 260-275.Beckett S., Trilogy: Molloy. MaloneDies. The Unnameable, London 1996.Bergonzi B., The Situation of the Novel, London 1970.Bradbury M., The Modern British Novel, London 1994.Eagleton T., Literary Theory: An Introduction, Oxford 1989.Esslin M., Samuel Beckett, [w:] The Novelist as Philosopher: Studies in French Fiction 1935-1960, pod red. J. Cruickshank, London, New York, Toronto 1962, 128-144.Fowles J., Kochanica Francuza, przeł. W. Komarnicka, Poznań 1996.Hill L., The Trilogy Translated, [w:] Beckett's Fiction: In Different Words, Cambridge 1990, s.40-58.Hutcheon L., Freedom Through Artifice: The French Lieutenant's Woman, [w:] The Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox, New York and London 1980, 57-70.Lodge D., The Novelist At the Crossroads and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism, Londyn 1971.Lodge D., Postmodernist Fiction, [w:] The Modes of Modern Writing, London 1977, 220-245.McEwan N., John Fowles: The French Lieutenant's Woman, w: The Survival of the Novel: British Fiction In the Later Twentieth Century, Houndmills, Basingstoke and London 1981, 20-37.Miller J. E., The Crisis of 1895: Realism and the Feminisation of Fiction, [w:] Rebel Women: Feminism, Modernism and the Edwardian Novel, London 1994, 10-38.Schulz H. J., The Hell of Stories: a Hegelian Approach to the Novels of Samuel Beckett, The Hague, Paris 1973, 16-30.Stevenson R., The British Novel Since the Thirties, London 1987.34535