Narrative technique in the P.-A. Lesort’s novel Les reins et les cœurs

Kolesnikov Ph.Yu.

Kolesnikov Philipp Yuryevich – postgraduate student at the Faculty of Philology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Department of Modern Western European Languages and Literatures

Abstract

The article analyses the narrative technique of P.-A. Lesort’s first novel Les reins et les cœurs (1946) as well as the author’s own and contemporary literary critics’ statements about it. On the basis of this analysis, we characterise the novel’s poetics as modernist. Some artistic principles common to Lesort and Sartre are established. The opinions of G. Marcel and P. de Boisdeffre on Lesort’s poetics help to show how it reveals his ideas about the novel and his Christian worldview. We interpret the novel’s title and point out the way it is reflected in its narrative technique. In conclusion, we propose a quote by Lesort that expresses his conception of the novel.

Keywords

catholicism; existentialism; French literature; Lesort; Mauriac; modernism; narrative technique; “nouveau roman”; point of view; Sartre

DOI: 10.31249/lit/2025.02.03

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