B.S. Johnson ou l’équilibre de l’écart

Abstract

This paper proposes to examine the apparent contradiction in B.S. Johnson’s novels between, on the one hand, the defamiliarisation of devices so as to lay bare all fictional effects and underline the distance between the referent and its graphic inscription, and on the other hand, the implementation of innovative formal strategies meant to reflect reality as faithfully as possible. This double movement (revealing the distance, reducing the distance) will be analysed in relation to Johnson’s theory based on a poetics of truth which rejects the lies of the novelistic form and places the autobiographical subject at the heart of the work. In the process, we will determine which forms of mimesis and of relationship to the real Johnson manages to establish.

Keywords

• B.S. Johnson
• truth and fiction
• autobiography
• metafiction
• graphic devices
• defamiliarisation