Julio Cortázar’s Prose and the French Nouveau Roman

Abstract

The paper is centred on the problem of influence of the French nouveau roman represented by A. Robbe-Grillet (1922–2008), M. Butor (1928–2016) and N. Sarraute (1900–1999) on the aesthetic formation of their Argentine contemporary, one of the creators of the new Latin American novel – Julio Cortázar (1914–1984). Considering Cortázar’s little known theoretical works (The Tunnel Theory, Novel’s Condition), the development of the new novel in the Old and the New World can be seen as a simultaneous process: Cortázar challenges “obsolete notions”, such as “novel”, “character”, “psychologism”, “story”, “coherence”, “space-time continuum”, “passive reader” independently from his French colleagues. Coinciding in the choice of the models he follows or rejects, Cortázar has never hid his interest in the theory of the nouveau roman. A detailed analysis of the artistic principles declared by the new novelists and their creative realizations permits to trace numerous parallels (including full coincidence of the statements) that prove that Cortázar, Robbe-Grillet, Butor and Sarraute followed one direction and shared ideas (“antinovel”, “new man”, “new language”, direct perception). Seeking, as did Sarraute, to reach a transpersonal psychological sphere, Cortázar plays with time and space together with Butor, and tries to digress an everyday logic and reverse relations between subject and object, similarly to Robbe-Grillet. These affinities bring to light Cortázar’s originality, which is determined by his peculiar world view, his life-long search of “new ethics” and “new metaphysics”. Cortázar pays much more attention to non-aesthetic, gnoseological, existential values of literature.

Keywords

• julio cortázar
• nathalie sarraute
• michel butor
• alain robbe-grillet
• new novel
• theory of anti-novel
• “obsolete notions”
• experiment
• french–latin american literary contacts
• reception.