Revue Italienne d'Etudes Françaises (Nov 2023)
Les Biens de ce monde (1941) d’Irène Némirovsky ou la chronique d’une famille d’industriels du Nord
Abstract
This paper attempts to rehabilitate All Our Wordly Goods 1941), one of Némirovsky’s least studied novels and the last one published during her lifetime. While this chronicle of a family of industrialists in the north of France draws on personal memories, it has a wider purpose, that of a fresco that pits its heroes' aspiration for happiness against bourgeois norms and the upheavals of history over three generations. Adapting the poetics of the serial novel to the structure of the soap opera was a major technical challenge. In the end, Némirovsky succeeded in overturning the codes of the sentimental novel and the image of the haute bourgeoisie.
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