Anatomy of an Obsession: Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs

Anatomy of an Obsession: Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs

B.S. Johnson is remembered for his experimental novels, but his critical writings have fallen into oblivion over the past three decades (a tendency mitigated by the recent publication of a monograph devoted to his work and a biography). This is all the more regrettable as the introduction to Aren’t...

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主要作者: Ganteau, Jean-Michel
格式: Article ou chapitre numérique
语言:Anglais
出版: Études britanniques contemporaines 2020
在线阅读:Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM
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spelling openedition-oai:revues.org:ebc_9432 https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.9432 urn:doi:10.4000/ebc.9432 en https://journals.openedition.org/ebc/9432 2020-09-10T02:00:00Z info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess article info:eu-repo/semantics/article urn:handle:20.500.13089/fear https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Anatomy of an Obsession: Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs Études britanniques contemporaines Presses universitaires de la Méditerranée info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/2271-5444 info:eu-repo/semantics/reference/issn/1168-4917 URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc Ganteau, Jean-Michel B.S. Johnson is remembered for his experimental novels, but his critical writings have fallen into oblivion over the past three decades (a tendency mitigated by the recent publication of a monograph devoted to his work and a biography). This is all the more regrettable as the introduction to Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs expresses a very idiosyncratic theory of the novel penned in a paradoxical, even contradictory, ars poetica. To Johnson, the novel is not the vehicle of fiction but truth, and his faithfulness to this single idea makes him argue in favour of an ethics of truth (as opposed to what has come to be more acceptable as an ethics of truths, over the last decade). By hankering after a naturalist, objectivist ideal, Johnson privileges an ethics of a deontic type, and this may help us situate his oeuvre in a period of transition (the 1960s and ’70s) and see him more as a belated Modernist than a proto-Postmodernist. B.S. Johnson est connu pour ses romans expérimentaux, mais peut-être moins pour ses textes critiques qui révèlent une théorie idiosyncrasique du roman. C’est en effet dans l’introduction à Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs qu’il définit son art poétique en des termes qui fleurent le paradoxe, voire la contradiction. Pour Johnson en effet, le roman n’est pas le lieu de la fiction mais bien de la vérité, et sa fidélité à cette idée unique lui fait faire le choix d’une éthique de la vérité et non des vérités. Sa poursuite d’un idéal naturaliste, voire objectiviste, l’entraîne ainsi sur les sentiers d’une éthique de nature déontique qui contribue à mieux situer son œuvre dans une période de transition, où l’image de l’écrivain maudit moderniste l’emporte peut-être sur celle du proto-postmoderniste.
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language Anglais
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description B.S. Johnson is remembered for his experimental novels, but his critical writings have fallen into oblivion over the past three decades (a tendency mitigated by the recent publication of a monograph devoted to his work and a biography). This is all the more regrettable as the introduction to Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs expresses a very idiosyncratic theory of the novel penned in a paradoxical, even contradictory, ars poetica. To Johnson, the novel is not the vehicle of fiction but truth, and his faithfulness to this single idea makes him argue in favour of an ethics of truth (as opposed to what has come to be more acceptable as an ethics of truths, over the last decade). By hankering after a naturalist, objectivist ideal, Johnson privileges an ethics of a deontic type, and this may help us situate his oeuvre in a period of transition (the 1960s and ’70s) and see him more as a belated Modernist than a proto-Postmodernist.
author Ganteau, Jean-Michel
spellingShingle Ganteau, Jean-Michel
Anatomy of an Obsession: Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs
author_facet Ganteau, Jean-Michel
author_sort Ganteau, Jean-Michel
title Anatomy of an Obsession: Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs
title_short Anatomy of an Obsession: Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs
title_full Anatomy of an Obsession: Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs
title_fullStr Anatomy of an Obsession: Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs
title_full_unstemmed Anatomy of an Obsession: Aren’t You Rather Young to Be Writing Your Memoirs
title_sort anatomy of an obsession: aren’t you rather young to be writing your memoirs
publisher Études britanniques contemporaines
publishDate 2020
container_title URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ebc
url https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.9432
https://ezproxy.univ-orleans.fr/login?url=https://journals.openedition.org/ebc/9432
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