Engagement in the Novel in light of history in mid and late twentieth century French and Italian literature ; L'engagement du roman à l'épreuve de l'histoire en France et en Italie au milieu et à la fin du vingtième siècle
We intent to elaborate a new definition of the "engagement littéraire" concept, confronting it to two specific periods (in the aftermath of World War II and at the end of the Twentieth century, after the fall of the Berlin Wall) and based on a corpus of French and Italian novelists: A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre, I. Calvino and E. Vittorini for the first covered period; P. Modiano, O.Rolin, A. Volodine, E. De Luca and A. Tabucchi for the second one. We are proposing a new definition of "engagement littéraire" since we are considering it in a new light which is tightly connected with the so-called notion of regime of historicity, introduced by François Hartog. Our hypothesis is that the novelist's engagement does not rely on a political content or a demonstrative style, but consists mainly in the way the novel itself reflects and puts into question its own situation in History and its connection with History. Therefore, the "roman engagé", which should not be mistaken with the thesis novel, should be associated with the modem regime of historicity, itself based on the conception of a linear and progressive History that turns toward the future. Moreover, contemporary novels should be inscribed within a new temporal regime, called "présentiste", in which the present and the sense of a debt to the past (of remembrance) and to the future (of a patrimony to preserve and to pass on) predominate. In both cases, the novels collected in our corpus lead to a problematization of the regimes of historicity, more than to a simple reproduction of them. ; Nous proposons de redéfinir la notion d'engagement littéraire en la mettant à l'épreuve de deux périodes historiques distinctes - les années suivant la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale et la fin du 20ème siècle, après la chute du mur de Berlin - et en prenant appui sur un corpus de romans d'auteurs français et italiens: A. Camus, J.-P. Sartre, I. Calvino, V. Pratolini, E. Vittorini pour la première période; P. Modiano, O. Rolin, A. Volodine, E. De Luca et A. Tabucchi pour la ...