The Return of the Narrative: the Call for the Novel- Le retour a la narration : le desir du roman : The Call for the Novel / Le Désir Du Roman

This study focuses on the return of the narrative as applied by literary historians. Through the 1980s, criticism on the hermetic nature of many postmodern texts grew louder and louder: novelists expressed the wish to restore the bonds between the reader and the texts as well as between the texts and the extra-literary reality. Many fiction writers have grown tired of formalism and restore the conventions of realism, though not using them in a passive manner. Literary historians dealing with the post-postmodern or late postmodern European novel agree that conventional techniques are being adopted in new manners, and that all 20th century tendencies that criticized and tried to overcome 19th century realism do leave their traces on the contemporary novel: it might be a matter of hybrid forms combining realism and postmodernism. Cette etude porte sur la notion, souvent avancee par des commentateurs du roman contemporain, du retour a la narration. Le romancier contemporain s'opposerait a l'hermetisme du roman postmoderne et desirerait retablir le lien entre le texte et son lecteur et entre la litterature et la realite extralitteraire. Les ecrivains se lassent du formalisme et reprennent les conventions du realisme sans toutefois les appliquer passivement ; l'auteur actuel n'envisage pas de restaurer une forme traditionnelle, mais de reecrire au second degre certains modeles romanesques afin de mieux representer le monde contemporain. Le roman contemporain serait donc une forme hybride qui combine des tendances realistes et postmodernes.