Jean Ricardou

Bio: Jean Ricardou is an academic researcher. The author has contributed to research in topics: Character (mathematics) & Reading (process). The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 16 publications receiving 160 citations.

Narrative discourse : an essay in method

Abstract: Foreword by Jonathan Cutler Translator's Preface PrefaceIntroduction 1. Order 2. Duration 3. Frequency 4. Mood 5. VoiceAfterword Bibliography Index

Narrate and Describe: The Problem of Ekphrasis*

Abstract: The subject of ekphrasis, and in particular of the ekphrasis of works of art, has recently begun to receive a great deal of attention from classical scholars. As will become clear, I believe that the reason for this is that many of the theoretical issues that are most pressing in classical studies — and indeed in cultural studies in general — are raised by the study of ekphrasis. The purpose of this note on the other hand is modest: I want to say a little about the narratological issues that are raised by set-piece description (I), and to look at one example in the Aeneid (II). But even so I have found it impossible not to offer some thoughts of a frighteningly general nature (III). I shall concentrate on the ekphrasis of works of art for reasons that will again become clear, but some at least of what I shall say will also be relevant mutatis mutandis to the ekphrasis of natural features and events.

Telling in Time (I): Chronology and Narrative Theory

Abstract: My main title has two bearings on narrative, one necessary, the other optional, one directed to the medium and the other to the object of narration. On the one hand, telling in time is telling in a temporal medium, where all items and structures and effects must unfold in an ordered sequence. Whether viewed from the transmitting or the receiving end, communication there proceeds along a continuum. This is evidently a sine qua non for verbal storytelling, as for all literature and discourse in language, but not for them alone. It applies no less necessarily to a variety of syncretic, multimedia forms of discoursedance, theatre, opera, cinema-whose extension in space yet combines with an irreversible progression in time. Whatever the grouping of their signs at any given moment, it cannot so much as freeze, let alone develop or regroup, except from moment to moment along the communicative process. Nor is this because they signify a narrative-which they usually do-but rather because, like narrative, their signifiers follow a line even in their least narrative moments, as when describing a place or a state of affairs. Temporality in the sense of discourse sequentiality (linearity, directionality) thus controls an assortment of media, art forms, representations. And the straining against the "tyranny of time" throughout the ages, in modernism, for example, only reaffirms and redefines the tyrant's power with each abortive rebellion. On the other hand, in a sense limited and optional to narrative (factual, fictional, epic, dramatic, operatic, cinematic) as the represen-

Le Poete en personnes: Mises en scene de soi et transformations de l'ecriture chez Blaise Cendrars, Guillaume Apollinaire et Max Jacob

Abstract: Cette these analyse les enjeux de la diversification des styles et des representations du poete chez trois ecrivains, Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob et Guillaume Apollinaire. L’essentiel du corpus s’etend de 1912-1919, soit les annees de guerre et l’immediat avant- et apres-guerre. La carriere de ces trois poetes prend alors son envol; ce sont des initiateurs de l’avant-garde poetique postsymboliste. L’une des caracteristiques saillantes de leur demarche est de multiplier les representations de soi souvent divergentes ou contradictoires, accompagnees d’autoderision et/ou d’autopromotion hyperboliques, de porte-parole fictifs ou de transformations stylistiques importantes. Cela va a l’encontre d’une tendance a l’effacement du poete dans la poesie moderne et contemporaine. Mais les deux phenomenes d’effacement et de mise en scene excessive, temoignent d’une meme interrogation sur la place du poete dans la societe et du monde exterieur a l’art. Face au poeme, poser la question « qui parle? » revient a demander a quel titre il parle, de quel droit, depuis quelle position: affaire de valeur et de legitimite. Pour peu que le poete n’ait plus de role social ou symbolique clair, il peut se retirer de son poeme sous pretexte que la particularite de son existence n’a aucune pertinence, – ou bien profiter de l’indetermination de son statut pour jouer les roles qui lui plaisent; mage, oracle, soldat, paria, etc. Jacob, Apollinaire et Cendrars optent pour ce jeu de masques qui temoigne a la fois d’une inquietude – le poete n’a-t-il plus aucune place? – et d’une aspiration a l’universel: parler enfin pour tous – en devenant chacun tour a tour.