Wandering Women in French Film and Literature : A Study of Narrative Drift

How and when can a narrative agent or voice be considered unreliable? What happens when narrative authority fails and, just as importantly, why does it? As a means to answering these questions, "Wandering Women in French Film and Literature" examines the phenomenon of 'narrative drift' through in-depth analysis of twentieth-century novels and films. Combining feminist theories and structural narratology, Devereux Herbeck illustrates the ways in which evidence and/or admissions of doubt by narrative entities in works featuring wandering women disrupt conventions of continuity, coherence, and authority and thereby forces the story in new, unexpected directions Front Matter....Pages i-x Introduction....Pages 1-8 An Introduction to Narrative Drift....Pages 9-34 Qui suis-je?....Pages 35-59 “Impersonal” Narrative: Fade to Lack—Detachment and Discontinuity....Pages 61-86 “Personal” Narrative: Taking It Personally—Men Telling the Stories of Wandering Women....Pages 87-128 “Pluralized” Narrative: More Is Less? The Paradox of Pluralized Perspectives....Pages 129-156 Conclusion....Pages 157-165 Back Matter....Pages 167-199 Cover 1 WANDERING WOMEN IN FRENCH FILM AND LITERATURE 4 CONTENTS 8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 10 Introduction 12 1 An Introduction to Narrative Drift 20 2 Qui suis-je? 46 3 “Impersonal” Narrative: Fade to Lack—Detachment and Discontinuity 71 4 “Personal” Narrative: Taking It Personally—Men Telling the Stories of Wandering Women 97 5 “Pluralized” Narrative: More Is Less? The Paradox of Pluralized Perspectives 139 6 Conclusion 167 NOTES 176 BIBLIOGRAPHY 192 INDEX 200 The unreliable narrator is a common trope in fiction. In French literature and film, the female vagabond frequently embodies this motif and plays an at once subversive and revolutionary role. This book uses the phenomenon of "narrative drift" to examine what happens when narrative authority fails and, just as importantly, why it fails.