Narration d'une double recherche dans Un long dimanche de fiançailles de Sébastien Japrisot

Abstract

The novel Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A very long engagement) takes a special place in Sébastien Japrisot's oeuvre. On the one hand, the writer had worked on it for the longest time (nearly four years), on the other hand, he put a lot of autobiographical elements in it. The salient feature of Japrisot's writing is held to be the subversion of narrative logic. This statement is true for A very long engagement, in spite of the fact that its structure is simpler than the those of the writer's other novels. This time Japrisot complicates the identity of the narrator as the heterodiegetic narrator is nobody else but the main character of the novel, Mathilde. It is she herself thar narrates - or more precisely - writes her own story in an unusual way: in the third person singular. Why does the writer cover up the real narrator Mathilde behind the mask of the heterodiegetic narrator? This is the question that this paper focuses on. This study is to honour the writer, who would be 90 years old this year.