Effet d'archipel: Autour de l'opposition passé composé/passé simple

Abstract

This paper deals with the opposition between French passé composé and passé simple in fictional and some other texts. The author focuses on two questions in relation to the notions of island/isolation, namely the function and interpretation of the passé simple inserted into a discoursive context, and the use of the passé composé as a narrative tense, by commenting examples from Camus, Rousseau and Proust. It is argued that such phenomena are closely connected with psychological distance in the case of the passé simple, and with narrative disjunction in the case of the passé composé.