Marie Darrieussecq’s Textual Worlds: Self, Society, Language

This is the first book-length study devoted to the work of the contemporary French author Marie Darrieussecq, one of France’s leading writers, whose work has proved fascinating to both critics and readers for its diversity, her seeming ability to evade established literary categories and the changes in focus of her trajectory. This book focuses on this very ambivalence, highlighting the capacity of Darrieussecq’s texts to treat both contemporary social issues such as national identity and the role of women, and examine the complex relationship between language and reality. Focussing on the mid-section of her œuvre: Bref sejour chez les vivants, Le Bebe and Le Pays, this book brings together Darrieussecq’s social realism, her emphasis on the productive and creative roles of language and narrative and her interest in the role of social discourse in the formation of identity. It highlights the significant questions her texts raise about the ways in which we perceive and narrate the world to show the original and essential nature of Darrieussecq’s continuing literary project.