The preparation of the novel
The preparation of the novel ( La preparation du roman ) is a series of literary theoretical lectures by the post-structuralist and semioticist Roland Barthes . A German translation by Horst Brühmann was published by Suhrkamp Verlag in 2008 .
content
It is not a text intended for publication, but notes for a lecture that Barthes gave at the Collège de France . In April 1978 Barthes had decided to write a novel, but hadn't gotten beyond key words: the experience of this failure he made the subject of his theoretical work the following year.
In the preparation of the novel , he devotes himself to the transition "from wanting to write to being able to write" and examines the question of how a text continuum can arise from scattered ideas that creates a "reality effect". Using the example of the novel In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust and the works of Gustave Flaubert and Lev Nikolajewitsch Tolstoy , he deals with the process of writing and the "dietary rules", that is, the rules of life to which authors submit. In addition, Barthes lectures in detail on the Japanese poem form of the haiku , various forms of diary entry and aspects of photography .
Classification and style
Barthes had assigned the published works he three different phases: In the first phase, he turned in the succession de Saussure of language or the discourse to, in the second phase, he worked on a semiotic analysis of fashion before going into the third phase looked at the text ; The lectures The Preparation of the Novel also fall into this phase . In later notes, Barthes' tendency towards the literary and artificial - similar to " Die Lust am Text " - emerged more strongly, influences from psychoanalysis , Kristeva , Derrida and Nietzsche become recognizable.
The writing
The preparation of the novel deals with the paradox of being a writer, on the one hand being driven to write and on the other hand being afraid of it. Barthes explains how obsessions , desire and fear drive the writer to sometimes unimaginably extensive and differentiated preparations in order to enable his production against all odds. In doing so, he pursues elementary questions of writing: Where do I write? With what material? At which desk? He mainly refers to the work of Marcel Proust , on which the focus of his analysis lies.
Quotes
"The PHOTOGRAPHY - and I believe that this is where the originality, the novelty of our seminar lies - allows the DREAM , the IMAGINARY (during) reading, to meet the REAL ."
"Writing is an eternal self-deception, because you always want to finish and then immediately begin again with this agonizing condition of the unfinished and the renewed war of nerves against the unreasonable demands of the work."
reception
Lothar Müller read the preparation as Barthes 'attempt to follow the "author's path to writing" using the example of "Proust, Tolstoy, Kafka" and thereby demonstrate his "own intellectual metamorphosis". Christian Schärf recognized Barthes' "subjective-poststructuralist" Remarks a methodical refusal of method ", and read from the preparation the thesis" that the desire to write comes to itself in the novel, "while Ina Hartwig noted a" surprising return to biography "in Roland Barthes' work, the biographical readings so far always was critical of it.
See also
literature
- La Préparation du roman: I et II, cours au collège de France 1978 - 1980 . Éditions du Seuil / Imec, Paris, 2003.
- The preparation of the novel . Suhrkamp, Frankfurt / M. 2008, ISBN 351812529X
Web links
- Review notes on The preparation of the novel at perlentaucher.de
- Audio recordings of the two-part seminar (28 hours)