Roman-fleuve

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The French term roman-fleuve (from French roman = "Roman" and fleuve = "river") denotes a sub-genus of the novel; it has been used since around 1930 (Petit Robert). The expression roman-fleuve appears with the work of Jean-Christophe by Romain Rolland , the first real representative of this genre.

definition

The roman-fleuve is a very large-scale novel in several (often more than ten) volumes. These form a whole; the same characters appear repeatedly, but the volumes can also be read individually without any problems. The entire work portrays a society or an epoch in an opulent form, with a central figure, a community or a (often bourgeois) family in the center, which is presented against a contemporary historical background.

Heyday

The roman-fleuve experienced its heyday in France in the 1930s ; Examples are:

  • Roger Martin du Gard , Les Thibault (Eng. The Thibaults ) (1922–1940)
  • Jules Romains , Les Hommes de bonne volonté (Eng. The good will ) (1932–1947)
  • Georges Duhamel , Chronique des Pasquier (Eng. The Chronicle of the Pasquier Family ) (1933–1945)
  • Louis Aragon , Cycle du Monde Réel (Eng. The Real World ) (1933–1951)
  • Jacques Chardonne , Les Destinées sentimentales (1934–1936)

precursor

The human comedy by Balzac or Les Rougon-Macquart by Zola can be seen as a forerunner of roman-fleuve, as can Marcel Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu (1908–1922) (Eng. In search of lost time ). These works are cycles of novels ; with Rolland the cyclical character now takes a back seat, and from this time the term roman-fleuve became common (cf. Hess et al.). Although the forerunners have the form of the roman-fleuve, they can be more accurately described as family sagas, since, in contrast to the romans-fleuve of the period between the world wars, they show society from an exclusively bourgeois perspective.

To individual representatives of the genus

Les Hommes de bonne volonté by Jules Romains shows society, in contrast to the forerunners of the roman-fleuve, from extremely diverse perspectives, in particular that of unanimism , a philosophical movement to which the author professes. The characters in this huge work, with 27 volumes and 779 chapters, the largest of the novel genre in 20th century French literature, are of completely different social origins. So emerge: a clergyman, a teacher, a worker, a member of parliament, a marquis and even great personalities of contemporary history such as Clemenceau , Jaurès , Joffre or Briand .

A great variety of perspectives, albeit less clear, can be found in Les Thibault by Roger Martin du Gard. Jacques, the brother of the main character Antoine Thibault, has a view of society that is diametrically opposed to that of his brother and his family; he rejects civil order.

A similar contradiction of views can be found in Duhamel's Chronique des Pasquier , where Ferdinand lives on the street after a professional failure. This novel also shows a wide variety of social milieus in the upper class (trade, theater, science ...).

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