Geocritical Interpretation of Spatial Imagery in Robert Merle's Derrière la vitre

Derrière la vitre (Behind the Glass) is a 1970 novel by a French writer Robert Merle. It focuses on the hour-by-hour recital of events of one day, 22 March 1968, that led to occupation of the Sorbonne's newly built campus in Nanterre and started further student protest movement of May 1968. The same series of events is presented through focal points of several characters, including students, professors and Algerian workers living the Nanterre bidonville close to the faculty construction site, allowing to examine and compare their experiences. The spatial imagery of Nanterre itself plays an important role in the narrative, and is often compared and opposed to the new concrete-and-glass faculty building. The metaphor of «glass» separating idealistically inspired students from the immigrant workers, with whose very hands this «glass» had been built, and, more broadly, from France in general is essential to the novel. The paradox that gave birth to this research is in the apparent...Show moreDerrière la vitre (Behind the Glass) is a 1970 novel by a French writer Robert Merle. It focuses on the hour-by-hour recital of events of one day, 22 March 1968, that led to occupation of the Sorbonne's newly built campus in Nanterre and started further student protest movement of May 1968. The same series of events is presented through focal points of several characters, including students, professors and Algerian workers living the Nanterre bidonville close to the faculty construction site, allowing to examine and compare their experiences. The spatial imagery of Nanterre itself plays an important role in the narrative, and is often compared and opposed to the new concrete-and-glass faculty building. The metaphor of «glass» separating idealistically inspired students from the immigrant workers, with whose very hands this «glass» had been built, and, more broadly, from France in general is essential to the novel. The paradox that gave birth to this research is in the apparent contradiction between, on one hand, multiple descriptions of the emptiness and facelessness of Nanterre from different points of view and, on the other hand, a heavy corpus of historical associations that these same spaces evoke in the the collective memory of the characters. The former allows to apply the concept of the non-place to the humal spaces in the text, while the latter opens a possibility to speak of the «site of memory» (lieu de mémoire) value of the described places. Using a thoroughly presented methodological and conseptual framework, I am aiming at elaborating, how paradoxal this particularity, in fact, is, and at answering the question, if the spatial imagery of Nanterre in Derrière la vitre, described during the one particular historical turning point, can be geocritically read as a non-place in the process of becoming a lieu de mémoire.Show less

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Geocritical Interpretation of Spatial Imagery in Robert Merle's Derrière la vitre