A ''récit'' is a subgenre of the French novel, in which the narrative calls attention to itself. Literary critic

Roger Shattuck Roger Whitney Shattuck (August 20, 1923 in Manhattan, New York – December 8, 2005 in Lincoln, Vermont) was an American writer best known for his books on French literature, art, and music of the twentieth century. Background and education Born i ...

explains, "During a ''récit'', we are conscious of being at one remove from the action; the very act of narration interferes and calls attention to itself." Examples of the ''récit'' include works by

Benjamin Constant Henri-Benjamin Constant de Rebecque (; 25 October 1767 – 8 December 1830), or simply Benjamin Constant, was a French people, Franco-Switzerland, Swiss political thinker, activist and writer on political theory and religion. A committed repub ...

and

Eugene Fromentin Eugene may refer to: People and fictional characters * Eugene (given name), including a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Eugene (actress) (born 1981), Kim Yoo-jin, South Korean actress and former member of the sin ...

André Gide André Paul Guillaume Gide (; 22 November 1869 – 19 February 1951) was a French author and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (in 1947). Gide's career ranged from its beginnings in the Symbolism (arts), symbolist movement, to the advent o ...

Maurice Blanchot Maurice Blanchot (; ; 22 September 1907 – 20 February 2003) was a French writer, philosopher and literary theorist. His work, exploring a philosophy of death alongside poetic theories of meaning and sense, bore significant influence on post- ...

, and

Michel Leiris Julien Michel Leiris (; 20 April 1901 in Paris – 30 September 1990 in Saint-Hilaire, Essonne) was a French surrealist writer and ethnographer. Part of the Surrealist group in Paris, Leiris became a key member of the College of Sociology with G ...

. According to Shattuck,

The discomfort of the narrator in confronting his own effort of composition (by now it should be apparent that narrator and author become indistinguishable) has been inherited as one of the principal features of the recit.

Critic

Geoffrey Hartman Geoffrey H. Hartman (August 11, 1929 – March 14, 2016) was a German-born American literary theorist, sometimes identified with the Yale School of deconstruction, although he cannot be categorised by a single school or method. Hartman spent most ...

describes the ''récit'' as "a confessional narrative, a kind of dramatic monologue in prose . ... " Daniel Just writes of an ambiguity in the nature of the ''récit'':

For literary critics, the ''récit'' as a category became ... elusive—at once too broad and too specific. Meaning a "narrative" in general, ''récit'' has been used as an indefinite notion embracing many prose genres, to the point when it ceases to be clear if it does not coincide with narrative literature as such. At the same time, it has also served to identify a stylistic specificity found in the select works of only a few writers. This latter use finds perhaps its most exemplary illustrations in André Gide's '' L'Immoraliste'' and
Albert Camus Albert Camus ( , ; ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist. He was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history. His work ...
's ''
La Chute ''The Fall'' (french: La Chute) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. Set in Amsterdam, ''The Fall'' consists of a series of dramatic monologues by the self-proclaimed "judge-p ...
''. Gide, in particular, was quite meticulous in differentiating between his novels and their complex view of life, and his ''récits'' that portray life from a single perspective. Blanchot's insistence on the difference between the novel and the ''récit'' is equally scrupulous, but for other reasons. His emphasis on a strong generic meaning of the term ''récit''—which is evident in spite of the semantic overload this notion sometimes undergoes in his theoretical texts—has nothing to do with the number of points of view represented in the story. For Blanchot, the ''récit'' is a distinct literary form whose uniqueness resides in its not merely stylistic but "essential" difference from the genre of the novel.

Maurice Blanchot describes the ''récit'' as follows:

If we regard the ''récit'' as the true telling of an exceptional event which has taken place and which someone is trying to report, then we have not even come close to sensing the true nature of the ''récit''. The ''récit'' is not the narration of an event, but the event itself, the approach to that event, the place where that event is made to happen—an event which is yet to come and through whose power of attraction the ''récit'' can come into being, too.Quoted in

References

Sources

* * * * {{cite journal, last1=Shattuck, first1=Roger, title=The Doubting of Fiction, journal=

Yale French Studies ''Yale French Studies'' is an academic journal published biannually by Yale University Press and connected with the French department at Yale University. It was established in 1948 by editor Robert Greer Cohn, and is currently edited by Alyson Wate ...

, date=1950, issue=6, pages=101–108, doi=10.2307/2929201, jstor=2929201 Literary genres