Andre Gide and the questioning of the novel

Abstract

The paper presents some elements of the works of Andre Gide that question the novel as a genre, starting at the end of the 19th Century. Gide does not consider novels any of the narratives or farces which precede the only book considered as such: Les faux-monnayeurs (1926). Here we have the question of the genre discussed by the protagonist Edouard. Who himself is a writer who is writing a novel which has the same title as the one we are reading. Thus, the strategy of mise en abyme, of a book inside the other, is analyzed. Other expedients are also analyzed: the fi rst person diary of Edouard, to which the reader has access, as well as the reports of several characters about the same fact, which introduce the idea of the presence of several point of views and question the omniscient narrator’s discourse of Truth. Keywords: Modern French novel. André Gide. Mise en abyme.