La Jalousie
Encyclopedia
La Jalousie is a 1957 novel
by Alain Robbe-Grillet
. The title of its English
editions is Jealousy, but this fails to capture the ambiguity of the French
title: "la jalousie" can be translated as "jealousy", but also as "the jalousie window". And the jealous husband in the novel spies on his wife through the Venetian blind-like slats of the jalousie windows of their home.
La Jalousie is one of critics' and literary theorists' main examples of Robbe-Grillet's demonstrations of his concept of the nouveau roman, for which he later explicitly advocated in his 1963 Pour un nouveau roman (For a New Novel).
Robbe-Grillet argued that the novel was constructed along the lines of an "absent" third-person narrator. In that account of the novel the narrator, a jealous husband, silently observes the interactions of his wife (referred to only as "A...") and a neighbour, Franck. The silent narrator, who never names himself (and whose presence is merely inferred, e.g. by the number of place settings at the dinner table or deck chairs on the verandah) is extremely suspicious that A... is having an affair with Franck. Throughout the novel, he continually replays his observations and suspicions (that is, created scenarios about A... and Franck) so much so that it becomes impossible to distinguish moments that are observed from those that are merely suspected.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet
Alain Robbe-Grillet , was a French writer and filmmaker. He was, along with Nathalie Sarraute, Michel Butor and Claude Simon, one of the figures most associated with the Nouveau Roman trend. Alain Robbe-Grillet was elected a member of the Académie française on March 25, 2004, succeeding Maurice...
. The title of its English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
editions is Jealousy, but this fails to capture the ambiguity of the French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
title: "la jalousie" can be translated as "jealousy", but also as "the jalousie window". And the jealous husband in the novel spies on his wife through the Venetian blind-like slats of the jalousie windows of their home.
La Jalousie is one of critics' and literary theorists' main examples of Robbe-Grillet's demonstrations of his concept of the nouveau roman, for which he later explicitly advocated in his 1963 Pour un nouveau roman (For a New Novel).
Robbe-Grillet argued that the novel was constructed along the lines of an "absent" third-person narrator. In that account of the novel the narrator, a jealous husband, silently observes the interactions of his wife (referred to only as "A...") and a neighbour, Franck. The silent narrator, who never names himself (and whose presence is merely inferred, e.g. by the number of place settings at the dinner table or deck chairs on the verandah) is extremely suspicious that A... is having an affair with Franck. Throughout the novel, he continually replays his observations and suspicions (that is, created scenarios about A... and Franck) so much so that it becomes impossible to distinguish moments that are observed from those that are merely suspected.