Conclusion

Abstract

Modern writing focuses on the seams and sutures of literary invention. It recognises that fiction is not a house with open windows but a linguistic fabrication conforming to a given set of literary and ideological conventions. The bricks and mortar of all narrative fiction are language and perspective. Reading the ‘nouveau roman’ one is made aware of the fact that ‘realism’, at least the traditional brand of ‘realism’ which, in literature, has produced novels ‘containing’ rounded characters, a continuous plot and psychological insight, is in essence a figurative embodiment of the Aristotelian ideal of unity. By seeking roundedness, continuity and insight, realism relies heavily on the formal restrictions imposed by the laws of unity and homogeneity in art. ‘L’effet de réel’, to quote Barthes, is doubly deceitful since it glosses over both the polysemic ‘realities’ of the language and formal properties upon which it is built and, by overlooking the infinite, the incomplete, the equivocal, it misrepresents that very ‘reality’ which it claims to reproduce.