B. Gervais, La Ligne brisée: labyrinthe, oubli & violence (Logiques de l'imaginaire II) - Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

French Literature Reviews - 2026

B. Gervais, La Ligne brisée: labyrinthe, oubli & violence (Logiques de l'imaginaire II)
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Bertrand Gervais, La Ligne brisée: labyrinthe, oubli & violence – Logiques de l'imaginaire, volume II, Montréal, Le Quartanier, coll. “Erres Essais” no. 4, March 2008, 216 p.

  • ISBN 978-2-923400-42-6
  • $25.95 / €21

On the Vox Poetica website: Imaginaries of the Labyrinth. An Interview with Bertrand Gervais

Logiques de l'imaginaire, volume II:

Let us imagine a form of forgetting that is not merely the flip side of memory, but a modality of action. A positive forgetting. An active forgetting, in præsentia. Can one inhabit such forgetting? Can it be translated into narrative? If memory is an unbroken line linking the present to the past, forgetting is assuredly a broken line, and the path it traces consists of disjointed segments, of moments devoid of continuity, much like a labyrinth.

La Ligne brisée explores the labyrinth as a theater of forgetting. Through the multitude of choices it demands, the layout of the labyrinth induces disorientation and a loss of bearings. Yet self-forgetting here is not merely a superficial effect; it is a fundamental feature, as the myth of Theseus teaches us. At the heart of this narrative unfolds a scene of immense symbolic significance: the Greek hero enters the labyrinth to slay the Minotaur. Yet when he emerges victorious—as traditional versions of the myth confirm—he remembers nothing. Whatever transpired within the labyrinth is utterly erased. The execution of the monster is of such violence that it induces complete amnesia.

Thus, the figure of the labyrinth allows us to conceptualize forgetting and to represent the disorientation and violence inextricably bound up with it. Drawing on a contemporary literary and cinematic corpus (from Paul Auster to David Lynch), La Ligne brisée demonstrates the significance of this figure, recurrently employed in works of art to represent the complexity of our world and the conception of the subject it implies—the very antithesis of the Oedipal subject at the core of our modernity.

A researcher, professor, and writer, Bertrand Gervais has authored essays on literary reading and American literature. In 2007, also with Le Quartanier, he published Figures, lectures, the first installment of a trilogy on the logics of the imaginary. He is also the author of Donald Barthelme: critique de la vie quotidienne (Paris, Belin, 2002), Lecture littéraire et explorations en littérature américaine (Montréal, XYZ, 1998), and À l'écoute de la lecture (Montréal, VLB, 1992). In fiction, he has published L'île des Pas perdus (2007), Les failles de l'Amérique (2005), and Oslo (1999) with XYZ, which also released his short story collection Tessons (1998). He teaches in the Department of Literary Studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal. He directs Figura, the Research Center on the Text and the Imaginary, as well as NT2, the Research Laboratory on Hypermedia Arts and Literatures. He co-directs the Erres Essais series at Le Quartanier with Jean-François Chassay.

The volume continues an ongoing inquiry into the logics of the imaginary, examining how contemporary cultural forms negotiate complex experiences of the subject. La Ligne brisée explores the labyrinth as a theater of forgetting through a contemporary literary and cinematic corpus ranging from Paul Auster to David Lynch. Readers interested in contemporary literary theory and the intersection of narrative studies with aesthetic representations of the labyrinth may find this volume relevant to their inquiries.

Within the broader landscape of contemporary criticism, explorations of the imaginary often turn to recurring symbolic figures to interrogate modern subjectivity. The labyrinth has long served as a rich spatial metaphor in artistic creation, engaging questions of choice, spatial disorientation, and narrative immersion. Bertrand Gervais is a researcher, professor, and writer who teaches in the Department of Literary Studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal and directs Figura, the Research Center on the Text and the Imaginary.