French Literature Reviews - 2026
Bertrand Gervais, Au bout des doigts. Lecture, figure et imaginaire
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Literature makes full use of our capacity to mentally create beings and worlds from marks printed on pages. Words and sentences conjure up figures born of our imagination. We bring them to life within ourselves, let them develop, transform, inhabit our thoughts, and gradually free themselves from our grasp. A novel's character stays with us long after we have closed the book. The finely described face of a loved one becomes a haunting figure. A theater comes alive, populated by imaginary beings that we ourselves have summoned into existence.
Au bout des doigts explores this imaginary space that opens up and comes to life through contact with fiction. The readings offered examine numerous figures and their trajectories; they also question the relationship between perception and imagination, the links between memory and forgetting, between creation and repetition, the imaginary of the end and intimate apocalypses, and the forms assumed by idiocy when embodied in figures. A sustained exploration of the powers of the imaginary.
Full Professor in the Department of Literary Studies at the Université du Québec à Montréal, Bertrand Gervais directs the NT2 Laboratory and is the principal investigator for the partnered research project Mobile Quebec Literature (SSHRC). In 2022, he took over the direction of Figura, the Research Center on the Theories and Practices of the Imaginary, which he founded in 1998. In 2018, he was elected to the Academy of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of the Royal Society of Canada. His research focuses on theories of the imaginary, contemporary literature, and digital culture.
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Table of Contents
Introduction. Figures and the Imaginary, p. 7
Figuring
1. The Sound of the Falling Trombone. Reading and the Imaginary, p. 17
2. The Figure at Our Fingertips. Forgetting and Memory in Le nom sur le bout de la langue, p. 29
3. The Figure of Enchantment. The Tadzio Effect in Death in Venice, p. 41
4. Whose Fault Is It? Wonders and Signs of the End in Nathaniel Hawthorne, p. 53
Figural Trajectories
5. Chet Baker Is a Figure. On a Critical Fiction by Enrique Vila-Matas, p. 71
6. The Sentinel Entity Chloé Delaume. Trajectory of a Literary Avatar, p. 89
7. A Suspended Figure. Repetition and Doubling of a Figure from the September 11, 2001 Attacks, p. 101
8. The Secret Life of Events. The Poetics of Paul Auster, p. 119
Idiotic Figures
9. The Idiot as Sovereign. Figures of Forgetting and the Political in Blindness, p. 135
10. The Suburban Idiot. Bienvenue au conseil d’administration by Serge Cardinal, p. 147
11. A Tenuous and Persistent Crease. Left-Handed Countered versus Becoming Right-Handed, p. 159
12. Dali Attacked by the Real! Variations on a Figure of Immersion, p. 179
Conclusion. The Great Illusion, p. 189
Bibliography, p. 195
Bibliographical References, p. 203
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The study of the imaginary has long occupied a central place in modern literary criticism, intersecting with phenomenology, reception theory, and cognitive approaches to narrative. Scholars in these fields frequently investigate how printed signs on a page transform into vivid mental representations, exploring the psychological mechanisms that allow readers to inhabit fictional worlds. Within contemporary literary scholarship, these inquiries often bridge literary analysis with cultural theory, reflecting broader academic interest in how human consciousness interacts with aesthetic forms.
Bertrand Gervais investigates the mental spaces and figures that emerge through our contact with fiction, analyzing numerous trajectories and reading experiences. The volume explores the relationship between perception and imagination, links between memory and forgetting, and dynamics between creation and repetition. Additional areas of focus include the imaginary of the end, intimate apocalypses, and the varied forms assumed by idiocy when embodied in figures. Readers interested in contemporary literary theory and the workings of the imagination may find this exploration relevant to their studies.
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