French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Labadie, The Corporate Novel in the 21st Century
Novel and Narrative Prose

Aurore Labadie

Le roman d’entreprise au XXIe siècle

Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2016, 252 p.

ISBN: 978-2-87854-698-9

Publisher's Overview:

In the literary imagination, is the corporation still that gaping maw that daily devours its share of workers and reduces the proletariat to the status of "bosses' fodder"? Neoliberal ideology tends to portray it as a space of individual fulfillment, a structure where personal self-realization, material well-being, and general prosperity converge. To challenge these representations, the contemporary corporate novel seeks to defamiliarize their self-evident assumptions and expose the everyday reality of domination. Shedding light on the recent transformations—linguistic, managerial, structural, and ideological—of large corporations, it highlights their socio-economic, ethical, and anthropological consequences by drawing upon the heuristic capacity of the novelistic form. Breaking away from realist and naturalistic aesthetics, it invents new forms capable of reflecting contemporary issues.

Through a panoramic corpus, this study aims to demonstrate the movement toward the repoliticization of literature initiated by the corporate novel. Borrowing tools from the humanities to conceptualize the metamorphoses of capitalism, it offers new ways of reading reality while radically reframing the question of literary commitment.

Aurore Labadie holds a Ph.D. in Literature from the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III and currently teaches at the secondary school level. Her research focuses on political literature and, more specifically, on representations of work in the novel since the 1980s. She received the PSN Dissertation Prize in 2016.

Aurore Labadies study investigates how contemporary fiction engages with the socio-economic, ethical, and anthropological consequences of late capitalism. Moving beyond traditional realist and naturalistic aesthetics, the works examined in this volume invent innovative formal approaches to reflect contemporary working conditions. By drawing upon critical tools from the humanities, Labadie demonstrates how these narratives defamiliarize corporate ideology and expose everyday workplace domination, marking a significant turn toward the repoliticization of literature in the twenty-first century.

This book will be particularly useful for researchers, students, and readers interested in political literature, sociology of literature, and representations of labor since the 1980s. It offers valuable insights into the evolving relationship between economic structures and narrative form, redefining the boundaries of literary commitment. By mapping a diverse corpus of texts, Labadie provides a structured framework for understanding how modern fiction grapples with the linguistic and managerial transformations of the large contemporary enterprise.