French Literature Reviews - 2026
Y. Hanhart-Marmor, Pierre Michon. Une écriture oblique
Novel and Narrative Prose
Pierre Michon
Une écriture oblique
Yona Hanhart-Marmor
Villeneuve d'Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2020.
182 pages - 22 euros - ISBN 978-2-7574-3176-4
Both the themes explored by Pierre Michon and his writing style are characterized by a rejection of the straight line and the direct approach. To truly understand his work, one must look away from the center toward the periphery: ordinary people, the provinces, and literary gestures that might at first glance seem trivial.
If Michon deploys obliquity in its most varied forms, it is to propose, in an equally oblique manner, a theory of it. Major themes and genuine artistic stakes can only be grasped by starting from the detail, the periphery, and digression.
Obliquely, Michon portrays the world in a far more striking way than any frontal approach ever could. Better yet, Michon invites us to engage in this mental exercise. The challenge lies in uncovering the oblique rhetorical effects within the precision of his sentences, moving beyond the imposture of the written word to reach the essential constellation of life itself.
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Pictorial Obliquity: From Literature to Painting
Michonian ekphrasis: a means of asserting the sovereignty of fiction
Iconographic analysis or a definition of literature
A theorization of obliquity: center and periphery
A constitutive decentering
Painting as obliquity
Chapter 2: From Absence to Presence, Failure as Success
A writing of the derisory and the absent
Absence as a condition for writing
Abyme structures within the utterance
Oblique descriptions of the authorial act
Fundamental decentering: wandering beyond language
Chapter 3: Total Obliquity: The Example of La Grande Beune
Relations of substitution
A narrative of obliquity
Stylistics of obliquity: figures of displacement
Chapter 4: Metonymic Obliquity: Dettaglio
The detail at the heart of Michonian poetics
The role of the pathosformel
Conclusion
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
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Senior Lecturer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Yona Hanhart-Marmor has published an essay with Rodopi entitled Des Pouvoirs de l’ekphrasis. L’objet auratique dans l’oeuvre de Claude Simon. She has also published articles on Marcel Proust, Michel Leiris, Nathalie Sarraute, and Annie Ernaux, among others. She is currently working on narratives written by authors belonging to the third generation after the Holocaust.
The concept of obliquity in literature often refers to a departure from linear narrative structures and direct representation, favoring instead the use of digression, metonymy, and the focus on minor details to construct meaning. By emphasizing the periphery rather than the center, authors can challenge conventional modes of storytelling and explore the complexities of human experience. This approach aligns with broader traditions in modern French literature that seek to interrogate the relationship between language, visual art, and the act of writing itself, often through the lens of ekphrasis or the deliberate aestheticization of absence and failure.
In Pierre Michon: Une écriture oblique, Yona Hanhart-Marmor examines Michon's use of rhetorical strategies, including pictorial references and abyme structures, to navigate the tension between the written word and the reality it captures. By analyzing the role of the detail and the pathosformel, the book explores how a decentered narrative perspective functions in his work. Readers interested in contemporary French prose and the intersection of visual culture and narrative theory may find this examination relevant.