Void and Voice

Questioning Narrative Conventions in André Gide's Major First-Person Narratives

By Charles O'Keefe

Void and Voice

260 pp., 6 x 9, 1 figs, notes, bibl

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-9255-8
    Published: January 1996

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Distributed for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Department of Romance Studies

Charles O'Keefe provides a close reading of André Gide's three major first-person narratives--L'Immoraliste, La Porte étroite, and La Symphonie pastorale--through the lens of semiotics and narratology. O'Keefe argues that Gide is in many ways a 'pre-postmodernist' who uses narrative strategies to show that there is a crucial connection between telling a story and telling the self. In particular, O'Keefe demonstrates the paradoxical fact that the tales simultaneously subvert and generate the illusion of their own mimetic presence. O'Keefe's study, with its judicious use of deconstructionist techniques, offers new insights into the literary and philosophical implications of Gide's fiction.