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Simon Kemp

University of Oxford, French, Faculty Member

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I'm an Associate Professor in French at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Somerville College. I'm currently working on the second volume of an academic trilogy on theories of consciousness and literature, critical theory and film. I also have interests in the twentieth- and twenty-first-century French novel, narrative form and translation studies. I run the French sub-faculty's outreach programme, and its blog, which you can find at bookshelf.mml.ox.ac.uk.
Address: Somerville College, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6HD, UK

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Papers by Simon Kemp

‘Stimulus and Response: Behaviorism, Tropisms, and Twentieth-Century French Thought and Literature’, Romanic Review, 105.3-4 (2014), 341-60.

This article explores the impact of the behaviorist theory of mind on French literature and cultu... more This article explores the impact of the behaviorist theory of mind on French literature and culture, and in doing so uncovers a significant mismatch between the "behaviorist novel" as it has been narrowly conceived and the broader theories of behaviorism as a movement within psychology. Understanding this disparity permits us to reconsider the validity of the label "behaviorist" with regard to mid-twentieth-century authors, and notably among European writers, Camus, Sartre, and Sarraute.

Le Nouveau Roman et le roman policier: éloge ou parodie?

Le roman policier était un objet de fascination pour les Nouveaux Romanciers. La liste des ouvrag... more Le roman policier était un objet de fascination pour les Nouveaux Romanciers. La liste des ouvrages qui s’approprient les thèmes, les personnages ou la structure narrative du polar est longue, et comprend des textes de Robbe-Grillet, Simon, Pinget et Butor. La forme fixe du polar, et le thème dominant de la restitution de l’ordre à l’aide de la raison et de la vérité, se sont avérés irrésistibles pour un mouvement littéraire qui visait à remettre en question toute présupposition esthétique ou épistémologique de la fiction romanesque. Comment caractériser ce rapport d’imitation entre le Nouveau Roman et le roman policier, qui ne semble pas être une parodie hostile, mais qui n’est pas exactement non plus un éloge du genre ?

‘The Many-Layered Palimpsest: Metafiction, Genre Fiction and Georges Perec’s “53 jours”’

Rewriting Wrongs: French Crime Fiction and the Palimpsest, ed. by Angela Kimyongür and Amy Wigelsworth (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), pp. 163–174

The chapter examines Georges Perec’s last novel, ’53 jours’, an unfinished fantasia of nested cri... more The chapter examines Georges Perec’s last novel, ’53 jours’, an unfinished fantasia of nested crime stories that sends its reader bouncing between different levels of fictionality within the text, as well as outward into the novel’s literary and crime-fiction intertexts, and ultimately into Perec’s own troubled wartime childhood experience. I argue that the particular mode of reading elicited by crime fiction forms a crucial element in Perec’s literary project.

'Post-psychoanalytic Proust'

Modern Language Quarterly, 75.1 (2014), 77-101

A la recherche du temps perdu, the last great pre-Freudian novel of the mind, has attracted much ... more A la recherche du temps perdu, the last great pre-Freudian novel of the mind, has attracted much attention from psychoanalytic critics since its publication. This article explores the analysis of Proust’s novel by critics, with a particular focus on the representation of the conscious and unconscious mind. It follows the history of such criticism through the rise of psychoanalysis in the humanities to the waning of its influence in the early years of the present century. The article argues that our postpsychoanalytic present is the ideal moment to reexamine the parallels and divergences between Proust’s and Freud’s understandings of consciousness and to measure them against the rival philosophical and psychological theories developed during the twentieth century. The current pluralism in the humanities’ approach to analyzing representations of the mind allows the literary author’s implicit understanding of mental life to assert itself more clearly.

'Contamination Anxiety in Annie Ernaux's Twenty-First-Century Texts'

Women's Writing in Twenty-First-Century France: Life as Literature, ed. by Amaleena Damlé and Gill Rye (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013), pp. 168-79

Can we detect new trends in the work of France’s most significant life-writer over the first deca... more Can we detect new trends in the work of France’s most significant life-writer over the first decade of the new century? Since the year 2000, Annie Ernaux has published two short récits, a substantial extract from her private diary, a co-written photography project and memoir of her cancer treatment, and most recently, the entwined personal and social history of Les Années. During this period, too, Ernaux has become ever more established as a major voice in French literature, consolidating best-seller status with overdue recognition in French academic criticism. However, elevation to the literary pantheon is not without problems for an autobiographer whose intention was never to offer her readers ‘the writer’s life’. On the contrary, Ernaux’s project has always been to present herself as a typical member of her sex, her social class or her historical generation. Her texts emphasize those aspects of her experience and attitudes which might be generally valid for large sectors of the population, and which might in particular echo the experiences of her readership. This paper uses narrative theory to demonstrate how Ernaux’s writing exploits the division between the time of narrating and narrated time to split her own persona into a writing self, who self-consciously discusses the composition of the text she is creating, and a former experiencing self, who is largely devoid of writerly traits. I argue that Ernaux’s recent work displays a growing anxiety about writerly contamination of the experiencing self. Such contamination risks damaging both the ‘everywoman’ aspect of Ernaux’s persona on which her connection to her readers relies, and the sociological or psychological validity of the material presented, if it was experienced at the time with an eye to subsequent publication. Such anxiety is sometimes made explicit, as when Ernaux complains in L’Usage de la photo of the ‘lost innocence’ of her photographs once the book project has been conceived, or insists in her public-private diary, ‘je ne suis pas écrivain, j’écris, puis je vis’. It can also be detected in Ernaux’s omissions: the mismatches between diary texts and récit where the literary life has been expunged, the interview questions about the undisclosed impact of Ernaux’s writing on her relationship with her mother, and, most strikingly, the disappearance of her entire literary career from the narrative of Les Années. Ernaux’s later work, the paper argues, reveals the difficulty of writing the self as a mirror to society when the act of writing itself singles you out from the crowd.

'Translation Studies and the Integrated Modern Languages Degree'

Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research, 2 (2013), 121-34

This article examines the role of translation studies within the modern languages undergraduate d... more This article examines the role of translation studies within the modern languages undergraduate degree course. It explores three possible goals that the teaching of translation might serve: as an aid to language learning, as a subject in its own right, and as a means of integrating the language learning with the cultural or area studies which make up the rest of the modern languages course. The article investigates the origins of translation as a teaching method, its fall from favour in the era of communicative language teaching in the late twentieth century, and its renaissance in the last decade due to the extraordinary recent growth in postgraduate courses in translation studies at UK higher education institutions and across anglophone academia, in order to ask what the purpose and possibilities of the subject might now be.

'André Breton's L'Amour fou'

The Literary Encyclopedia, ed. by Robert Clark et al., (2013)

'The Inescapable Metaphor: How Time and Meaning Become Space When We Think about Narrative'

Philosophy and Literature, 36 (2012), 391-403

Stories go places. It is impossible to talk about narrative without using spatial terms, such as ... more Stories go places. It is impossible to talk about narrative without using spatial terms, such as “plotline,” “narrative thread,” “twists and turns,” “pacing,” or “circularity.” In such metaphors, the two essential elements of narrative, time and meaning, are consistently replaced by distance and direction. Drawing on Bergson’s ideas on the spatial representation of time and Boroditsky’s cognitive research into spatial metaphors in abstract thought, and using literary digression in Sterne and Diderot as illustration, I consider the pervasiveness of these metaphors in narrative theory, and the consequences of such spatial mediation in the discipline’s analysis of narrative form.

'Pastiche, Structuralism and Authorial Intention'

Journal of Romance Studies, 12.2 (2012), 93-105

Two enduring legacies of mid-twentieth century Structuralist theory are the typological approach ... more Two enduring legacies of mid-twentieth century Structuralist theory are the typological approach to literary subgenres and the idea of the Death of the Author, which rules authorial intention irrelevant in the interpretation of the text. The article demonstrates how both of these influential approaches to literary criticism are put into question by certain texts on the fringes of pastiche. The 'possible pastiche', for which the author's intention to imitate a textual model is unclear, troubles the boundaries of any typology of hypertexts that would set clear limits to its categories. In the continuum of rewritings that extends beyond Structuralism's best-fit categories, only the restoration of authorial intention preserves the terms parody and pastiche from expansion into all-encompassing redundancy.

'Representing the Mind in the French Catholic Novel'

MLR, 107 (2012), 408-21

The apogee of the French Catholic Novel in the first half of the twentieth century coincides with... more The apogee of the French Catholic Novel in the first half of the twentieth century coincides with a period of unprecedented cultural interest in the workings of the mind, with a variety of artistic, scientific, and philosophical ideas on consciousness prominently employed by major French writers of the period. This article explores how the Catholic novel participates in this debate, presenting its own detailed conception of consciousness derived from theological principles, finding echoes with certain contemporary theories of the mind and contrast with others, and, in particular, coming into sharp conflict with both the existentialist and psychoanalytic models.

‘The Ghost and the Machine: Minds and Spirits in Darrieussecq’

Dalhousie French Studies, 98, (Spring 2012)

Darrieussecq's novels are filled with ghosts. A phantom husband appears to the wife he left behin... more Darrieussecq's novels are filled with ghosts. A phantom husband appears to the wife he left behind. A sibling lost in early childhood becomes a face at the window or a stranger on a train. Twice Darrieussecq has her narrators recount the story from beyond the grave. How does the strong presence of the supernatural in her writing relate to the scientific aspects of her fiction, which explore technological advances and scientific theories with rationalist enthusiasm? In particular, how do these disembodied spirits square with a resolutely materialist view of the mind, which embodies consciousness in the neurons of the physical brain? The prominent theme of consciousness in Darrieussecq's fiction is intriguingly entwined with that of ghosts. As the return of repressed memories, or as outward manifestations of mourning in the living, Darrieussecq's representation of ghosts draws on traditional psychoanalytic understanding of the mind, while troubling the texts' overt reliance on a cognitive model of consciousness. This paper aims to unpick the literal and figurative implications of the spectres in the text, in order to see how they shape the model of the mind that Darrieussecq presents to her reader.

'Georges Bernanos'

The Literary Encyclopedia, ed. by Robert Clark et al., (2012)

'Bergson, Bauby and the Neuroscience of Emotion'

French Studies Bulletin, 121 (2011), 73-75

Henri Bergson's theory of the emotions claims that the intensity with which an emotion is felt re... more Henri Bergson's theory of the emotions claims that the intensity with which an emotion is felt results from a reciprocal feedback system between mind and body. We clench our fists from anger, and the muscle tension of our clenched fists shows us the strength of our anger. This article demonstrates not only that Bergson's intuitive philosophy is closely reflected in the cognitive neuroscience of Antonio Damasio, but also that it is plausibly illustrated in Le Scaphandre et le papillon, Jean-Dominique Bauby's celebrated memoir of locked-in syndrome. Bauby's striking equanimity in the face of his paralysis accords closely with both Damasio's and Bergson's theories.

'Postmodern Detectives and French Traditions'

French Crime Fiction (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009), 107-24

'Japrisot on Film'

Sébastien Japrisot: The Art of Crime, ed. by Martin Hurcombe and Simon Kemp (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009)

Japrisot’s engagement with cinema is long-lasting and varied, consisting of self-directed short f... more Japrisot’s engagement with cinema is long-lasting and varied, consisting of self-directed short films, original screenplays, and adaptations of his novels by himself and others, from the 1960s to the present day. The central issue in examining Japrisot on film is that of perspective. Hallmarks of Japrisot’s novels are a multiplicity of voices and a subjectivity of viewpoint, building the mystery through the deceptions, distortions and contradictions engendered by this polyphony of unreliable storytellers. This chapter argues that neither of these central elements of Japrisot’s technique finds a straightforward translation into cinema. The camera’s gaze is consistent where the narrators were conflicting; what we see on screen has the authority of truth, where what we were told in the text raised doubts. The epistemological status of the narrative has thus changed fundamentally. Drawing on the narratological work of Gérard Genette and Seymour Chatman, this chapter explores this incompatibility of media and discovers how Japrisot on film requires significant alterations to his literary methods in order to approximate the hermeneutic functioning of his fiction. Despite such approximations, it argues, the films offer very different pleasures to the viewing public to those afforded to the reader.

‘Le Roman Policier Par Excellence’: Narrative Perspective in Sébastien Japrisot and the Norms of the Crime Novel

New Approaches to Crime in French Literature, Culture and Film, ed. by Louise Hardwick (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 137-50

'Darrieussecq's Mind'

French Studies, 62 (2008), 429-41

From Naissance des fantômes onwards, Marie Darrieussecq's representation of the self draws heavil... more From Naissance des fantômes onwards, Marie Darrieussecq's representation of the self draws heavily on the materialist mind/brain model of cognitive science. Her fiction makes use of the discipline's discourse with and against the grain, creating micro-narratives of the mind's surface level and present moment which contrast sharply with more familiar psychoanalytic perspectives. Narrative form in Darrieussecq, I argue, can be characterized as a stream-of-consciousness, which, while failing to conform to the literary model set by Dujardin and Joyce, is in fact closer to the original psychological conception of the term. The article concludes by examining Darrieussecq's model of the mind in the context of France's current ‘guerre des psys’ between cognitive science and psychoanalysis.

'Homeland: voyageurs et patrie dans les romans de Marie Darrieussecq'

Nomadismes des romancières contemporaines de langue française, ed. A. Lasserre and A. Simon (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2008), 159-66

'Fade-Out: Patterns of Inconclusion in Modiano's Novels'

Patrick Modiano, ed. John. E. Flower (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 223-38

'Parler une langue morte: Fredric Jameson et le pastiche postmoderne'

Poétiques de la parodie et du pastiche de 1850 à nos jours, ed. C. Dousteyssier-Khoze and F. Place-Verghnes (Bern: Lang, 2006), 313-22

‘Stimulus and Response: Behaviorism, Tropisms, and Twentieth-Century French Thought and Literature’, Romanic Review, 105.3-4 (2014), 341-60.

This article explores the impact of the behaviorist theory of mind on French literature and cultu... more This article explores the impact of the behaviorist theory of mind on French literature and culture, and in doing so uncovers a significant mismatch between the "behaviorist novel" as it has been narrowly conceived and the broader theories of behaviorism as a movement within psychology. Understanding this disparity permits us to reconsider the validity of the label "behaviorist" with regard to mid-twentieth-century authors, and notably among European writers, Camus, Sartre, and Sarraute.

Le Nouveau Roman et le roman policier: éloge ou parodie?

Le roman policier était un objet de fascination pour les Nouveaux Romanciers. La liste des ouvrag... more Le roman policier était un objet de fascination pour les Nouveaux Romanciers. La liste des ouvrages qui s’approprient les thèmes, les personnages ou la structure narrative du polar est longue, et comprend des textes de Robbe-Grillet, Simon, Pinget et Butor. La forme fixe du polar, et le thème dominant de la restitution de l’ordre à l’aide de la raison et de la vérité, se sont avérés irrésistibles pour un mouvement littéraire qui visait à remettre en question toute présupposition esthétique ou épistémologique de la fiction romanesque. Comment caractériser ce rapport d’imitation entre le Nouveau Roman et le roman policier, qui ne semble pas être une parodie hostile, mais qui n’est pas exactement non plus un éloge du genre ?

‘The Many-Layered Palimpsest: Metafiction, Genre Fiction and Georges Perec’s “53 jours”’

Rewriting Wrongs: French Crime Fiction and the Palimpsest, ed. by Angela Kimyongür and Amy Wigelsworth (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2014), pp. 163–174

The chapter examines Georges Perec’s last novel, ’53 jours’, an unfinished fantasia of nested cri... more The chapter examines Georges Perec’s last novel, ’53 jours’, an unfinished fantasia of nested crime stories that sends its reader bouncing between different levels of fictionality within the text, as well as outward into the novel’s literary and crime-fiction intertexts, and ultimately into Perec’s own troubled wartime childhood experience. I argue that the particular mode of reading elicited by crime fiction forms a crucial element in Perec’s literary project.

'Post-psychoanalytic Proust'

Modern Language Quarterly, 75.1 (2014), 77-101

A la recherche du temps perdu, the last great pre-Freudian novel of the mind, has attracted much ... more A la recherche du temps perdu, the last great pre-Freudian novel of the mind, has attracted much attention from psychoanalytic critics since its publication. This article explores the analysis of Proust’s novel by critics, with a particular focus on the representation of the conscious and unconscious mind. It follows the history of such criticism through the rise of psychoanalysis in the humanities to the waning of its influence in the early years of the present century. The article argues that our postpsychoanalytic present is the ideal moment to reexamine the parallels and divergences between Proust’s and Freud’s understandings of consciousness and to measure them against the rival philosophical and psychological theories developed during the twentieth century. The current pluralism in the humanities’ approach to analyzing representations of the mind allows the literary author’s implicit understanding of mental life to assert itself more clearly.

'Contamination Anxiety in Annie Ernaux's Twenty-First-Century Texts'

Women's Writing in Twenty-First-Century France: Life as Literature, ed. by Amaleena Damlé and Gill Rye (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2013), pp. 168-79

Can we detect new trends in the work of France’s most significant life-writer over the first deca... more Can we detect new trends in the work of France’s most significant life-writer over the first decade of the new century? Since the year 2000, Annie Ernaux has published two short récits, a substantial extract from her private diary, a co-written photography project and memoir of her cancer treatment, and most recently, the entwined personal and social history of Les Années. During this period, too, Ernaux has become ever more established as a major voice in French literature, consolidating best-seller status with overdue recognition in French academic criticism. However, elevation to the literary pantheon is not without problems for an autobiographer whose intention was never to offer her readers ‘the writer’s life’. On the contrary, Ernaux’s project has always been to present herself as a typical member of her sex, her social class or her historical generation. Her texts emphasize those aspects of her experience and attitudes which might be generally valid for large sectors of the population, and which might in particular echo the experiences of her readership. This paper uses narrative theory to demonstrate how Ernaux’s writing exploits the division between the time of narrating and narrated time to split her own persona into a writing self, who self-consciously discusses the composition of the text she is creating, and a former experiencing self, who is largely devoid of writerly traits. I argue that Ernaux’s recent work displays a growing anxiety about writerly contamination of the experiencing self. Such contamination risks damaging both the ‘everywoman’ aspect of Ernaux’s persona on which her connection to her readers relies, and the sociological or psychological validity of the material presented, if it was experienced at the time with an eye to subsequent publication. Such anxiety is sometimes made explicit, as when Ernaux complains in L’Usage de la photo of the ‘lost innocence’ of her photographs once the book project has been conceived, or insists in her public-private diary, ‘je ne suis pas écrivain, j’écris, puis je vis’. It can also be detected in Ernaux’s omissions: the mismatches between diary texts and récit where the literary life has been expunged, the interview questions about the undisclosed impact of Ernaux’s writing on her relationship with her mother, and, most strikingly, the disappearance of her entire literary career from the narrative of Les Années. Ernaux’s later work, the paper argues, reveals the difficulty of writing the self as a mirror to society when the act of writing itself singles you out from the crowd.

'Translation Studies and the Integrated Modern Languages Degree'

Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research, 2 (2013), 121-34

This article examines the role of translation studies within the modern languages undergraduate d... more This article examines the role of translation studies within the modern languages undergraduate degree course. It explores three possible goals that the teaching of translation might serve: as an aid to language learning, as a subject in its own right, and as a means of integrating the language learning with the cultural or area studies which make up the rest of the modern languages course. The article investigates the origins of translation as a teaching method, its fall from favour in the era of communicative language teaching in the late twentieth century, and its renaissance in the last decade due to the extraordinary recent growth in postgraduate courses in translation studies at UK higher education institutions and across anglophone academia, in order to ask what the purpose and possibilities of the subject might now be.

'André Breton's L'Amour fou'

The Literary Encyclopedia, ed. by Robert Clark et al., (2013)

'The Inescapable Metaphor: How Time and Meaning Become Space When We Think about Narrative'

Philosophy and Literature, 36 (2012), 391-403

Stories go places. It is impossible to talk about narrative without using spatial terms, such as ... more Stories go places. It is impossible to talk about narrative without using spatial terms, such as “plotline,” “narrative thread,” “twists and turns,” “pacing,” or “circularity.” In such metaphors, the two essential elements of narrative, time and meaning, are consistently replaced by distance and direction. Drawing on Bergson’s ideas on the spatial representation of time and Boroditsky’s cognitive research into spatial metaphors in abstract thought, and using literary digression in Sterne and Diderot as illustration, I consider the pervasiveness of these metaphors in narrative theory, and the consequences of such spatial mediation in the discipline’s analysis of narrative form.

'Pastiche, Structuralism and Authorial Intention'

Journal of Romance Studies, 12.2 (2012), 93-105

Two enduring legacies of mid-twentieth century Structuralist theory are the typological approach ... more Two enduring legacies of mid-twentieth century Structuralist theory are the typological approach to literary subgenres and the idea of the Death of the Author, which rules authorial intention irrelevant in the interpretation of the text. The article demonstrates how both of these influential approaches to literary criticism are put into question by certain texts on the fringes of pastiche. The 'possible pastiche', for which the author's intention to imitate a textual model is unclear, troubles the boundaries of any typology of hypertexts that would set clear limits to its categories. In the continuum of rewritings that extends beyond Structuralism's best-fit categories, only the restoration of authorial intention preserves the terms parody and pastiche from expansion into all-encompassing redundancy.

'Representing the Mind in the French Catholic Novel'

MLR, 107 (2012), 408-21

The apogee of the French Catholic Novel in the first half of the twentieth century coincides with... more The apogee of the French Catholic Novel in the first half of the twentieth century coincides with a period of unprecedented cultural interest in the workings of the mind, with a variety of artistic, scientific, and philosophical ideas on consciousness prominently employed by major French writers of the period. This article explores how the Catholic novel participates in this debate, presenting its own detailed conception of consciousness derived from theological principles, finding echoes with certain contemporary theories of the mind and contrast with others, and, in particular, coming into sharp conflict with both the existentialist and psychoanalytic models.

‘The Ghost and the Machine: Minds and Spirits in Darrieussecq’

Dalhousie French Studies, 98, (Spring 2012)

Darrieussecq's novels are filled with ghosts. A phantom husband appears to the wife he left behin... more Darrieussecq's novels are filled with ghosts. A phantom husband appears to the wife he left behind. A sibling lost in early childhood becomes a face at the window or a stranger on a train. Twice Darrieussecq has her narrators recount the story from beyond the grave. How does the strong presence of the supernatural in her writing relate to the scientific aspects of her fiction, which explore technological advances and scientific theories with rationalist enthusiasm? In particular, how do these disembodied spirits square with a resolutely materialist view of the mind, which embodies consciousness in the neurons of the physical brain? The prominent theme of consciousness in Darrieussecq's fiction is intriguingly entwined with that of ghosts. As the return of repressed memories, or as outward manifestations of mourning in the living, Darrieussecq's representation of ghosts draws on traditional psychoanalytic understanding of the mind, while troubling the texts' overt reliance on a cognitive model of consciousness. This paper aims to unpick the literal and figurative implications of the spectres in the text, in order to see how they shape the model of the mind that Darrieussecq presents to her reader.

'Georges Bernanos'

The Literary Encyclopedia, ed. by Robert Clark et al., (2012)

'Bergson, Bauby and the Neuroscience of Emotion'

French Studies Bulletin, 121 (2011), 73-75

Henri Bergson's theory of the emotions claims that the intensity with which an emotion is felt re... more Henri Bergson's theory of the emotions claims that the intensity with which an emotion is felt results from a reciprocal feedback system between mind and body. We clench our fists from anger, and the muscle tension of our clenched fists shows us the strength of our anger. This article demonstrates not only that Bergson's intuitive philosophy is closely reflected in the cognitive neuroscience of Antonio Damasio, but also that it is plausibly illustrated in Le Scaphandre et le papillon, Jean-Dominique Bauby's celebrated memoir of locked-in syndrome. Bauby's striking equanimity in the face of his paralysis accords closely with both Damasio's and Bergson's theories.

'Postmodern Detectives and French Traditions'

French Crime Fiction (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2009), 107-24

'Japrisot on Film'

Sébastien Japrisot: The Art of Crime, ed. by Martin Hurcombe and Simon Kemp (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009)

Japrisot’s engagement with cinema is long-lasting and varied, consisting of self-directed short f... more Japrisot’s engagement with cinema is long-lasting and varied, consisting of self-directed short films, original screenplays, and adaptations of his novels by himself and others, from the 1960s to the present day. The central issue in examining Japrisot on film is that of perspective. Hallmarks of Japrisot’s novels are a multiplicity of voices and a subjectivity of viewpoint, building the mystery through the deceptions, distortions and contradictions engendered by this polyphony of unreliable storytellers. This chapter argues that neither of these central elements of Japrisot’s technique finds a straightforward translation into cinema. The camera’s gaze is consistent where the narrators were conflicting; what we see on screen has the authority of truth, where what we were told in the text raised doubts. The epistemological status of the narrative has thus changed fundamentally. Drawing on the narratological work of Gérard Genette and Seymour Chatman, this chapter explores this incompatibility of media and discovers how Japrisot on film requires significant alterations to his literary methods in order to approximate the hermeneutic functioning of his fiction. Despite such approximations, it argues, the films offer very different pleasures to the viewing public to those afforded to the reader.

‘Le Roman Policier Par Excellence’: Narrative Perspective in Sébastien Japrisot and the Norms of the Crime Novel

New Approaches to Crime in French Literature, Culture and Film, ed. by Louise Hardwick (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), pp. 137-50

'Darrieussecq's Mind'

French Studies, 62 (2008), 429-41

From Naissance des fantômes onwards, Marie Darrieussecq's representation of the self draws heavil... more From Naissance des fantômes onwards, Marie Darrieussecq's representation of the self draws heavily on the materialist mind/brain model of cognitive science. Her fiction makes use of the discipline's discourse with and against the grain, creating micro-narratives of the mind's surface level and present moment which contrast sharply with more familiar psychoanalytic perspectives. Narrative form in Darrieussecq, I argue, can be characterized as a stream-of-consciousness, which, while failing to conform to the literary model set by Dujardin and Joyce, is in fact closer to the original psychological conception of the term. The article concludes by examining Darrieussecq's model of the mind in the context of France's current ‘guerre des psys’ between cognitive science and psychoanalysis.

'Homeland: voyageurs et patrie dans les romans de Marie Darrieussecq'

Nomadismes des romancières contemporaines de langue française, ed. A. Lasserre and A. Simon (Paris: Presses Sorbonne Nouvelle, 2008), 159-66

'Fade-Out: Patterns of Inconclusion in Modiano's Novels'

Patrick Modiano, ed. John. E. Flower (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007), 223-38

'Parler une langue morte: Fredric Jameson et le pastiche postmoderne'

Poétiques de la parodie et du pastiche de 1850 à nos jours, ed. C. Dousteyssier-Khoze and F. Place-Verghnes (Bern: Lang, 2006), 313-22

Oxford Literary Companion to L'Etranger

Writing the Mind: Representing Consciousness from Proust to the Present

Writing the Mind: Representing Consciousness from Proust to the Present explores how writers acro... more Writing the Mind: Representing Consciousness from Proust to the Present explores how writers across the last hundred years have risen to the challenge of putting the workings of the conscious and unconscious mind on the page. Against the backdrop of a century of cultural and scientific development, the study examines the work of seven ground-breaking French and European authors: Marcel Proust, whose writing is the cornerstone of the modern psychological novel; Georges Bernanos and the Catholic novelists; André Breton and Surrealism; Jean-Paul Sartre and the existentialist novel; Samuel Beckett; Nathalie Sarraute; and, finally, bringing us into our own century, Marie Darrieussecq. Simon Kemp examines the inf luence of science, faith, and philosophy on these writers, and demonstrates how writers learn from or react against their predecessors or quarrel with their peers. Kemp’s elegant study also charts the rise and wane of Freudian inf luence on literature through the twentieth century, and the emergence of cognitive and neo-Darwinian ideas at the dawn of the twenty-first. In the work of these seven writers, we discover radically different understandings of how consciousness and the unconscious mind are constituted, which are the most salient characteristics of mental life, and even what it is that defines a mind at all.

French Fiction into the Twenty-First Century: The Return to the Story (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2010)

The French novel’s “return to the story” in the last decades of the twentieth century and the beg... more The French novel’s “return to the story” in the last decades of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first is has been widely acknowledged in literary scholarship. But is this assessment accurate? With French Fiction in the Twenty-First Century, Simon Kemp looks at the work of five contemporary writers—Annie Ernaux, Pascal Quignard, Marie Darrieussecq, Jean Echenoz, and Patrick Modiano—in the context of the current French literary scene, and examines how far they pursue the innovations of their predecessors and just how far they have turned their backs on the era of experiment.

Sébastien Japrisot: The Art of Crime, editor, with Martin Hurcombe, (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009)

Influential author of highly unconventional crime fiction, screenwriter, and occasional film dire... more Influential author of highly unconventional crime fiction, screenwriter, and occasional film director, Sébastien Japrisot was one of those rare contemporary writers in France able to establish an international reputation for himself. Although Japrisot’s novels in particular continue to be read and studied across the world, this volume is the first ever academic study of Japrisot’s work in the fields of both literature and cinema. Through a combination of thematic and text-specific studies, this volume takes in, and examines the legacy of, Japrisot’s work from his youthful writings under his real name, Jean-Baptiste Rossi, to his crime fiction and screen writings of the 1960s and 1970s, concluding with his final novel Un long dimanche de fiançailles (A Very Long Engagement). It is both an essential introduction to Japrisot and a valuable academic assessment of his work’s importance in the field of contemporary French literature and film.

Defective Inspectors: Crime Fiction Pastiche in Late-Twentieth-Century French Literature (Oxford: Legenda, 2006)

Crime fiction is a popular target for literary pastiche in France. From the nouveau roman and the... more Crime fiction is a popular target for literary pastiche in France. From the nouveau roman and the OULIPO group to the current avant-garde, writers have seized on the genre to exploit it for their own ends, toying with its traditional plots and characters, and exploring its preoccupations with perception, reason and truth. In the first full-length study of the phenomenon, Simon Kemp’s investigation centres on four major writers of the twentieth century, Alain Robbe-Grillet (b. 1922), Michel Butor (b. 1926), Georges Perec (1936-82) and Jean Echenoz (b. 1947). Out of their varied encounters with the genre, from deconstruction of the classic detective story to homage to the roman noir, Kemp elucidates the complex relationship between the pasticheur and his target, which demands an entirely new assessment of pastiche as a literary form.

Seeing Things: Vision, Perception and Interpretation in French Studies, editor, with Libby Saxton, Modern French Identities (Berne: Peter Lang, 2002)

Seeing Things explores all matters visual within the field of French studies. It brings together ... more Seeing Things explores all matters visual within the field of French studies. It brings together writings on French literature, philosophy and the visual arts, both from established critics and the new generation of young academics. From post-Freudian psychoanalysis through postmodernist theory to cognitive science, questions of vision have gained an unprecedented prominence in contemporary discourse. Seeing Things looks at the intersections of these questions with the concerns of Romance studies, and discovers fertile new territory in the crossover. Whether investigating the correspondences between photography and the novel, philosophy and perception, or time and film, the studies included here offer a radical exploration of western culture’s kaleidoscope of images.

Adventures on the Bookshelf

This is a blog for anyone interested in French language and literature, and particularly for sec... more This is a blog for anyone interested in French language and literature, and particularly for secondary-school students (and their teachers) who might consider coming to Oxford to study modern languages with us in the future. It’s run by Simon Kemp, the Schools Liaison Officer in the sub-faculty of French at Oxford, who is based in Somerville College. I’d be delighted to receive any feedback or suggestions for the site.

Unconscious Memory from Proust to the Present

A joint presentation with Prof Larry Squire of the University of California, San Diego, on the to... more