- Title
- Jeux textuels et paratextuels dans J'irai cracher sur vos tombes: au-delà du canular
- Creator
- Vuaille-Barcan, Marie-Laure; Sitbon, Clara; Rolls, Alistair
- Relation
- Romance Studies Vol. 32, Issue 1, p. 16-26
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1179/0263990413Z.00000000055
- Publisher
- Maney Publishing
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2014
- Description
- The novel J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, which was famously written by the black American author Vernon Sullivan and translated into French by Boris Vian only to be outed subsequently as a hoax, is generally understood precisely as a simple prank or canular. A close reading of the text, however, reveals multiple layers of mise en abyme, which correspond to the work's equally thickly layered paratextual frame. This article explores the various reflexive devices used throughout the novel, considering them in the framework of its preface, foreword, afterword, and various newspaper articles and legal documents. This book, which is as underrated as it is famous, and in which the diegesis vies for space, at times subtly and at others flagrantly, with the ever-encroaching real world of the hors-texte, in fact raises a number of questions about literary creation, parody, authorial power, and translation. In this way, J'irai cracher sur vos tombes, by testing any number of limits, goes beyond those of an innocent prank.
- Subject
- mise en abyme; reflexivity; paratext; roman noir; Série Noire; 'traduit de l'américain'
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1308000
- Identifier
- uon:21586
- Identifier
- ISSN:0263-9904
- Language
- fre
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