![]() Back in 2000, Smith was hailed as the symbol of multicultural, multiracial London and her first novel constituted an important landmark in British literature, in the same way as Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children had inaugurated a new type of writing in 1984 in both Indian and British literary productions. Haut de pageġ NW (2012) is Zadie Smith’s fourth novel after White Teeth (2000), The Autograph Man (2002) and On Beauty (2005). Il s’agira ainsi de dresser les contours de la société et de l’identité britanniques contemporaines telles qu’elles sont présentées dans NW. Je m’appuierai sur la métaphore du carrefour développée par David Lodge (lorsqu’il se demandait quelles directions le romancier de la deuxième moitié du vingtième siècle pouvait prendre), ainsi que sur les concepts de lignes de « segmentarité » et lignes de fuite développés par Deleuze et Guattari, lignes le long desquelles des vies individuelles et collectives s’ordonnent ou se fissurent. Dans chaque domaine, la question qui se pose, appliquée au roman de Smith, est de savoir s’il est possible de franchir les lignes qui séparent strictement les personnes, les quartiers, les races, les classes sociales et les objets culturels en catégories distinctes et d’aboutir ainsi à un mélange revigorant, ou bien si les lignes rigides de séparation persistent. The aim will be to try and delineate the contours of British contemporary society and identity as depicted in NW.Ĭet article vise à analyser NW, le quatrième roman de Zadie Smith, à travers la notion de croisements, que l’on peut envisager en tant que liens éthiques entre les personnages mais aussi comme déplacements géographiques dans la ville de Londres, mouvements le long de l’échelle sociale, rencontres multiculturelles, tissage de diverses traditions littéraires et mélange d’éléments de culture populaire et érudite. The argument will draw from David Lodge’s metaphor of the crossroads (when he wondered which directions the novelist of the second half of the twentieth century could take), as well as from Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of lines of “segmentarity” and lines of flight, along which individual and collective lives are ordered or fractured. In each of these areas, the question that is raised in relation to Smith’s novel is whether it is possible to step across the lines that strictly divide people, districts, races, social classes and cultural objects into separate categories and come up with an invigorating mélange, or if rigid lines of separation still persist. The purpose of this paper is to examine NW, Zadie Smith’s fourth novel, through the notion of crossings, which can be viewed as ethical connections between characters but also as geographical journeys across London, movements along the social scale, multicultural encounters, weavings of various literary traditions and lineages, as well as intertwining of high and popular culture. ![]()
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