Narrative destiny in self-writing: Michel Leiris' La 'Regle du Jeu'

Abstract

The publication of the Michel Leiris' La Règle du jeu for the first time in a single volume in Gallimard's Pléïade collection poses the generic question concerning the relationship of self-writing with its desired but absent end. This article examines the narrative organisation of the work in an attempt to understand how its end is figured at successive stages. It pays particular attention to the narrative disjunctions at the centre of self-writing, to the principle of chance that gains in importance as the work unfolds, and finally attempts to offer an explanation for Leiris' unexpected return, in the final volume, to the surrealist notion of le merveilleux.