Monograph
• Landais, Clotilde. Stephen King as a Postmodern Author. New York: Peter Lang Publishing. 2013. Print. Modern American Literature: New Approaches.
Although studies on Stephen King (1947–) traditionally belong to the field of popular culture, some of his stories, such as The Dark Half and “Secret Window, Secret Garden,” give an insightful perspective on contemporary fiction. Drawing upon methods in literary analysis and textual interpretation, this study proposes a new reading of Stephen King’s fiction as a literary reflection on the artistic identity of the writer and on writing. Taking popular culture material seriously, the book shows that horrific descriptions do not necessarily exclude metafiction. It also aims at serving as an introduction to major theories influencing contemporary American literature such as narratology, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, and theories of fiction.
Book Chapters
• Landais, Clotilde. “'Fair Extension:' Of Contemporary America.” The Modern Stephen King Canon: Beyond Horror. Eds. Philip L. Simpson and Patrick McAleer. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2019. 33-44. Print.
In his short-story “Fair Extension,” (Full Dark, No Stars, 2010), Stephen King draws upon the religious and literary traditions of the devil and gives a postmodern twist to the motif of the Faustian bargain. This article highlights how King re-tells Faust’s and Job’s stories as a mise en abyme of contemporary America and its recent traumas such as 9/11 and the Iraq war.
• Landais, Clotilde. “Reading Joyland and Dr. Sleep as Complementary Stories.” Stephen King’s Contemporary Classics: Reflections on the Modern Master of Horror. Eds. Philip L. Simpson and Patrick McAleer. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. 41-53. Print.
This article explores Stephen King's last two novels at the time: Joyland (June 2013) and Dr. Sleep (September 2013). Probably because they were both written the same year, these novels share quite a few common themes and figures which respond to one another, notably the ghost, the villain, and the hero -- a child with the shining. Drawing upon cognitive theories, this article proposes to explain how these themes and figures interact with each other in Joyland and Dr. Sleep and why these novels should be read as complementary stories in order for readers to greatly enrich their experience of Stephen King's narrative world.
• Landais, Clotilde. “La représentation littéraire de l’écrivain chez Stephen King: un reflet de l’imposture de l’institution littéraire.” Imaginaires de la vie littéraire: Fiction, figuration, configuration. Ed. Björn-Olav Dozo, Anthony Glinoer, and Michel Lacroix. Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012. 339-353. Print. Interférences.
This article explores three main narratives by Stephen King -- The Dark Half (1989), "Secret Window, Secret Garden" (1990) and Bag of Bones (1998) -- in which the author denounces the literary institution's deception (the fact that, while exploiting bestseller authors, it usually refuses to consider them as artists). King thus uses the literary representation of the writer as a metafictional tool to disqualify the institutional division between "mainstream" fiction and "popular" fiction.
• Landais, Clotilde. “Interroger le psychisme humain: le double dans Oniria de Patrick Senécal.” L’imaginaire médical dans le fantastique et la science-fiction. Ed. Jérôme Goffette and Lauric Guillaud. Paris: Bragelonne, 2011. 205-217. Print. Essais.
Between science fiction and fantastic fiction, Patrick Senécal’s novel Oniria questions the duality of the human psyche from a perspective that this article deems modern in two ways: first, the doppelgänger does not incarnate the dark side of the first-self, but his ideal. Second, the doppelgänger is aware of his nature of second-self. Thanks to this shift in the reading of one of Freud’s best-known theories, the doppelgänger must deal with his own identity crisis.
Articles
• Landais, Clotilde. “Genre Cataloguing in Fiction: The Case of Ray Bradbury’s Work.” The New Ray Bradbury Review 6 (2019): 17-28. Print.
Genre cataloguing in fiction has repercussions on many marketing aspects, but also on the author’s literary reputation. Because some genres among genre fiction are considered nobler than others, like fantastic fiction or speculative fiction, some authors manage to reach a particular position, akin to literary fiction authors. J. R. R. Tolkien, Ursula K. Le Guin, and Ray Bradbury are such authors. This article explores the following underlying questions: how is a work of fiction catalogued as literary or genre fiction--and more specifically, as science fiction, horror, or fantasy? Moreover, with an author like Ray Bradbury who skillfully combined elements from different genres and went from being considered a genre fiction author to a mainstream fiction author, how do scholars and publishers catalogue a particular narrative?
• Landais, Clotilde. “The Narrative Metalepsis as an Instrument of the Uncanny in Contemporary Fantastic Fiction.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 28.2 (2017): 236-252. Print.
In his novel Aliss (2000), Patrick Senécal pays homage to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its fictional universe. In the Quebec author’s hands, the children’s tale is transformed into a work for adults. Senécal explores the limits of the real and the possible through the adventures of an adolescent from suburban Brossard who finds herself in a parallel-world Montreal. This narratological analysis demonstrates how Senécal employs Genette’s narrative metalepsis to move a diegetic character into a metadiegetic universe and to evoke the sense of the uncanny which lies at the source of the fantastic.
This article is a translation and revised version of the article “Aliss de Patrick Senécal : la métalepse ontologique comme instrument du fantastique” published in @nalyses 8.2 (2013): 321-340, chosen as a semi-finalist for the Eight Annual Jamie Bishop Memorial Award given by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA) in January 2014.
• Landais, Clotilde. "Challenges and Strategies for Analysing the Translation of Fear in Horror Fiction." Literary Imagination 18.3 (2016): 242-254 (Online Advance Access -- DOI: 10.1093/litimag/imw018).
This article examines some of the challenges faced by horror fiction translators and presents strategies to answer these challenges. As horror fiction aims at inducing fear in the reader’s mind, its writing relies on two main mechanisms which both depend on specific elements which may prove difficult to translate: (1) the reality effect, which relies on cultural elements that, if not properly transferred from the source culture to the target's, may ruin the suspension of disbelief and character identification, and (2) suspense, which relies on narrative rhythm and a careful choice of words. Drawing upon prominent theories in translation studies and literary analysis, this article explores the French translation of some major horror fiction authors such as Stephen King and Jack Ketchum. It shows the consequences of improper translation on reception and proposes solutions to generate in the target text the effect intended in the source text.
• Landais, Clotilde. “La réécriture de Merlin comme affirmation de la littérarité de la bande dessinée francophone.” L’Esplumeoir 13 (2014): 27-46. Print.
The figure of Merlin, either per se or under different avatars of the archetypal wizard, is a central figure in contemporary Fantasy. In most of these representations, Merlin or his counterparts are presented as the hero figure from the proto-legend. However, there are some exceptions to this representation, and the Francophone graphic novel is a case in point. This article examines some examples of parodistic rewritings of the wizard’s figure, in series such as Merlin by Joann Sfar and José Luis Munuera (Dargaud, 1999-2003), Kaamelott by Alexandre Astier and Steven Dupré (Casterman, 2006-), Thorgal by Grzegorz Rosinski and Jean Van Hamme (Le Lombard, 1980-2006), and Lanfeust de Troy by Christophe Arleston and Didier Tarquin (Soleil, 1994-2000) to show that the Francophone graphic novel anchors itself in postmodernism while generating a redefinition of the Fantasy genre and its motifs.
In his novel Aliss (2000), Patrick Senécal pays homage to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and its fictional universe. In the Quebec author’s hands, the children’s tale is transformed into a work for adults. Senécal explores the limits of the real and the possible through the adventures of an adolescent from suburban Brossard who finds herself in a parallel-world Montreal. This narratological analysis demonstrates how Senécal employs Genette’s ontological metalepsis to move a diegetic character into a metadiegetic universe and to evoke the sense of the uncanny which lies at the source of the fantastic.
In January 2014, this article was chosen as a semi-finalist for the Eight Annual Jamie Bishop Memorial Award given by the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA).
• Landais, Clotilde. “Le métadiscours du fantastique ou comment écrire après la théorie du genre.” @nalyses 6.3 (2011): 150-166.
Horror fiction has always divided scholars, creating a tradition of theoretical thinking in which contemporary authors have to find their place. This article examines two horror novels by North American authors who inserted these different debates in their works. The study of Stephen King’s Dark Half and Patrick Senécal’s Sur le seuil allows me to show how the metadiscourse of horror fiction and the metadiscourse of horror writing underline the accuracy of Harold Bloom’s questions on the management of literary and theoretical influences in the creative process.
• Landais, Clotilde. “Aliénation et altérité: la construction identitaire dans Aliss de Patrick Senécal.” @nalyses 6.1 (2011): 176-196.
Standing apart from all social stereotypes, the novel Aliss, by the Quebec writer, Patrick Senécal, describes the process of a subjective alterity constructed by a character towards a reference group, while denying an objective alterity towards a second group. This article explains how, through this play between these two reference groups, Senécal signifies that a constructed feeling of alterity can lead its subject to an alienation as total as an objective alterity.
• Landais, Clotilde. “Nathan Zuckerman: Between the Sacred Fount and the Ivory Tower, or the Fall of the Artist as a Hero.” Philip Roth Studies 5.2 (2009): 95-103. Print.
In the course of the nine books that compose the Zuckerman series, Philip Roth’s fictitious writer illustrates the evolution of the fictionally represented artist since Goethe and Rousseau. This essay shows how, from the young writer yearning for the 19th-century artistic tradition, to the old novelist who has reached a 21st-century Ivory Tower from which he recognizes his mistakes as a man and artist, Roth’s fictitious writer positions himself in literary history as the post-modern anti-hero of our age.
• Landais, Clotilde. “L’hypertextualité comme révélateur d’identité dans Aliss de Patrick Senécal.” Clair-Obscur 5 (2009): 50-61. Print.
This article explores the play of transposition in Senécal's novel Aliss, which allows the author reveal Lewis Carroll's identity through his fictitious Doppelgänger Charles.
• Landais, Clotilde. “‘Vue imprenable sur jardin secret’ ou la déconstruction du fantastique selon Todorov.” Proceedings of the Cerisy-La-Salle Symposium, July 20-30, 2007: L’horreur dans la fiction contemporaine: Autour de Stephen King. Ed. Guy Astic and Jean Marigny. Paris: Bragelonne, 2008. 49-62. Print.
This article proposes a reading of Stephen King’s novella “Secret Window, Secret Garden” as a play on Todorov’s criteria of a necessary hesitation in fantastic fiction both on the character’s and on the reader’s part. Such a reading shows that, while horrifying his readers, King reflects on the fantastic genre, which questions the traditional division between literary fantastic fiction and popular horror fiction.
• Landais, Clotilde. “Aliss de Patrick Senécal: le corps violenté comme représentation métatextuelle.” @nalyses (2008): 20-34.
This article explains how, in his novel Aliss, Quebec author Patrick Senécal plays with intertextuality. Revisiting Lewis Carroll’s tales of initiation, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There, Senécal’s rewriting is established around the subversion of Carroll’s Wonderland, and more precisely around the literary representation of the abused body of the heroine. Within a logic of initiation, this corporal violence is part of the girl’s quest for her identity. However, these representations of the heroine’s abused body are also significant from a literary perspective, inasmuch as they force the reader to rethink Carroll’s tales, thus giving a metafictional dimension to the novel.
• Landais, Clotilde. “Le fantastique obvie de Stephen King et Patrick Senécal: Dire l’indicible et l’envers du réel.” Proceedings of the Research Seminar at the Finnish Institute in Paris, November 25-26, 2005: Le réel et son envers. Ed. Mervi Helkkula and Ulla Tuomarla. Publications du Département des Langues Romanes de l’Université de Helsinki 19 (2007): 65-77. Print.
Fantastic fiction, although dealing with supernatural phenomena, is defined in relation to reality. This article explores the ways authors of fantastic fiction describe what does not exist in order to create the reality effect essential to fear: techniques such as the acknowledgment of the impossibility of telling the supernatural, the use of markers of intensity, or of rhetorical devices such as allegory, metaphor, comparison, and hyperbole. However, the most important way of writing the unwritable appears to be through the creation of a self-referent language based on the one hand on intertextuality and on the other hand on a game of opposites.
Encyclopedia Entries