Le fantastique de Maurice Sandoz: Le cas du "Labyrinthe"
The Fantastic Genre in the Novel "The Maze" of Maurice Sandoz

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the structure of Maurice Sandoz’s novel Le Labyrinthe (The Maze) in order to determine to what extent that novel belongs to the fantastic genre. Drawing on classical theories of the fantastic, the present article demonstrates that Sandoz’s Labyrinthe raises terminological issues, since it contains elements that canonical theories consider as fantastiques but also merveilleux (Todorov, Caillois). A detailed analysis of the Sandozian forewords’ characteristics makes it possible to show that the author plays with the notions of limit and hesitation. The latter are crucial in the seminal theories on the fantastique and are at the core of the Sandozian strategy that consists in the blurring of the boundaries between author, narrator, narrative, and “reality”. This study constitutes a first step towards a more detailed analysis of Sandoz’s fantastique and its goal is to underlines the necessity of a perspective shift in the comprehension thereof.

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