Jean Genet, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs [Our Lady of the Flowers]

Federico Sabatini (Università Degli Studi di Torino)

Ed. by David Houston Jones, University of Exeter
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.5.2.07: French Writing and Culture: Postwar and Contemporary, 1945-present.
Vol. editors: Kate Averis (University of Western Australia), Hugo Azerad (University of Cambridge), Patrick ffrench (King's College London), Edward Forman (University of Bristol), Akane Kawakami (Birkbeck, University of London), Siobhán McIlvanney (King's College London), Sinan Richards (King's College London), Tim Unwin (University of Bristol), David Williams (University of Sheffield)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1943

Places

France (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

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Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs

, Jean Genet's first novel, was written in 1941 and 1942 during Genet's time in the Prison of Fresnes. Not only is the work set in a detention centre, it also presents the experience of captivity as its major, all-encompassing theme. The narrator, a prisoner who bears the same name as the author (“…la solitude de la prison me donnait cette liberté d'être avec les cent Jean Genet entrevus au vol chez cent passants…”, Genet 1948: 305) [“… the solitude of prison gave me the freedom to be with the hundred Jean Genets glimpsed in a hundred passers-by..”, Genet 1963: 239], describes his long-term imprisonment and his life as dominated by the solitude of the prison cell, a feeling which is both distressing and ecstatic throughout the novel:

Cette cellule

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3265 words

Citation: Sabatini, Federico. "Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 September 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=20277, accessed 22 November 2024.]

Jean Genet, Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs [Our Lady of the Flowers]

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