GRAMMATICAL AND SYNTACTIC MEANS OF REPRESENTING MEMORY AND RECONSTRUCTING THE PAST IN LAURENT MAUVIGNIER’S NOVEL LA MAISON VIDE

Abstract

The article examines the grammatical and syntactic means of representing memory and reconstructing the past in La maison vide, the novel by 2025 Goncourt Prize laureate Laurent Mauvignier. The relevance of the study is determined by the growing interest of contemporary French prose in individual and collective memory, family history, loss, silence, and the reconstruction of the past, as well as by the limited scholarly attention devoted to the linguistic organization of this recent novel. The aim is to identify the main grammatical and syntactic features of La maison vide and determine their role in constructing the narrative of memory, uncertainty, absence, and reconstruction. The study analyzes the novel’s text, particularly its prologue and opening sections, using descriptive, contextual-interpretive, functional-stylistic, and structural-syntactic methods.

The analysis demonstrates that extended syntactic constructions, coordination and subordination, repetition, syntactic accumulation, negative and modal constructions, variation in verbal tenses, dashes, nominative and incomplete constructions, and personal and impersonal forms are central to the representation of memory. Long syntactic periods reproduce the gradual and nonlinear process of recollection, while repetition conveys the cyclical nature of the search. Negative constructions create a “grammar of absence,” representing memory through gaps and losses. Modal forms express uncertainty and the hypothetical nature of reconstructed events, while tense variation enables movement between the present, the past, and the possible past. Dashes and self-correction contribute to the representation of inner speech. The study concludes that grammatical and syntactic organization is an essential component of Mauvignier’s poetics, modeling the reconstruction of the past as fragmented, incomplete, and uncertain.