Queneau’s novels are extremely popular for their wit and linguistic ingenuity but they also pose a serious challenge to the reader’s reconstruction of the fictional world, which can often go unrecognised. This study takes us back to the fundamental elements of Queneau’s worlds, demonstrating how his idiosyncratic style can affect the reader’s mental processing of the text (‘world-building’). It also demonstrates the internal organisation of Queneau’s fictional worlds. Drawing on cognitive discourse models and the philosophical notion of ‘possible worlds’, the book provides both comparative and general analysis of Queneau’s novels and case studies of Le Vol d’Icare, Les Fleurs bleues, and Loin de Rueil, exposing the resistance that these worlds present to stable cognitive reconstruction, notably through the subversion of world boundaries (‘world-play’), and the positing of impossible spaces (‘heterotopiae’).

The Author: Nina Bastin trained as an art historian, as well as studying French at Bristol University. She was a holder of two British Academy scholarships during her doctoral research into the reception of Queneau’s novels. She has taught a number of French language and literature courses at Bristol University, and specialises in the French novel.