REFLECTIONS ON THE SUBJECT-OTHER RELATIONSHIP IN ROBBE-GRILLET'S EARLY NOVELS: A STUDY THROUGH KEY SIGNIFIERS

Abstract

As a representative writer of the French nouveau roman, Alain Robbe-Grillet in his early works focused on the core issue in post-war French intellectual circles--the relationship between the subject and the other. To explore how his novels rethink this relationship, this paper takes key signifiers as the entry point and, drawing on textual analysis, systematically interprets the artistic features of destabilizing the signified within the connotative system and reconstructing the signifier network and textual structure. Through key signifiers, Robbe-Grillet transcended the subject-centered stance of Sartrean existentialism, and, from a structuralist perspective, reined in the infinite drift of signifiers and constructed an egalitarian relationship in meaning creation between the author and the reader. His literary practice further repaired the rift between the subject and the other, fully demonstrating the ideological depth and the value of formal innovation of the French nouveau roman.