Nathalie Sarraute, Le planétarium, Paris, Gallimard (Blanche), 1959, 310 p.

« Voici les Guimier. Un couple charmant. Gisèle est assise auprès d’Alain. Son petit nez rose est ravissant. Ses jolis yeux couleur de pervenche brillent. Alain a un bras passé autour de ses épaules. Ses traits fins expriment la droiture, la bonté. Tante Berthe est assise près d’eux. Son visage, qui a dû être beau autrefois, ses yeux jaunis par le temps sont tournés vers Alain. Elle lui sourit. Sa petite main ridée repose sur le bras d’Alain d’un air de confiance tendre.
Mais on éprouve en les voyant comme une gêne, un malaise.
Qu’est-ce qu’ils ont ? On a envie de les examiner de plus près, d’étendre la main… Mais attention, un cordon les entoure. Tant pis, il faut voir. Il faut essayer de toucher… Oui, c’est bien cela, il fallait s’en douter. Ce sont des effigies. Ce ne sont pas les vrais Guimier. »
(Quatrième de couverture)

UZIEL, Linda, « Les Métamorphoses de l’intériorité. Roman et psyché dans leur déroulement historique. Analyse historique et comparative du phénomène entre la philosophie et le discours romanesque » , Thèse de Doctorat en Littérature comparée, dir. Guy Lavorel et Wladimir Krysinski, Université Lyon 3 en cotutelle avec l’Université de Montréal, 2006, 500 p. +++ Thèse de doctorat

### UZIEL, 2006, PDF ###

SOUSA, Germana H. P. de, « L’usage de la parole chez Nathalie Sarraute », Graphos: Revista da Pós-Graduação em Letras, vol. 13, n° 2 (2011), p. 1-9. +++ Article de revue

### Résumé
Ce travail a le propos de faire l’analyse du récit du Planétarium, roman de Nathalie Sarraute. Le but est de dévoiler la source de l’énonciation, tout en essayant de mettre en évidence les techniques narratives mises en oeuvre par Sarraute pour mêler parole du narrateur et parole du personnage, et pour agencer les différents discours dans le roman. On cherche encore à montrer le monde des tropismes ainsi que la lutte serrée entre la conversation et la sous-conversation, et par quels moyens, à travers les images, l’auteur arrive à verbaliser l’indicible.

Sousa, 2011, PDF ###

BACHAT, Charles, « L’Inscription du social dans Le Planétarium de Nathalie Sarraute », dans Roger-Michel ALLEMAND (dir.), Le “Nouveau roman” en questions, 4: Situation diachronique, Paris, Minard, 2002, p. 205-218. +++ Chapitre de collectif

ORR, Mary, « The Space of Satire: Le Planétarium by Nathalie Sarraute », Forum for Modern Language Studies, vol. 30, n° 4 (octobre 1994), p. 365-373. +++ Article de revue

### Orr, 1994, PDF ###

FLAMBARD-WEISBART, Véronique, « (Re-)écrire le lieu commun: Nathalie Sarraute et Agnès Varda »,RLA: Romance Languages Annual, n° 6 (1994), p. 52-56. +++ Article de revue

### Porte également sur Entre la vie et la mort. ###

PFISTER, Jolanda, « La Langue et le style chez Nathalie Sarraute: L’Exemple du Planétarium », dans Jean-Michel ADAM (dir.), Travaux d’étudiants, Lausanne, Université de Lausanne, 1993, p. 171-190. +++ Chapitre de collectif

VELGUTH, Madeleine, « Images religieuses dans Le Planétarium de Nathalie Sarraute », Romance Notes, vol. 24, n° 3 (printemps 1984), p. 214-220. +++ Article de revue

CALIN, Françoise, « Le planétarium de Nathalie Sarraute ou les tentations de l’apprenti-écrivain », Romance Notes, n° 15 (1974),pp. 401-406. +++ Article de revue

### Abstract
Creators in art and the creative act are Sarraute’s real protagonists in Les Fruits d’Or, a novel about a novel, and in Entre la Vie et la Mort, where writers are the main characters-and in her other novels, especially Le planétarium, in which young Alain Guimiez strives to become a writer. Numerous obstacles interfere with the creative process in Guimiez’s case. First of all, societal distractions, his fascination for literary salons, in particular the idle circle hovering around Germaine Lemaire. Secondly, his tendency to confuse art and reality, to turn his Aunt Berthe into a character in a novel. And, finally as a necessary precondition to creating, he has to rid himself of his exquisite taste, his obsession with perfection. For, in art, perfection is a trap, a false concept which presupposes the existence of absolute esthetic criteria, determined once and for all. Will Guimiez become a Swann or an Elstir? a Charlus or a Vinteuil? In the end Le Planétarium appears to give him the benefit of the doubt. ###

RAILLARD, Georges, « Nathalie Sarraute et la violence du texte (À propos de Planétarium) », Littérature, n° 2 (1971), p. 89-102. +++ Article de revue

### Raillard, 1971, PDF ###

MINOGUE, Valerie, « Nathalie Sarraute’s Le planétarium: The Narrator Narrated », Forum for Modern Language Studies, n° 9 (1973), p. 217-234. +++ Article de revue

LEUBE, Eberhard, « Aspekte der literarischen Tradition im Nouveau Roman: Nathalie Sarraute und Le planétarium », dans Eberhard LEUBE, Ludwig SCHARDER et Titus HEYDENRIECH (dir.), Interpretation und Vergleich:Festschrift fur Walter Pabst, Berlin, E. Schmidt, 1972, p. 184-206. +++ Chapitre de collectif

FALCO-SCHEUCH, Éléonora Maria, « Family conversation in the novel: Four twentieth century women writers », thèse de doctorat, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1998, 375 f. +++ Thèse de doctorat / mémoire de maîtrise

### Abstract
The aim of this dissertation is to analyze four novels by contemporary women authors as examples of a microgenre I have called the “family conversation novel”. Two traits define this microgenre. In the first place, the voices of the characters take over the act of narration in such a way that dialogue acquires crucial importance. The second trait is that subject of the novels is the family. Beyond the assumption of talkative characters in novels written by garrulous women, a cliché which the authors that belong in this microgenre initially exploited, a highly innovative technique that would considerably alter the way novels are read was being explored. on the thematic level, the claims of the family, the traditional subject of women’s writing, were being subjected to scrutiny.

The writers’ works are analyzed comparatively fundamental lines: first the issue of along three language, and specifically the recurrence of dialogue, in the second place the issue of reflexivity, and finally the representation of the family that the novels enact for their characters and designate for their readers.
The novels that are analyzed are Ivy Compton-Burnett’s The Present and the Past, Nathalie Sarraute’s Le Planétarium, Natalia Ginzburg’s Lessico famigliare, and Albalucía Angel’s Estaba la pájara pinta sentada en el verde limón. The novels belong to four different literary traditions and were originally written in different languages, thus calling for a comparative study. After an introduction in which the links between the writers themselves is explored, each of the novels is analyzed in a separate chapter.

La version PDF de la thèse est disponible pour les membres de communautés universitaires qui ont un abonnement institutionnel auprès de UMI - Proquest ###

HAVERCROFT, Barbara Jane, « Oscillation and subjectivity: Theories of “enonciation” and the contemporary French and German novel », thèse de doctorat, University of Toronto, 1988, 450 f. +++ Thèse de doctorat / mémoire de maîtrise

### Abstract
This thesis presents a critical study of current theoretical writings dealing with enonciation, with particular emphasis on the French linguistic and semiotic tradition, followed by an analysis of three contemporary literary texts in terms of the predominant features of their enonciation. Both the literary and theoretical texts explore the potentialities of the same features: the markers of subjectivity in language, the traces of the act of enonciation. The theoretical discourse reveals a dissatisfaction with the closed confines of earlier structuralist theories and a consequent endeavour to go beyond them, beyond langue as a static system, to account for the movement inherent in language. All three literary texts display a unique and insistent play with the markers of their enonciation, resulting in narratives of unceasing movement and irresolvable ambiguity.
In Robbe-Grillet’s Djinn, the pronominal deictics inaugurate a pattern of oscillation that reverberates throughout the novel on several levels. At the heart of this novel is an empty centre, a je to which no fixed referent can be attributed. Textual fluctuation of this pronominal deictic is engendered by its multiplicity, by a plurality of identities, and by a surfeit of non-deictic information that parodies and subverts the functions of identification and fixed reference.
The study of Sarraute’s Le Planétarium demonstrates how the Greimassian theory of modalities, with certain modifications, provides a fitting heuristic device for examining the novel’s metonymic reflections and deflections of beliefs and desires. Ambiguity in Le Planétarium is largely due to an intricate web of equivocal opinions, characterized by a continual movement which is linked with the vacillation of tropismes.
In Johnson’s Mutmassungen uber Jakob, the interaction of various markers of enonciation yields a text of speculations and heterogeneity. The border transgressions between the histoire and discours modes of enonciation and the dissolution of the assumed homogeneity of the distinct textual sections mirror the uncertainty and the unceasing boundary crossings of the novel’s themes.
Despite differences in subject matter and specific features of their enonciation, all three novels exhibit oscillation and plurality, in a movement beyond binarism into an enigmatic realm of deferral of meaning. ###

HALL, Colette Trout, « Les mères chez les romancières du XXe siècle », thèse de doctorat, Bryn Mawr College, 1983, 304 p. Bryn Mawr College +++ Thèse de doctorat / mémoire de maîtrise

### Abstract
If Colette’s autobiographical works present a positive maternal figure–Sido is a nurturing mother who became a model for the writer–other novelists increasingly present mothers in a negative light and denounce their devastating influence on their children. As early as Nathalie Sarraute’s Planetarium (1959), there appears a very petty and tyrannical mother figure. This type, with a few variations, can be found in Simone de Beauvoir’s works as well as in more recent writers such as Francoise Mallet-Joris or Christine de Rivoyre. In their works, mothers appear as inhibiting and abusive figures dedicated to crushing their children’s autonomy. In Marguerite Duras, mothers are less petty, but display, altogether, a possessive and overwhelming maternal love. In Violette Leduc’s and Marie Cardinal’s novels, the image of the mother deteriorates completely. Both writers denounce with hate the role their mother played in their life.
If mothers depicted in these works are mostly negative figures, we cannot however talk about the emergence of an “anti-maternal” literature similar to what is found in male writers like Jules Renard, Francois Mauriac or Herve Bazin. For, if women writers denounce mothers, they also denounce society in general, with its taboos which imprison women in certain roles. In this respect, Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex was of the utmost importance for it crystallized all the current ideas on women and presented an analysis of the feminine condition which permitted women, and thus women writers, to start thinking in other ways. It allowed them to develop the courage to reveal their thoughts and feelings about an area which had been repressed till now.
Discarding the invulnerable, quasi saint-like image of the mother, however destructive it might seem, clears the path for a new understanding of the role of woman as mother. Contemporary women writers are echoing the deep changes which are occurring in French society and elsewhere and which are placing the transition from a paternal, authoritarian to a more liberal, equalitarian education in the limelight. ###

FINAS, Lucette, « Le cœur transpercé des statues de cire », Littérature, dossier « Nathalie Sarraute », n° 118 (juin 2000), p. 15-24. +++ Article de revue

### Abstract
Alain’s call to Germaine Lemaire in The Planetarium prefigures Sarraute’s long-in-waiting theatricality: impersonal characters defined through their speech and aversions to others’ speech — tropisms. ###

SAMOYAULT, Tiphaine, « Des choses sans objet », Littérature, n° 118, dossier « Nathalie Sarraute » (juin 2000), p. 25-34. +++ Article de revue

### Abstract
Furnishings in Sarraute — see The Planetarium — become things without their status as objects, forms given materiality, in a reversal of the realistic and historical perspective.

Samoyault, 2000, PDF ###