Ceci n'est pas une tragédie is the first monograph dedicated to the particularly innovative American writer David Markson and includes all his work from 1956 to 2007.

Whether a work transposes or transforms empirical data, displaces or conceals it, goes beyond or transfigures it, it is worthy of study in relation to its tangible conditions of possibility. Claude Simon's novels are studied here in the light of literary history, cultural history and the sociology of literature.

Can we feel the pain of a character in a novel ? Immersed in a fiction, a reader may experience various somatosensory feelings. Such an experience of "empathic reading" is hardly conceivable through theories of interpretation that ignore the role of the biological body.

Towards the end of the 16th century,the English set sail for new horizons. The main aim of this collective work is to study the forms of the first meetings in "contact zones", uncertain places where self and other are thrown together on a shared stage.