Abstract
Tanguy Viel’s novels are peculiar variations on well-known novelistic genres: they creatively re-work
familiar plot configurations, narrative strategies and thematic concerns. It would appear that this
subversive re-activation of the genre can be related to this contemporary literary aesthetics which
foregrounds blurring of generic boundaries and mixing of traditional forms. In this context the ambiguous
generic status of Viel’s fiction deserves close scrutiny, which is precisely the aim of the present
paper: it analyses his last novel Paris-Brest (2009) within the framework of selected contemporary
theories of genre.
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