Liquid: A Source of Meaning and Structure in Claude Simon’s La Bataille De Pharsale

Applying his own adaptation of structuralist criticism, the author seeks out the modes of meaning in one of the most difficult of the French romans experimentaux. Mr. Storrs identifies liquid-related material from the realms of description, phonology, and narration, and shows how the complicated patterns of association between those elements illuminate the adventures of the novel’s two central protagonists and reveal the creative principle which underpins La Bataille de Pharsale.