| dc.description.abstract | The object of our thesis research was In the Café of Lost Youth, a novel by Patrick Modiano published in 2007. As in most of his works, toponyms of Paris are the ubiquitous thematic core of this novel. Modiano characters frequently recall the past by recalling a topographical clue which is essential for understanding the character’s role in order to find a reference point in their vague memory. Just as he said in his Nobel lecture at the Swedish Academy, ＂Themes of disappearance, identity, and the passing of time are closely bound up with the topography of cities.＂
In the first chapter, we study the narration and the generic triptych that we can discern in the novel. By examining the structure and the various devices used in the work, we can see elements of mixed detective novels, stories of promenades and urban adventures, as well as autobiographical novels. We try to classify the novel by comparing it with these three genres. Then, in the second chapter we draw out the recurrence of metaphor and the note of melancholy in the writing of this novel. What writing strategies were used in this multi-voiced story ? And for what aesthetic effects ?
We note certain terminology dictated by the central theme of the phantom which create moody and dreamlike effects with his terse style. How do all these writing strategies contribute to the aesthetic of vagueness and to the hazy nostalgia that infuses the narrative and captures the intangible and elusive qualities of memory.
In the third chapiter, we question the ＂patronym＂ and the ＂pseudonym＂ behind which the characters hide and then study their role in their search for identity. How does Patrick Modiano conceive of himself in this story ? Isn’t it by inventing an imaginary identity and by assuming it reinventing himself ? In the way this novel reverberates with the author’s other works on the common themes of memory, identity, and the search for one’s self.
Le Condé, the Café of Lost Youth, is considered a precarious refuge for young guys without direction. Modiano, like a landscape architect, builds his Paris to show it to his readers and to dazzle them with it. In the final chapter, we use certain notions of space, for example the concept of Non-Place coined by Marc Augé, the concept of Psychogeography invented by situationist Ralph Rumney, and the urban-walking practice known as the dérive of Guy Debord to analyse the interaction between the spaces traveled by their wanderings in Paris and the intimate spaces—memory—of the roles.
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