Sous-conversation and polyphony in Three

Reading Ann Quin through the lenses of Sarraute and Bachtin

Abstract

Starting from some preliminary considerations on the future of the novel advanced by Nathalie Sarraute in her essay “Conversation et sous-conversation”, and with the aid of Bachtin’s observations on the polyphonic word in Dostoevskij, this article intends to analyse the peculiar approach to dialogue which the British neo-Modernist author Ann Quin (1933-1973) has adopted in her second novel, Three (1966). Influenced by both Sarraute and Dostoevskij, with Three Quin has created a work in which the characters’ acts of communications, apparently banal and meaningless on the surface, let one perceive in fact the looming presence of an entire area of unexpressed darkness which pushes beneath words and gestures, shaping and leaving its indelible mark on them. By reading some pivotal passages of Three through the lenses of Sarraute’s discussions around tropismes and sous-conversation, as well as through Bachtin’s observations on Dostoevskij’s polyphony, the aim of this analysis will be that of assessing any similarities and/or original divergencies between Sarraute’s and Dostoevskij’s approaches to dialogue and Quin’s own re-elaboration of them in her writing.