Aux confins du fantastique et de la science-fiction : le vampire dans le récit d’Alain Dorémieux

Abstract

Alain Dorémieux is one of the masters of the fantastic, the peculiar and science fiction in France. Even though all these genres belong to the imaginary, their internal logic and their poetics are antagonistic. However, most of the French writer’s short stories and novels are characterized by the deletion of generic borders, a kind of generic porosity: in his oeuvre, Dorémieux unites and hybridizes these contradictory types of poetics. This article aims to analyze the phenomenon in question and focuses on a motif that is considered typically fantastic: the vampire. Dorémieux’s approach to this element exceeds the clichés of the fantastic. The textual corpus includes two representative short stories: L’Habitant des étoiles and Fugue. The study is based on theoretical works of R. Bozzetto, R. Cailllois, L. Vax, J. Malrieu, N. Prince and other critics.