Patrick Modiano – à l’articulation entre champ de diffusion restreinte et champ de grande production

Abstract

On October 9th 2014, the Nobel Prize of literature was awarded to French writer Patrick Modiano for “the art of memory with which he mentioned the most elusive human destinies and unveiled the world of the Occupation”. Our text will analyze the position of Modiano both in the French and international literary fields and how its success, both critically and commercially, questions and partly challenges the theory framed by P. Bourdieu about the two sub-fields of cultural champ. Modiano has been able to reconcile his position in the field of restricted production (valuation by critics, peers, academics, being publihsed in prestigious collections, getting various literary prizes like the most prestigious one – the Nobel prize, etc.) with direct access to the wide diffusion field (strong draws and high numbers of sales for his works,visibility outside of the strict literary field, for example in films and songs). Then we will analyze the impact of obtaining the Nobel Prize on figures in terms of prints and sales  ot only on the French book market but also on the markets of French literature abroad.