The present study aims to analyze Sylvie Germain’s works of fiction through the concept of ‘waiting’. Our interest was aroused by the internal articulation of her first novels. Its dependence on a proleptic network is symptomatic not only of the establishment of a pact that constantly confronts the reader with new expectations, but also of the author’s effort – conscious or not – to keep a good grip on the story. Despite the fact that the writer does not develop a theory around the notion of ‘waiting’ or make it the core of her writing, contexts built around it are plentiful in the narrative. The title of the dissertation anticipates our double perspective on Sylvie Germain’s novels, i.e.textual and diegetic. The whole is organized around a ternary structure. The first part focuses on establishing a poetics of waiting based on an abundance of pre-texts, on the highly dense paratextual apparatus, as well as on the use of anticipation by an infusion of details, which creates an echo effect against the diegesis. The second part of our analysis questions the multiple manners in which the characters live in waiting, psychologically as well as physiologically. Whatever its form, waiting remains atemporal experience. The last part offers a panorama of the time perceptions it engenders. Upon reaching the end of our research, we hope to have offered a synthesis around a concept that constantly escapes the rules, as well as to have approached time related aspects rarely discussed so far in relation to Sylvie Germain’s fiction.
