Jean Ricardou's literary work is generally associated with the nouveau roman (the French New Novel). His three novels, his two collections of short fiction, one of which has undergone radical revision, and his theory and criticism incorporate many of the same technical and thematic concerns found in the works of Alain Robbe-Grillet, Claude Simon, and Claude Ollier. However, Ricardou's novels are even more extreme examples of literary self-consciousness and more difficult, involuted, and arcane structures than most works characteristic of the nouveau roman. Ricardou's novels also have major significance as aesthetic and artistic statements about the means and ends of the literary experience. As important as is his fiction, however, Ricardou's innovative and insightful literary criticism and theory are generally better known. He has authored highly original treatises on the techniques and theoretical and aesthetic functions of the narrative in the fiction of both earlier writers such as...