Abstract: After his untimely death in 1982, Perec left a rich literary legacy, a great part of which consisted of projects for works to come. One of the most extensive ones is Lieux , on which he worked in the early seventies. It consists of 238 texts and numerous other documents, including photographs. Due to its fragmentary and unfinished character, it stayed unpublished for over forty years and thus acquired a nearly mythical status among the general public. The title Lieux refers to physical, Parisian places as well as rhetorical places (or commonplaces). This double dimension of the notion of place, in Lieux , is at the heart of the present article. I will firstly examine how Lieux fits Perec’s focus on space and places and his autobiographical quest at that time. This outline of the project itself and of its scholarly reception will then enable me to consider its relationship with classical rhetoric, especially with Inventio and ekphrasis, which has been little studied hitherto.
Annelies Schulte Nordholt (Wed,) studied this question.