SOURCE: Cornford, Sharon. “Death, Murder and Narrative Form in Pompes funèbres.” In Flowers and Revolution: A Collection of Writings on Jean Genet, edited by Barbara Read and Ian Buchnell, pp. 94-105. London: Middlesex University Press, 1997.

In the following essay, Cornford explores the connection between the narrator's expressions of his own grief and the construction of his narrated world in Pompes funèbres.

The themes of death and murder recur like an obsession throughout Genet's texts, but it is in Pompes funèbres that the narrator's preoccupation with mortality is the most graphic and sustained. It is also in Pompes funèbres that the narrator's own stated circumstances and the themes he probes in his narrative are most tightly linked, as he explores his immediate preoccupations within the imaginary arena of the narrated world. This [essay] aims to examine the nature of this relationship between narrator and narrated...