French abstract: Rosi Carpe, publié chez l’ é dition de Minuit, est l'une des oeuvres de Marie NDiaye qui s’ est imposé e comme un prodige de son é poque, et à qui a é té octroyé le prix Femina en 2001. Cette oeuvre est truffé e d’ intrigues multiples et de pé ripé ties qui lui donnent une qualité romanesque. Né anmoins, nous avons remarqué chez les protagonistes de ce roman, des particularité s qui ne s’ accordent pas avec celles qu’ on attend des personnages d'une oeuvre romanesque. Aussi, nous occupons-nous des personnages et des actions mises en place dans ce roman afin de clarifier cette contradiction entre les protagonistes de ce roman et ceux qu’ on rencontre normalement dans une oeuvre dite romanesque. Durant, cette analyse nous nous sommes inspiré s d’ un article de Todorov, intitulé « Roman poé tique », publié en 1987, dans lequel il pré cise les particularité s poé tiques du roman. English abstract: From the publication of her first novel entitled Quant au riche avenir (1985) with the Minuit edition, at the age of eightee, Marie NDiaye established herself as a new literary talent. With a heavy literary background provided with literary geniuses like Kafka, Proust, Joyce and Falkner, and with an irreproachable expression, she crossed the chronological hinge of the century so that at the beginning of the new century, she was granted the Femina Prize in 2001 for her latest novel: Rosie Carpe. Showing mastery of her art as a novelist, she tells the story of a young woman who is lost, in search of herself and a place to occupy in the world. This novel is full of multiple intrigues and adventures, which give it a romanesque quality. Nevertheless, we have noticed particularities in the protagonists of this novel, which do not agree with those, expected from the characters of a romanesque novel. Indeed, the question which concerns us and we try to answer in this article is the following one: how a novel, with passive characters, can be qualified as a romanesque novel? It should be noted that by the notion of “ passive” we mean the lack of action, even sometimes the simplest. It is understood that the presence of the passive protagonist is not a new phenomenon in the genre, but the passivity of the character, in a novel described as romanesque, seems curious to us. A literary book such as Rosie Carpe, who has established herself as one of the miracles of her time, cannot be admired solely for its narrative content without taking into account its particular structure. We believe that a study of the structure of the novel will lead us to understand how a novel can reconcile romantic content with the passivity of the characters. To do this, we were inspired by an article by Todorov, entitled “ Poetic novel” (Tzvetan Todorov, 1987, p. 123-138) dealing with the concepts of character and action in order to show, on the one hand, how these notions of action and character, participate in the creation of the structure, and, on the other hand, how the two qualities of romance and poetics are opposed in the work, without their coexistence being impossible. Todorov presents two kinds of men according to the path they choose to acquire knowledge: the hero and the poet. The first is defined by the actions he performs and we find him in the heroic and / or romantic novel; we find the second in the article that Todorov describes as poetic in the sense that the character immerses himself in his reflections instead of acting. In short, the hero is the one who acts and the poet is the one who thinks and narrates. In the first chapter of the novel, in the extra-diegetic narration are inserted from time to time the words of Rosie in the form of interior monologues, without the use of introductory verbs, in loos. The second chapter is overall an analepse: to give thickness to the existence of the main character, Rosie, the narration focuses on her past thanks to her memories. Through internal focus, we learn from Rosie's mouth the story of her life, while she sits in front of Lazarus' house. Unlike the previous chapter, the narration is responsible for direct speech, and there abound introductory verbs. At the same rate, in terms of length, the third chapter is even longer than the previous chapters. Because of this, and parallel to the previous chapter where it was largely a question of Rosie, here it is Lagrand which constitutes the center. Through an internal focus, that of Lagrand, we penetrate into his past, his relationship with his mother who had abandoned him when he was little. In the fourth chapter, the shortest, we find ourselves facing a narrative leap: after an ellipse of about twenty years, we find the characters. Lagrand spent these years away from Rosie; this one, in a total passivity, spends her days with her son, Titi, become a professor of mathematics. The novel ends with the libertine presence of a second daughter from the Carpe family, who is also called Rose-Marie. According to the layouts of the chapters and the focal points implemented in the narration, we thus find two highlighted characters who advance the narrative-not by what they do but-by what they think and what they remember. After having introduced the eponymous character in the first chapter, the narrator changes status in the second chapter. It is the protagonist who narrates his story to the second character. Lagrand, takes the place of the narrator, who, in the next chapter, takes his turn the place of the narrator. The object of these internally focused narrations (that of Rosie and that of Lagrand) is made up of dreams, abstract reflections and memories of these two characters, put in a way in parallel, if only because of focusing alternately. Indeed, the character of this novel only remembers past events, recalled as fuzzy memories under a thick yellowish fog. To achieve so many projects that she has for the future, she does nothing. The novel therefore seems incompatible with the adjective “ Romanesque” , at least, as far as the characters are concerned. Lagrand and Rosie, both similar and contrasting as characters, do not participate in the actions. Their role is only to remember past events and delve into reflections. In Rosie Carpe, the passivity of the characters towards what happens to them is doubled by a fact of text, in the sense that the narrated action, instead of occupying the foreground, is thrown backward plan of the narration. Take for example, the action of murder (which can constitute a romantic action par excellence). First, it is not committed by the protagonists of the novel. It is the package of Lazare and one of his friends. Thus, the action concerned does not occupy the foreground in the novel. In the second place, we do not learn this fact by the direct narration of the narrator first of the account: in the third chapter, we learn that Lagrand, on the return from Lazare (where he has just posed his parents), meets by chance that here in a restaurant. So, not only this act of murder does not directly concern the protagonists of the novel, but also, on the narrative level, it is thrown into the background by the fact that we do not even learn it at the time where Lagrand comes across Lazare (and tells him about the crime he has committed), but later, when Lagrand is driving on the way to the hospital, and again, he doesn't think about it on purpose. To these put at a distance, are added the following facts: first of all, this action of the crime, had been experienced for the first time, that is to say, by Lazarus as the murder of his own parents; then it was told by Lazare to Lagrand, who is a long-time friend, as a confession; and it is ultimately through Lagrand's thoughts that it is evoked as a cinematographic scene, where the point of view of Lazarus, the murderer, is inserted from time to time. These observations on the peculiarities of Rosie Carpe, in terms of characters and action, under the lighting of Todorov's article, lead to the fact that this novel, despite the romantic appearance due to the various events evoked throughout the novel, can only be described as poetic because neither the characters nor the narration of the actions can be compared to those of the romantic stories, and it is probably for this reason that this kind of novels can give the impression that is opposite a “ novel-not-like-the-others” . Some critics have considered this novel to be a romantic work. It seemed to us that an in-depth study could explain why, despite this designation of fiction, this novel cannot be classified in this category. The study of the particularities of two constituents of the novel, namely the character and the action, allowed us to show why they do not fall into the same category as those of the novels and that, thanks to one of the works of Todorov, it seemed to us that this work comes from what he calls poetic. Thus the feeling of strangeness (due to the characteristics of the characters and the action in this novel) will give its place to more intimacy and understanding as much about the characters as what happens there as action.