Synopses & Reviews
This splendid introduction to French literature from 842
A.D. to the present decade is the most imaginative single-volume guide to the French literary tradition available in English.
Conceived for the general reader, this volume presents French literature not as a simple inventory of authors or titles, but rather as a historical and cultural field viewed from a wide array of contemporary critical perspectives. The book consists of 164 essays by American and European scholars, and covers the history of French literature from 842 to 1989.
Review
Despite the eclectic nature of the various contributions...they nonetheless form a coherent ensemble thanks to the coordinating skills of a sophisticated editorial board and to Renee Morel's indispensable index...The fact is that this [book] has rendered its predecessors obsolete, making it one of a kind in its field today. Anthony Caprio - Library Journal
Review
Each and every chapter is chock full of illuminating and intriguing facts, and each one, rather than reserve the stage for one main actor, allows anyone who has something to say to take part in the fun. Stendhal, for instance, has two chapters devoted to his work--on his Romantic manifesto Racine et Shakespeare (1823), and another on his novel La charteuse de Parme (1893)--but his elegant shadow falls on dozens of other pages. Each chapter is announced by a date, a headline event and a theme, and is written by one of 165 academics collected by Hollier from both North America and Europe. And here one must marvel at Hollier's achievement: academics who can write both intelligently and with humor. The mind boggles. Ernest Sturm - French Review
Review
This grandly imagined and executed history of French literature is without precedent in any language...Here are many of the best contemporary critics and theorists, writing with vivid originality...This volume is a triumph of editorial and critical intelligence. Alberto Manguel - Globe and Mail
Review
This remarkable collection of brief essays on topics ranging from the Strasbourg Oaths of 842 to a 1983 broadcast of 'Apostrophes,' France's celebrated television literary interview program, is far more than a survey of 12 centuries of writing in France. It is a fascinating, generally very readable and almost always unpredictable ramble through the thick and varied garden of culture tended for these many centuries by the French people. The volume's editor, Denis Hollier, a professor of French at Yale University, has managed the considerable feat of compiling hundreds of brief essays by 164 mostly American scholars of French literature and to impose on the whole extraordinary unity. The result is a Francophile's delight and a lucid, often entertaining display of erudition...You can drop your cup at random into this deep well of cultural history and almost always come up with something sweet and stimulating to drink. Times Literary Supplement
Review
Exciting, riotous, irritating, invigorating, often provocative, always interesting. Ernest Storm - French Review
Review
Exciting, riotous, irritating, invigorating, often provocative, always interesting.
Review
For the first time, Marie de France, Marguerite de Navarre, Germaine de Staël, George Sand, and Colette have come forward as prize-winners. L 'Humanit - & - eacute;-Dimanche
Review
An impressive volume...It is not to be thought of as an exhaustive reference book, nor is it designed to be read right through as a single text. Its mode d'emploi is that of the browser. And as such it is indeed--as the blurbs repeat to us--a triumph. Plunge in, almost at random, and you will come up with pearls like Leo Bersani on Proust, DeJean on the salons or the editor on May 1968, discourse and power. I shall come back to it often. Peter France
Review
An original and outstanding overview of French literature from 842 to the present...There is no history of French literature of this nature on the market today, in French or in English. Highly recommended. Richard Bernstein - New York Times
Review
The fact is that A New History of French Literature has rendered its predecessors obsolete. Richard Poirier - Raritan
Review
After all the lights from the festivities have been extinguished, after all the babble from the colloquia has stilled, and the celebration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic comes to an end, one book will remain--this one. Claire Devarrieux - Liberation
About the Author
Denis Hollier is Chairman of the Department of French at Yale University. He is the author of many books, including works on Sartre and Bataille.
Table of Contents
Introduction
On Writing Literary History
Denis Hollier
778
Entering the Date
John Benton
842
The Birth of Medieval Studies
R. Howard Bloch
1050?
Saints' Lives
Brigitte Cazelles
1095
The Epic
Joseph J. Duggan
1123?
Manuscripts
Laura Kendrick
1127
The Old Provençal Lyric
Stephen G. Nichols
1152
The Romances of Antiquity
Jean-Charles Huchet
1165
Erec et Enide
Eugene Vance
1175
Fables and Parodies
Kathryn Gravdal
1180?
Marie de France
Joan M. Ferrante
1181?
The Grail
Alexandre Leupin
1202
Old French Prose Historiography
Gabrielle M. Spiegel
1209?
Arthurian Romance in Prose
E. Jane Burns
1210
The Fabliaux
Charles Muscatine
1214, 27 July
Literature and History
Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
1215, November
The Impact of Christian Doctrine
Evelyn Birge Vitz
1225?
Generic Hybrids
Kevin Brownlee
1267
Medieval Rhetoric
Douglas Kelly
1277, 7 March
Jean de Meun's Le roman de la rose
David F. Hult
1300?
Medieval Vernacular Drama
Donald Maddox
1342?
Lyricism in the Age of Allegory
Kevin Brownlee
1401, St. Valentine's Day
Trials of Eros
Jacqueline Cerquiglini
1456
"I the Scholar François Villon"
Nancy Freeman Regalado
1460?
Farces, Morality Plays, and Soties
Barbara C. Bowen
1493
The Rhétoriqueurs
François Rigolot
1512
Writing without Reserve
Terence Cave
1517
Humanist Models
Timothy Hampton
1526, July
Life-Saving Stories
Natalie Zemon Davis
1527
Margaret of Navarre
Carla Freccero
1528
Manners and Mannerisms at Court
Nancy J. Vickers
1532
Rabelais and Textual Architecture
Edwin M. Duval
1534, Fall
Literary Banquets
Michel Jeanneret
1534, 17-18 October
Evangelism
Gérard Defaux
1536
Emblems
Daniel S. Russell
1536, Summer
The Sonnet
François Rigolot
1538, 6 March
Dialogue
Jean-Claude Carron
1539
The Birth of French Lexicography
Terence R. Wooldridge
1541, July
Translation as Literature
Glyn P. Norton
1541, September
Calvin the Writer
Francis M. Higman
1542
The Neoplatonic Debate
Lawrence D. Kritzman
1544
The Architecture of Poetic Sequences
Doranne Fenoaltea
1549
A New Intellectual Elite
Margaret Ferguson
1550
Inspiration and Poetic Glory
Michel Beaujour
1552
Renaissance Comedy
Donald Stone, Jr.
1553, March
The Origin of French Tragedy
Timothy J. Reiss
1553, June
Antiquities and Antiquaries
Eric MacPhail
1555, July
Petrarchism with a Difference
Ann Rosalind Jones
1555, 13 September
Books in Print
Antoine Compagnon
1562
Scientific Poetry
Dudley B. Wilson
1563, 18 August
Anti-Dictator
Stephen Greenblatt
1566
History and Vernacular Humanism
Donald R. Kelley
1572, 24 August
Poetry and Action
Ullrich Langer
1573
From Mannerism to Baroque
Lance K. Donaldson-Evans
1578
Antarctic France
Michel Jeanneret
1581
The Spectacle of Power
Margaret M. McGowan
1595
Montaigne and His Readers
Richard L. Regosin
1609
Devout Humanism
Paul A. Chilton
1619
Pastoral Fiction
Louise K. Horowitz
1627
The Age of the Technician
John D. Lyons
1634, 13 March
The Académie Française
Timothy Murray
1637
Toward French Classical Tragedy
Mitchell Greenberg
1640
Problems in Logic and Rhetoric
Timothy J. Reiss
1647
The Subject of Modern Discourse
Thomas G. Pavel
1648, 26-28 August
The Sound of the Fury
Pierre Ronzeaud
1651
Cultural Life outside Paris
Bernard Beugnot
1654
The Salons and "Preciosity"
Joan DeJean
1657
Figures of Social and Semiotic Dissent
Jean Alter
1660
Autocritical Dramaturgy
Marcel Gutwirth
1661
From Roi Soleil to Louis le Grand
Jean-Marie Apostolidès
1664
Jansenist Tragedy
Philip E. Lewis
1668
Moralists
Georges Van Den Abbeele
1673, 17 February
The Comic at Its Limits
Gérard Defaux
1674
On the Sublime, Infinity, Je Ne Sais Quoi
Louis Marin
1677
Historiography in the Age of Absolutism
Roger Chartier
1678
The Emergence of the Novel
John D. Lyons
1680, 21 October
The Comédie-Française
Jacques Guicharnaud
1685
Religious Controversies
Domna C. Stanton
1687
The Ancients and the Moderns
Robert J. Nelson
1689
Pedagogy
John D. Lyons
1694
Linguistic Absolutism
Alain Rey
1697
Marginal Writing
Lionel Gossman
1699
Racine and the French New Criticism
Jean Alter
1700
Classics in the Making
Joan DeJean
1704
Sunset Years
Walter E. Rex
1707?
Fêtes Galantes
Thomas Crow
1721
Others
James Creech
1725
The Politics of Epistolary Art
Janet Gurkin Altman
1727
Portrait of the Philosopher as a Tramp
Jack Undank
1734
Intricacies of Literary Production
English Showalter, Jr.
1735
The Gender of the Memoir-Novel
Nancy K. Miller
1750
Beauty in Context
Gita May
1751
Ordering Knowledge
Daniel Brewer
1754?
Origins
Peggy Kamuf
1754
From Natural Philosophy to Scientific Discourse
Wilda Anderson
1759, January
On Cultivating One's Garden
Aram Vartanian
1759, 23 April
Clearing the Stage
Jay L. Caplan
1759, August-September
Salons
Michael Fried
1761, February
The Novel and Gender Difference
Ronald C. Rosbottom
1761, December
What Was Enlightenment?
Lionel Gossman
1762
Writing the Political
Patrick Colman
1769
Reason
Christie McDonald
1770
Kisses, en Taille Douce
Philip Stewart
1771
Diderot at the Crossroads of Speech
Jack Undank
1772
Utopias
Mark Poster
1774, 19 April
A War at the Opera
Herbert Josephs
1782, March
Words and "the Thing"
Peter Brooks
1782, May
Autobiographical Acts
Virginia E. Swain
1784, 27 April
Pre-Revolution (a Comedy)
Jacques Guicharnaud
1787
Designing Women
Joan Hinde Stewart
1788
Civil Rights and the Wrongs of Women
Madelyn Gutwirth
1789
Seventeen Eighty-nine
Sandy Petrey
1791, 13 January
Language under Revolutionary Pressure
Martine Reid
1791, Summer
Pleasure, Perversion, Danger
Chantal Thomas
1794, 8 June
Twilight of the Gods
Marie-Hélène Huet
1794, 25 July
Unfinished Work
E. S. Burt
1799, 10 October
The Ideologists
Frank Paul Bowman
1800
The Melodramatic Imagination
Peter Brooks
1802, 14 April
Gothic Revival
Anthony Vidler
1808, 17 March
Discipline and Melancholy
Patrizia Lombardo
1814, 4 June
Restoration Freedom and Repression
Tzvetan Todorov
1816, 8 May
Women's Voices in Literature and Art
Sarah Maza
1820
The Lady in the Lake
Barbara Johnson
1823
Romantic Historiography
Hayden White
1827, February
The Invention of the Renaissance
François Rigolot
1827, December
Drama
Jean Gaudon
1830, 27-29 July
An Oedipal Crisis
Peter Brooks
1833
The Scandal of Realism
Naomi Schor
1834
Romanticism and Social Vision
Sandy Petrey
1835
Dialogues with the Muse
Nathaniel Wing
1836, 25 October
Egypt in Paris
Denis Hollier
1837
Fantastic Tales
Ora Avni
1839
Body Bildung and Textual Liberation
D. A. Miller
1840
Discourses on Misery
Robert Bezucha
1843, 9 June
Publishing Novels
Lucienne Frappier-Mazur
1847, 23 December
Orientalism, Colonialism
Christopher L. Miller
1848
Class Struggles in France
Richard Terdiman
1851, 2 December
Literature Deterritorialized
Ross Chambers
1852, 2 December
Bonapartism
Richard Terdiman
1853
French Poe
Jefferson Humphries
1857
Two Trials
Dominick LaCapra
1859, 23 July
Poète Maudite
Michael Danaby
1859, 7 December
Exile from Within, Exile from Without
Nathaniel Wing
1866
The Dream of Stone
Barbara Johnson
1869
Tics
Ora Avni
1871, 15 May
Commune Culture
Kristin Ross
1873
Exit and Save
Norbert Bonenkamp
1874
Haute Couture and Haute Culture
Sima Godfrey
1876
Idealism
Naomi Schor
1877
Nature, Society, and the Discourse of Class
Sandy Petrey
1880
Prostitution in the Novel
Charles Bernheimer
1884
Decadence
Jefferson Humphries
1885, February
The Music of the Future
Richard Sieburth
1885, June
The Liberation of Verse
Barbara Johnson
1886
The Phantom's Voice
Esther Rashkin
1889
Commemoration and the Revolution
Victor Brombert
1892
Writing and the Dance
Françoise Meltzer
1895
Literature in the Classroom
Antoine Compagnon
1898
The Dreyfus Affair
Jeffrey MehIman
1905, 9 December
On Schools, Churches, and Museums
Denis Hollier
1911
From Exoticism to Homosexuality
Richard Howard
1913
Lyrical Ideograms
Tom Conley
1914-1918
Visions of Death and Dissolution
Mary Jean Green
1920
Bourgeois Sin
David O'Connell
1922, 18 November
Death and Literary Authority
Leo Bersani
1924
From Text to Performance
Michel Beaujour
1925, November
Mise en Abyme
Jean-Joseph Goux
1925, December
"I Cannot Abide Stupidity"
Vincent Kaufmann
1928, 3 May
Amnesias
Ann Smock
1929
"Odor di Femina" [Sic]
Elaine Marks
1931, March
Sadology
Carolyn J. Dean
1931, June
Plenty of Nothing
Denis Hollier
1933, February
Negrophilia
James Clifford
1933, November
Americans in Paris
John Atherton
1933, December
"Terrorists Ask No Questions"
Douglas Collins
1934, 6 February
Birthrate and Death Wish
Denis Hollier
1935, 6 May
Staging the Plague
Sylvère Lotringer
1937, March
The Avant-Garde Embraces Science
Allan Stoekl
1937, 12 July
Committed Painting
Susan Rubin Suleiman
1939
Surrealism and Négritude in Martinique
Ronnie Scharfman
1940-1944
The Honor of Poets
Ann Smock
1941
How Is Literature Possible?
Michael Syrotinski
1942
The Problem of Belief
Samuel Kinser
1945, 6 February
Literature and Collaboration
Alice Yaeger Kaplan
1945, 15 October
Rebellion or Revolution?
Steven Ungar
1946, July
Samuel Beckett Emerges as a French Writer
Alan Astro
1949
An Intellectual Woman in Postwar France
Toril Moi
1953
The Nouveau Roman
Gerald Prince
1954, January
On Certain Tendencies of the French Cinema
Dudley Andrew
1959, 9 January
The Ministry of Fate
Rosalind Krauss
1959, 28 October
The Theater of the Absurd
Thomas Bishop
1960
As Is
Susan Rubin Suleiman
1962, November
The School of Independence
Réda Bensmaïa
1966