Paths to Contemporary French Literature: Volume 3

by John Taylor

Overview

Praised for his independence, curiosity, intimate knowledge of French literature, and sharp reader's eye, John Taylor is a writer-critic who is naturally skeptical of literary fashions, overnight reputations, and readymade academic categories. Here he examines various genres of politically committed literature (such as Jean Hatzfeld's "narratives" about Rwanda or Tchicaya U Tam'si's verse), some overlooked fiction, and several provocative experiments with literary form (ranging from the poetry of Jean-Paul Michel and Marie etienne to the "three-line novels" of Felix Feneon).

Taylor continues to reveal the remarkable resourcefulness of French writing. Besides drawing attention to authors (like Dai Sijie or Albert Cossery) who have come to French from other languages, he has added younger novelists to his critical panorama.

Challenging persistent cliches and recovering deserving voices from unjust neglect, Taylor's vision of French literature conjures up the image of a vital nexus. Poetry crisscrosses with prose, writers from one generation meet up with those from the next or the previous one, while the philosophical ideas underlying French writing are scrutinized. This is an essential guide to the realities of French culture today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781138513006
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/26/2017
Pages:	234
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Taylor

Table of Contents

IntroductionPart 1: What Is, and What Might BePath, Light, Space (Pierre-Albert Jourdan) Strolling out from the Self (Jean Follain, Henri Thomas, Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Reda, Paul de Roux, Guy Goffette, Gilles Ortlieb) Rare Confi dent Moments (Philippe Jaccottet) In Search of the Absurd Evidence (Rene Daumal) Experience and Solitude (Paul Gadenne) A Modern Psalmist (Jean Grosjean) The Angel's Shoulder (Alexandre Romanes) Open-Eyed Drifting (Richard Rognet) The Music of What Is (Jean-Paul Michel)Part 2: Of Amorous CaptivityThe Language of Attachment (Laurence Werner David) Longing for the Ultimate Polestar (Jean Genet) From Sicilian Defenses to Tango Dancing (Brina Svit) Exalting Exitless Exits (Marcel Moreau) The Perils of Absolute Love (Marie-Claude Vincent) Narratives of Mood and Movement (Anne Serre) Crucial Quests (Cecile Wajsbrot) Meditations on the Real and the Imaginary (Emmanuel Hocquard) Styling Melancholy (Irene Schavelzon) Resonating beyond Elegy (Claude Vigee)Part 3: Forms of CommitmentRene Maran's Pioneering Batouala For a Reissue of Yambo Ouologuem's Le Devoir de violence A New Kind of French Engage Writing (Jean Hatzfeld) Bookish Passions (Yannick Haenel) Two Hesitations about the Recent Fiction of J. M. G. Le Clezio The Flickering Flames (Jean-Pierre Rosnay) Moving, Misguided, Melodious Lines (Louis Aragon) Rereading Tchicaya U Tam'si Three Chinese Francophones (Francois Cheng, Dai Sijie, Gao Xingjian) Drooping Eyelids, a Farcical World (Albert Cossery)Part 4: Narrative ArithmeticThe Arithmetic of Being in the World (Marie etienne) Robert Pinget's Ear Three-Line Novels (Felix Feneon) The Languages of Alta Ifland Unities and Disunities of Raymond Queneau Two Instructive Fabulists (Pierre Bettencourt and Jean-Marie Le Sidaner) A Defrocked Ethnologist (Jacques Meunier) A French Modernist a la chinoise (Victor Segalen)Part 5: Hommes De Lettres in the MirrorAn Aloof Modesty (Georges Henein) Myth and Mythomania (Andre Malraux) Ghosts in the Mirror (Alain Robbe-Grillet) The Worm of Insubordination (Georges Belmont) The Gossamer Threads of a Life (Julien Green) Facing Edmond Jabes The Moods of a Man of Letters (Valery Larbaud)Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

"John Taylor has been writing about, and translating, French literature for many years. In this third volume of essays and reviews, some published as recently as 2010, his familiarity with trends, issues and writers, and a style absent of jargon, bring out new facets of the work of familiar figures (Aragon, Genet, Pinget) and introduce . . . unknown writers such as Laurence Werner David, Brina Svit, and Marie Étienne. The fifty-odd writers focused on here are placed in a solid context of present and past French literature, at times extending beyond the borders of the country. [. . .] We are amiably guided through some of the many areas of concern and stylistic choices that constitute twentieth- and twentieth-century French literature, including post-colonial writing (Jean Hatzfeld), Franco-Egyptian works (the neglected Albert Cossery), formal inventors (Queneau, Pierre Bettencourt), and prose poets (Pierre-Albert Jourdan). Taylor doesn't hesitate to state when writers fail to measure up to his standards, and among these are practitioners of 'autofiction,' defined as writing of a 'simplistic confessional directness. . .'; the subject of the essay 'Two Hesitations about the Recent Fiction of J.M.G. Le Clézio'; and Julien Green, whose 'literary essays . . . are uniformly disappointing.' He is happiest when describing writers he likes, such as Valery Larbaud, or the novels of Anne Serre. At the back of the book is publishing information on the various pieces, as well as a helpful bibliography that will aid in finding books that John Taylor's encyclopedic knowledge and enthusiasm have indicated are worth finding. Paths to Contemporary French Literature is a useful addition to libraries everywhere."—Jeff Bursey, Review of Contemporary Fiction "In the third volume of Paths to Contemporary French Literature, John Taylor has just given Anne Serre's writing one of those empathic critical readings of which he has the secret."—Ronald Klapka, La Lettre de la Magdelaine “[S]hort and very informative essays. . . . There is clearly some perversity in reviewing the third volume of an enterprise that has already dealt with many major figures in contemporary French literature—and Taylor is notably unafraid of tackling the Nobel laureate Le Clézio in these pages. . . . [T]he possibility that this is not in your university library should be considered with alarm.”—Chris Miller, Warwick Review "A genuine critical French revolution is at work [in Paths to Contemporary French Literature], which reconfigures the rigid hierarchy of values and the dialectics of minor writers and major writers. . . . Poets and writers are studied for their own sakes as well as iconically, and in the process Taylor defines concentric circles of lineages and influences, of spiritual and aesthetic affinities that transcend literary genres and movements. This revision of the critical field—its subject matter as well as its methodology—makes this book uncommonly imposing."—Juliette Einhorn, Le Magazine Litteraire

From the Publisher