R. Howard Bloch

Denis Hollier

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.

A New History of French Literature

Discusses the influential French philosopher, and examines the connections he drew between philosophy and architecture

The Writings of Georges Bataille

Against Architecture

They were not the "Banquet Years," those anxious wartime years when poets and novelists were made to feel embarrassed by their impulse to write literature. And yet it was the attitude of those writers and critics in the 1930s and 1940s that shaped French literature--the ideas of Derrida, Foucault, de Man, Deleuze, and Ricoeur--and has so profoundly influenced literary enterprise in the English-speaking world since 1968. This literary history, the prehistory of postmodernism, is what Denis Hollier recovers in his interlocking studies of the main figures of French literary life before the age of anxiety gave way to the era of existentialist commitment. Georges Bataille, Michel Leiris, Roger Caillois, André Malraux, the early Jean-Paul Sartre are the figures Hollier considers, writers torn between politics and the pleasures of the text. They appear here uneasily balancing the influences of the philosopher and the man of action. These studies convey the paradoxical heroism of writers fighting for a world that would extend no rights or privileges to writers, writing for a world in which literature would become a reprehensible frivolity. If the nineteenth century was that of the consecration of the writer, this was the time for their sacrificial death, and Hollier captures the comical pathos of these writers pursuing the ideal of "engagement" through an exercise in dispossession. His work identifies, as none has before, the master plot for literature that was crafted in the 1940s, a plot in which we are still very much entangled.

French Literature under the Threat of War

Absent without Leave

Rosalind E. Krauss

Hal Foster

Rosalind Krauss

Yve-Alain Bois

Annette Michelson

Benjamin H. D. Buchloh

Professor Emeritus Founding Ed October Magazine Annette Michelson

Silvia Kolbowski

October: The Second Decade collects examples of the innovative critical and theoretical work for which the journal October is known. A journal anthology draws a collective portrait; together, the gathered texts demonstrate the journal's ambitions and strengths. From the outset, October's aim has been to consider a range of cultural practices and to assess their place at a particular historical juncture. That task has now taken on an intensified urgency. The catastrophic state of our urban economies and the attendant social crises, as well as the more general predicaments of a postcolonial era, have had an inescapable impact on the cultural and discursive practices that are October's concern. Hence, October in its second decade has had an intensified concern with the role of cultural production within the public sphere and a sharper focus on the intersections of cultural practices with institutional structures. The topics of inquiry include body politics and psychoanalysis, spectacle and institutional critique, art practice and art history, and postcolonial discourse. Contributors: Carol Armstrong, Leo Bersani, Homi Bhabha, Yve-Alain Bois, Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Susan Buck-Morss, Lygia Clark, T. J. Clark, Jonathan Crary, Gilles Deleuze, Manthia Diawara, Peter Eisenman, Hal Foster, Group Material, Denis Hollier, Alexander Kluge, Gertrud Koch, Silvia Kolbowski, Rosalind Krauss, Annette Michelson, Helen Molesworth, V. Y. Mudimbe, Oskar Negt, Mignon Nixon.

The Second Decade, 1986-1996

October

Georges Bataille

The College of Sociology (1937-39)

The aim of this book is to explore the French writers and critics of the 1930s and 1940s, who were to shape French literature. It studies the prehistory of postmodernism, looking at the main figures in French literature before the age of anxiety gave way to the era of

French Literature Under the Threat of War

Absent Without Leave

Essay on Sartre

The Politics of Prose

Designed for the general reader, this splendid introduction to French literature from 842 A.D.—the date of the earliest surviving document in any Romance language—to the present decade is the most compact and imaginative single-volume guide available in English to the French literary tradition. In fact, no comparable work exists in either language. It is not the customary inventory of authors and titles but rather a collection of wide-angled views of historical and cultural phenomena. It sets before us writers, public figures, criminals, saints, and monarchs, as well as religious, cultural, and social revolutions. It gives us books, paintings, public monuments, even TV shows. Written by 164 American and European specialists, the essays are introduced by date and arranged in chronological order, but here ends the book’s resemblance to the usual history of literature. Each date is followed by a headline evoking an event that indicates the chronological point of departure. Usually the event is literary—the publication of an original work, a journal, a translation, the first performance of a play, the death of an author—but some events are literary only in terms of their repercussions and resonances. Essays devoted to a genre exist alongside essays devoted to one book, institutions are presented side by side with literary movements, and large surveys appear next to detailed discussions of specific landmarks. No article is limited to the “life and works” of a single author. Proust, for example, appears through various lenses: fleetingly, in 1701, apropos of Antoine Galland’s translation of The Thousand and One Nights; in 1898, in connection with the Dreyfus Affair; in 1905, on the occasion of the law on the separation of church and state; in 1911, in relation to Gide and their different treatments of homosexuality; and at his death in 1922. Without attempting to cover every author, work, and cultural development since the Serments de Strasbourg in 842, this history succeeds in being both informative and critical about the more than 1,000 years it describes. The contributors offer us a chance to appreciate not only French culture but also the major critical positions in literary studies today. A New History of French Literature will be essential reading for all engaged in the study of French culture and for all who are interested in it. It is an authoritative, lively, and readable volume.

Denis Hollier

About

Books

Join the club