Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-Century French Writing

Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-Century French Writing PDF Author: Sam Ferguson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192545825
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
This volume is the first study of the diary in French writing across the twentieth century, as a genre which includes both fictional and non-fictional works. From the 1880s it became apparent to writers in France that their diaries—a supposedly private form of writing —would probably come to be published, strongly affecting the way their readers viewed their other published works, and their very persona as an author. More than any other, André Gide embraced the literary potential of the diary: the first part of this book follows his experimentation with the diary in the fictional works Les Cahiers d'André Walter (1891) and Paludes (1895), in his diary of the composition of his great novel, Le Journal des faux-monnayeurs (1926), and in his monumental Journal 1889-1939 (1939). The second part follows developments in diary-writing after the Second World War, inflected by radical changes in attitudes towards the writing subject. Raymond Queneau's works published under the pseudonym of Sally Mara (1947-1962) used the diary playfully at a time when the writing subject was condemned by the literary avant-garde. Roland Barthes's experiments with the diary (1977-1979) took it to the extremes of its formal possibilities, at the point of a return of the writing subject. Annie Ernaux's published diaries (1993-2011) demonstrate the role of the diary in the modern field of life-writing. Throughout the century, the diary has repeatedly been used to construct an oeuvre and author, but also to call these fundamental literary concepts into question.

Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-Century French Writing

Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-Century French Writing PDF Author: Sam Ferguson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192545825
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book

Book Description
This volume is the first study of the diary in French writing across the twentieth century, as a genre which includes both fictional and non-fictional works. From the 1880s it became apparent to writers in France that their diaries—a supposedly private form of writing —would probably come to be published, strongly affecting the way their readers viewed their other published works, and their very persona as an author. More than any other, André Gide embraced the literary potential of the diary: the first part of this book follows his experimentation with the diary in the fictional works Les Cahiers d'André Walter (1891) and Paludes (1895), in his diary of the composition of his great novel, Le Journal des faux-monnayeurs (1926), and in his monumental Journal 1889-1939 (1939). The second part follows developments in diary-writing after the Second World War, inflected by radical changes in attitudes towards the writing subject. Raymond Queneau's works published under the pseudonym of Sally Mara (1947-1962) used the diary playfully at a time when the writing subject was condemned by the literary avant-garde. Roland Barthes's experiments with the diary (1977-1979) took it to the extremes of its formal possibilities, at the point of a return of the writing subject. Annie Ernaux's published diaries (1993-2011) demonstrate the role of the diary in the modern field of life-writing. Throughout the century, the diary has repeatedly been used to construct an oeuvre and author, but also to call these fundamental literary concepts into question.

Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-century French Writing

Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-century French Writing PDF Author: Sam Ferguson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198814534
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
An authoritative and original volume on the history of the diary in French writing in the twentieth century with a series of chapter-length studies on works by Andre Gide, Raymond Queneau, Roland Barthes, and Annie Ernaux

The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature

The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature PDF Author: Alison James
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192603493
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature identifies a documentary impulse in French literature that emerges at the end of the nineteenth century and culminates in a proliferation of factual writings in the twenty-first. Focusing on the period bookended by these two moments, it highlights the enduring concern with factual reference in texts that engage either with current events or the historical archive. Specifically, it considers a set of ideas and practices centered on the conceptualization and use of documents. In doing so, it contests the widespread narrative that twentieth-century French literature abandons the realist enterprise, and argues that writers instead renegotiate the realist legacy outside, or at the margins of, the fictional space of the novel. Analyzing works by authors including Gide, Breton, Aragon, Yourcenar, Duras, and Modiano, the book defines a specific documentary mode of literary representation that records, assembles, and investigates material traces of reality. The document is a textual, visual, or material piece of evidence repurposed through its visual insertion, textual transcription, or description within a literary work. It is a fact, but it also becomes a figure, standing for literature's confrontation with the real. The documentary imagination involves a fantasy of direct access to a reality that speaks for itself. At the same time, it gives rise to concrete textual practices that open up new directions for literature, by interrogating the construction and interpretation of facts.

The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature

The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature PDF Author: Alison James
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0198859686
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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Book Description
Studying works by authors including Gide, Breton, Aragon, Yourcenar, Duras, and Modiano, this volume re-thinks twentieth-century French literature and engages with the question of distinctions between the factual and the fictional.

A History of Modern French Literature

A History of Modern French Literature PDF Author: Christopher Prendergast
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400885043
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 736

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Book Description
An accessible and authoritative new history of French literature, written by a highly distinguished transatlantic group of scholars This book provides an engaging, accessible, and exciting new history of French literature from the Renaissance through the twentieth century, from Rabelais and Marguerite de Navarre to Samuel Beckett and Assia Djebar. Christopher Prendergast, one of today's most distinguished authorities on French literature, has gathered a transatlantic group of more than thirty leading scholars who provide original essays on carefully selected writers, works, and topics that open a window onto key chapters of French literary history. The book begins in the sixteenth century with the formation of a modern national literary consciousness, and ends in the late twentieth century with the idea of the "national" coming increasingly into question as inherited meanings of "French" and "Frenchness" expand beyond the geographical limits of mainland France. Provides an exciting new account of French literary history from the Renaissance to the end of the twentieth century Features more than thirty original essays on key writers, works, and topics, written by a distinguished transatlantic group of scholars Includes an introduction and index The contributors include Etienne Beaulieu, Christopher Braider, Peter Brooks, Mary Ann Caws, David Coward, Nicholas Cronk, Edwin M. Duval, Mary Gallagher, Raymond Geuss, Timothy Hampton, Nicholas Harrison, Katherine Ibbett, Michael Lucey, Susan Maslan, Eric Méchoulan, Hassan Melehy, Larry F. Norman, Nicholas Paige, Roger Pearson, Christopher Prendergast, Jean-Michel Rabaté, Timothy J. Reiss, Sarah Rocheville, Pierre Saint-Amand, Clive Scott, Catriona Seth, Judith Sribnai, Joanna Stalnaker, Aleksandar Stević, Kate E. Tunstall, Steven Ungar, and Wes Williams.

The Diary

The Diary PDF Author: Batsheva Ben-Amos
Publisher:
ISBN: 0253046963
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 492

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Book Description
The diary as a genre is found in all literate societies, and these autobiographical accounts are written by persons of all ranks and positions. The Diary offers an exploration of the form in its social, historical, and cultural-literary contexts with its own distinctive features, poetics, and rhetoric. The contributors to this volume examine theories and interpretations relating to writing and studying diaries; the formation of diary canons in the United Kingdom, France, United States, and Brazil; and the ways in which handwritten diaries are transformed through processes of publication and digitization. The authors also explore different diary formats including the travel diary, the private diary, conflict diaries written during periods of crisis, and the diaries of the digital era, such as blogs. The Diary offers a comprehensive overview of the genre, synthesizing decades of interdisciplinary study to enrich our understanding of, research about, and engagement with the diary as literary form and historical documentation.

The French Fictional Journal

The French Fictional Journal PDF Author: Valerie Raoul
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Unlike other forms of fictional first-person narrative such as the memoir or epistolary novel, the French fictional journal or diary-novel has received inadequate critical attention. This is the first full-length analysis devoted to its particular features. Valerie Raoul bases her study on the premise that the interest of the fictional journal lies in its subjugation of one set of conventions, those of the diary, to another set, those of the novel, and the interference of each of those 'codes' in the function of the other. In this context she discusses more than fifty novels or short stories wholly or partly in diary form and written in France between 1800 and the present. In the first part of the book she deals with the fictivity of the diary-novel. Philippe Lejeune's work on the functioning of autobiography serves as a point of comparison to elucidate the distinctive reading pact involved in this aspect of first-person fiction. The second part analyses the internal communication model: on this intradiegetic level the fictional diarist is narrator, actor, and narrate. In the third part, an abstract model is developed to illustrate the functioning of the fictional journal as a bi-textual form of communication, in which the internal communications process is a mise en abyme of the external one between author, character, and reader. The personal narcissism of the 'intimiste' is seen to give way in the fictional 'journal intime' to narcissistic fiction, since diary-novels are always the narration of the production of a 'recit.' This book is an important investigation into the very nature of fiction and the meaning of the activity of writing. It not only fills an important gap in the appreciation of French prose, but also adds to the comprehension of personal narrative in particular and narrative discourse in general.

Short French Fiction

Short French Fiction PDF Author: John Flower
Publisher: University of Exeter Press
ISBN: 9780859895705
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Book Description
With individual chapters written by specialists, Short French Fiction offers the reader new insights into some of the best examples of this genre and an impression of where this type of writing is heading as the new millennium approaches.

The Diary Novel

The Diary Novel PDF Author: Lorna Martens
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521108256
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Although the diary novel is often regarded as a twentieth-century genre due to its particular popularity in this century, the form actually has a long history that originates in the eighteenth century. The Diary Novel is the first book to trace that history, concentrating on French, German and English works with some attention given to Russian and Scandinavian traditions as well. Beginning with a discussion of the definition of the diary novel and some observations about genre study and criticism, Lorna Martens proceeds with interpretations of major diary novels by writers such as Defoe, Gide, Rilke, Frisch, Butor and Lessing. The Diary Novel includes sections on the influence of Richardson and the letter journal novel, the publication of the journaux intimes, psychological fiction, reliability of the narrator and the contemporary diary novel.

Marginal Voices, Marginal Forms

Marginal Voices, Marginal Forms PDF Author: Langford
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004651187
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
Diaristic writing has often been relegated to the fringes of literary studies as a marginal cultural activity. This volume seeks to challenge that marginality by exploring some of the wide-ranging forms of literary practice encompassed by diaristic writing in Europe from the Renaissance to the present day. The volume deals with questions of the value and status of the diary, of the functioning of the diary in society and history, and of the reception and interpretation of the multifarious forms of first-person daily writing. The volume investigates diaries across national borders and linguistic boundaries, so as to make the hitherto marginal place of the private journal a site of fruitful interdisciplinary encounters. Australian, British, Catalonian, French, German and Italian critics examine diaries dating from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, within the context of the literature, history and literary history of Catalonia, England, France, Germany and Italy. A prime concern of the essays in this collection is to highlight the cultural, generic and historical diversity of the diary, while emphasising the points of convergence between different texts and differing critical approaches to the texts. The volume will be of interest to students and teachers of European and comparative literature.