History and the literary – a method of interdisciplinary enquiry into seventeenth– to twentieth–century France

This book makes available in English for the first time the work of the pioneering French interdisciplinary research group, Groupe de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur l’Histoire du Littéraire, better known as the GRIHL. Founded in 1997 by the historian, Christian Jouhaud, and the sociologist of literature, Alain Viala, the GRIHL’s weekly seminar has been the crucible for the careers of a whole generation of scholars, working on social and political phenomenon of what it terms ‘the literary’ from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, primarily but not exclusively in France, and pioneering an interdisciplinary perspective.

The brainchild of Alain Viala, who died in 2021 and to whom it pays tribute, the book combines methodological position pieces and case studies, work done both individually and collectively as a seminar. The Introduction (Kate Tunstall and Christian Jouhaud) situates the GRIHL in the intellectual and institutional landscape and explains what is meant by ‘the literary’ (as distinct from ‘literature’). Three powerful pieces on method – ‘Opening Moves’ – set out why the GRIHL approaches ‘writings’ rather than ‘texts’ and what happens when writing is viewed, as it is by the GRIHL, as a social act (Alain Cantillon, Laurence Giavarini, Dinah Ribard, Nicolas Schapira); what happens when place is viewed not as site but as situation (Mathilde Bombart and Alain Cantillon), and a publication not as an object but as an action (Christian Jouhaud and Alain Viala). The GRIHL’s deep interdisciplinarity is evident in the two sets of case studies – ‘Three Things to Think With’, which includes urban riots (Nicolas Schapira), the literary canon (Laurence Gavarini), libertines and heretics (Sophie Houdard and Jean-Pierre Cavaillé) – and ‘Seeing the Past’, which deals with Romantic ruins (Judith Lyon-Caen), historical amnesia in Simenon (Christian Jouhaud), and the many figures of Watteau (Alain Viala). Together, these essays make clear what is truly distinctive about the GRIHL’s approach. In critical conversation with J. L. Austin, Foucault, de Certeau, and others, including themselves, and with disciplines such as the history of the book and cultural studies, the GRIHL brings into view the many acts of writing that created, sustain – and block – our knowledge of the past.

Kate Tunstall is Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford and Tutorial Fellow of Worcester College. She is a specialist of eighteenth-century French literature, the works of Diderot in particular. She is the author of Blindness and Enlightenment (2012), the co-translator (with Caroline Warman) of Rameau’s Nephew (2017), and co-editor (with Wilda Anderson) of Naming, Renaming and Un-naming in Early Modern Europe (2013) and (with Helena Taylor) of Women and Quarrels in Early Modern France (2022). She is currently General Editor of the Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the official journal of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Christian Jouhaud is Professor of History at the EHESS and the author of many pioneering works of history, including most notably Mazarinades. La Fronde des mots (1985); Les Pouvoirs de la littérature. Histoire d’un paradoxe (2000); Sauver le Grand siècle ? Présence et transmission du passé (2007); (with Dinah Ribard and Nicolas Schapira), Histoire, littérature, témoignage. Écrire les malheurs du temps (2009); and Le siècle de Marie Du Bois. Écrire l'expérience au XVIIe siècle (2022).