What Forms Can Do: The Work of Form in 20th- and 21st- Century French Literature and Thought

Patrick Crowley

ISBN 10: 1789620651 / ISBN 13: 9781789620658

Published by Liverpool University Press, 2020

About this Item

THERE ARE NO TARIFFS OR CUSTOMS DUTIES ON BOOKS. This volume responds to important questions about the formal properties of literary texts and the agency of form. A central feature of twentieth- and twenty-first century French and Francophone writing has been the exploration of how cultural forms (literary, philosophical and visual) create distinctive semiotic environments and at the same time engage powerfully with external realities. How does form propose a bridge between the environment of the text and the world beyond? What kinds of formal innovations have authors devised in response to the complexity of that world? How do the formal properties of texts inflect our reading of them, and perhaps also our apprehension of the real? In addressing such questions as they apply to a wide corpus of texts, including the novel, life writing, the essay, travel writing, poetry and textual/visual experiments, the chapters in this volume offer new perspectives on a wide range of creative figures including Proust, Picasso, Breton, Bataille, Ponge, Guillevic, Certeau, Camus, Barthes, Perec, Roubaud, Chauvet, Savitzkaya, Eribon, Ernaux, Laurens and Akerman. Collectively, they renew the engagement with form that has been a key feature of French cultural production and of analysis in French studies.

Seller Inventory # 432202

Bibliographic Details

• Title: What Forms Can Do: The Work of Form in 20th- and 21st- Century French Literature and Thought
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: French
• ISBN 10: 1789620651
• ISBN 13: 9781789620658
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

This volume responds to important questions about the formal properties of literary texts and the agency of form. A central feature of twentieth- and twenty-first century French and Francophone writing has been the exploration of how cultural forms (literary, philosophical and visual) create distinctive semiotic environments and at the same time engage powerfully with external realities. How does form propose a bridge between the environment of the text and the world beyond? What kinds of formal innovations have authors devised in response to the complexity of that world? How do the formal properties of texts inflect our reading of them, and perhaps also our apprehension of the real? In addressing such questions as they apply to a wide corpus of texts, including the novel, life writing, the essay, travel writing, poetry and textual/visual experiments, the chapters in this volume offer new perspectives on a wide range of creative figures including Proust, Picasso, Breton, Bataille, Ponge, Guillevic, Certeau, Camus, Barthes, Perec, Roubaud, Chauvet, Savitzkaya, Eribon, Ernaux, Laurens and Akerman. Collectively, they renew the engagement with form that has been a key feature of French cultural production and of analysis in French studies.

About the Authors

Patrick Crowley is Senior Lecturer in French at University College Cork.

Shirley Jordan is Professor of French Studies at the University of Newcastle and Co-Director of the Centre for Contemporary Women’s Writing (CCWW) in the School of Advanced Studies, University of London.