A New History of French Literature [Paperback]

These two volumes, consisting of 164 essays written by American and European specialists, provide an original and outstanding overview of French literature from 842 to the present. Each essay is introduced by a date and arranged in chronological order. A brief headline follows the date, relating the essay to a major literary event. Essays, however, follow no specific format. Some are devoted to a genre, others to a major literary movement or historical event. Large surveys are also included. Social and cultural perspectives are present, including essays on women in French literature and art, viewed from philosophical as well as theoretical perspectives. Such a compilation runs the risk of being disjointed and uneven. What emerges, however, is a rich mosaic covering over 1000 years of French literature, beginning with the Serments de Strasbourg . Most of the scholars writing for these volumes bring to the task years of specialized research concerning areas and subjects they have written on extensively. This results in broad, inclusive, and associative essays that demonstrate depth as well as breadth. These pages can be read in sequence by the ambitious reader in search of a stimulating survey that goes beyond dates and summaries and that raises social, political, literary, and philosophical issues. The scholar, too, selecting essays at random, will find novel insights by peers that merit further consideration. There is no history of French literature of this nature on the market today, in French or in English. Highly recommended.
- Anthony Caprio, Oglethorpe Univ., Atlanta, Ga.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

An impressive volume...It is not to be thought of as an exhaustive reference book, nor is it designed to be read right through as a single text. Its mode d'emploi is that of the browser. And as such it is indeed--as the blurbs repeat to us--a triumph. Plunge in, almost at random, and you will come up with pearls like Leo Bersani on Proust, DeJean on the salons or the editor on May 1968, discourse and power. I shall come back to it often.
--Peter France (Times Literary Supplement )

This remarkable collection of brief essays on topics ranging from the Strasbourg Oaths of 842 to a 1983 broadcast of 'Apostrophes,' France's celebrated television literary interview program, is far more than a survey of 12 centuries of writing in France. It is a fascinating, generally very readable and almost always unpredictable ramble through the thick and varied garden of culture tended for these many centuries by the French people. The volume's editor, Denis Hollier, a professor of French at Yale University, has managed the considerable feat of compiling hundreds of brief essays by 164 mostly American scholars of French literature and to impose on the whole extraordinary unity. The result is a Francophile's delight and a lucid, often entertaining display of erudition...You can drop your cup at random into this deep well of cultural history and almost always come up with something sweet and stimulating to drink.
--Richard Bernstein (New York Times )

An original and outstanding overview of French literature from 842 to the present...There is no history of French literature of this nature on the market today, in French or in English. Highly recommended.
--Anthony Caprio (Library Journal )

Despite the eclectic nature of the various contributions...they nonetheless form a coherent ensemble thanks to the coordinating skills of a sophisticated editorial board and to Renee Morel's indispensable index...The fact is that this [book] has rendered its predecessors obsolete, making it one of a kind in its field today.
--Ernest Sturm (French Review )

Each and every chapter is chock full of illuminating and intriguing facts, and each one, rather than reserve the stage for one main actor, allows anyone who has something to say to take part in the fun. Stendhal, for instance, has two chapters devoted to his work--on his Romantic manifesto Racine et Shakespeare (1823), and another on his novel La charteuse de Parme (1893)--but his elegant shadow falls on dozens of other pages. Each chapter is announced by a date, a headline event and a theme, and is written by one of 165 academics collected by Hollier from both North America and Europe. And here one must marvel at Hollier's achievement: academics who can write both intelligently and with humor. The mind boggles.
--Alberto Manguel (Globe and Mail )

This grandly imagined and executed history of French literature is without precedent in any language...Here are many of the best contemporary critics and theorists, writing with vivid originality...This volume is a triumph of editorial and critical intelligence.
--Richard Poirier (Raritan )

The fact is that A New History of French Literature has rendered its predecessors obsolete.
--Ernest Storm (French Review )

Exciting, riotous, irritating, invigorating, often provocative, always interesting. (L 'Humanité-Dimanche )

For the first time, Marie de France, Marguerite de Navarre, Germaine de Staël, George Sand, and Colette have come forward as prize-winners.
--Claire Devarrieux (Liberation )

After all the lights from the festivities have been extinguished, after all the babble from the colloquia has stilled, and the celebration of the bicentennial of the French Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic comes to an end, one book will remain--this one.
--Pierre-Yves Pétillon (Critique )