Jean Paulhan was a legendary editorial figure of twentieth-century
French literature, assisting and publishing many of the most
important writers of his lifetime. He was also the author of
several volumes of fiction and numerous essays dealing with
literature, art, rhetoric, and language. Yet he published his own
work in a manner that deliberately kept it inconspicuous, or as
Maurice Blanchot put it, "in the margins." A critics' critic, he
gave his texts the same scrupulous attention he gave to others, and
was recognized as a discreet master. But when he was sufficiently
upset or angry, as he was when French politics endangered the
intellectual freedom of French writers and writing, he published
ferociously.
This volume is the first English translation of these major
essays, presenting in one book the development of his thinking on
his most studied subject: how language works, or, to echo Blanchot
again, how literature is possible. Much of contemporary literary
theory finds its modern antecedents in Paulhan's essays. He
reflected on large questions such as the philosophy and psychology
of literature, while at the same time showing a concern for detail
and aesthetic accomplishment. He constantly emphasized the act of
reading as an activity and literature as the engagement and
provocation of such activity. Beloved by writers because he took
the problems of writing with the utmost seriousness, his own
personal style was marked by self-effacement and irony.
General
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