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The idea of the "project" crosses generic, disciplinary and
cultural frontiers. At a time when writers and artists are
increasingly describing their practices as "projects," remarkably
little critical attention has been paid to the actual idea of the
"project." This collection of essays responds to an urgent need by
suggesting a framework for evaluating the notion of the project in
the light of various modernist and postmodernist cultural
practices, drawn mainly but not exclusively from the
French-speaking domain. The overview offered by this volume
promises to makes an original and thought-provoking contribution to
contemporary literary, artistic and cultural criticism.
Johnnie Gratton is the holder of the 1776 Chair of French at
Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of Expressivism: The
Vicissitudes of a Theory in the Writing of Proust and Barthes
(Legenda, 2000), and has written widely on modern French fiction
and autobiography.
Michael Sheringham is Marshal Foch Professor of French Literature,
University of Oxford. He has worked extensively on Surrealism,
modern fiction, poetry, and autobiography and related genres. His
publications include French Autobiotraphy: Devices and Desires (OUP
1993) and Parisian Fields (ed, Raktion Books, 1996).
This is the first full-scale study of French autobiography. Whereas
earlier critics have engaged primarily in theoretical discussion of
the genre, or in analyses of individual works or authors, Michael
Sheringham identifies sixteen key autobiographical texts and
situates them in the context of an evolving set of challenges and
problems. Informed by a sophisticated awareness of recent
theoretical debates, Sheringham conceives autobiography as a
distinctively open form of writing, perpetually engaged with
different forms of `otherness'. Manifestations of the Other in the
autobiographical process - from the reader, who incarnates other
people, to ideology, against which individual truth must be pitted,
to the potential otherness of memory itself - are traced through a
scrutiny of the `devices and desires' at work in a range of texts
from Rousseau's Confessions, to Stendhal's Vie de Henry Brulard and
Sartre's Les Mots. Other writers examined include Chateaubriand,
Gide, Green, Leiris, Leduc, Gorz, Barthes, Perec, and Sarraute.
French Autobiography: Devices and Desires represents both the first
attempt to assemble a canon in one volume and a strikingly original
contribution to the theory of autobiography.
In the last twenty years the concept of the quotidien, or the
everyday, has been prominent in contemporary French culture and in
British and American cultural studies. This book provides the first
comprehensive analytical survey of the whole field of approaches to
the everyday. It offers, firstly, a historical perspective,
demonstrating the importance of mainstream and dissident
Surrealism; the indispensable contribution, over a 20-year period
(1960-80), of four major figures: Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes,
Michel de Certeau, and Georges Perec; and the recent proliferation
of works that investigate everyday experience. Secondly, it
establishes the framework of philosophical ideas on which
discourses on the everyday depend, but which they
characteristically subvert. Thirdly, it comprises searching
analyses of works in a variety of genres, including fiction, the
essay, poetry, theatre, film, photography, and the visual arts,
consistently stressing how explorations of the everyday tend to
question and combine genres in richly creative ways. By
demonstrating the enduring contribution of Perec and others, and
exploring the Surrealist inheritance, the book proposes a genealogy
for the remarkable upsurge of interest in the everyday since the
1980s. A second main objective is to raise questions about the
dimension of experience addressed by artists and thinkers when they
invoke the quotidien or related concepts. Does the 'everyday' refer
to an objective content defined by particular activities, or is it
best thought of in terms of rhythm, repetition, festivity,
ordinariness, the generic, the obvious, the given? Are there events
or acts that are uniquely 'everyday', or is the quotidien a way of
thinking about events and acts in the 'here and now' as opposed to
the longer term? What techniques or genres are best suited to
conveying the nature of everyday life? The book explores these
questions in a comparative spirit, drawing new parallels between
the work of numerous writers and artists, including Andre Breton,
Raymond Queneau, Walter Benjamin, Michel Leiris, Maurice Blanchot,
Michel Foucault, Stanley Cavell, Annie Ernaux, Jacques Reda, and
Sophie Calle.
In the last twenty years the concept of the quotidien, or the
everyday, has been prominent in contemporary French culture and in
British and American cultural studies. This book provides the first
comprehensive analytical survey of the whole field of approaches to
the everyday. It offers, firstly, a historical perspective,
demonstrating the importance of mainstream and dissident
Surrealism; the indispensable contribution, over a 20-year period
(1960-80), of four major figures: Henri Lefebvre, Roland Barthes,
Michel de Certeau, and Georges Perec; and the recent proliferation
of works that investigate everyday experience. Secondly, it
establishes the framework of philosophical ideas on which
discourses on the everyday depend, but which they
characteristically subvert. Thirdly, it comprises searching
analyses of works in a variety of genres, including fiction, the
essay, poetry, theatre, film, photography, and the visual arts,
consistently stressing how explorations of the everyday tend to
question and combine genres in richly creative ways.
By demonstrating the enduring contribution of Perec and others,
and exploring the Surrealist inheritance, the book proposes a
genealogy for the remarkable upsurge of interest in the everyday
since the 1980s. A second main objective is to raise questions
about the dimension of experience addressed by artists and thinkers
when they invoke the quotidien or related concepts. Does the
'everyday' refer to an objective content defined by particular
activities, or is it best thought of in terms of rhythm,
repetition, festivity, ordinariness, the generic, the obvious, the
given? Are there events or acts that are uniquely 'everyday', or is
the quotidien a way of thinking about events and acts in the 'here
and now' as opposed to the longer term? What techniques or genres
are best suited to conveying the nature of everyday life? The book
explores these questions in a comparative spirit, drawing new
parallels between the work of numerous writers and artists,
including Andre Breton, Raymond Queneau, Walter Benjamin, Michel
Leiris, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Stanley Cavell, Annie
Ernaux, Jacques Reda, and Sophie Calle."
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