Patrick Crowley and Shirley Jordan (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781789620658
- eISBN:
- 9781789623918
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789620658.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
The chapters in this book respond to important questions about the formal properties of French literary texts and the agency of form. A central feature of twentieth- and twenty-first century French ...
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The chapters in this book respond to important questions about the formal properties of French 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 with external realities. The aim of this volume is to explore how the formal properties of a range of texts inflect our reading of them and, through that exploration, to renew the engagement with form that has been a key feature of French cultural production and of analysis in French studies.Less
The chapters in this book respond to important questions about the formal properties of French 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 with external realities. The aim of this volume is to explore how the formal properties of a range of texts inflect our reading of them and, through that exploration, to renew the engagement with form that has been a key feature of French cultural production and of analysis in French studies.
Douglas Morrey
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781846318610
- eISBN:
- 9781846318047
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781846318610.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
Michel Houellebecq is perhaps the single most successful and controversial of all contemporary novelists writing in French. Houellebecq has become a global publishing phenomenon: since the success of ...
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Michel Houellebecq is perhaps the single most successful and controversial of all contemporary novelists writing in French. Houellebecq has become a global publishing phenomenon: since the success of Les Particules élémentaires (1998), his books have been translated worldwide, three film adaptations of his work have been produced, and the author has been the subject of million-euro publishing deals and of successive media scandals in France. If Houellebecq is unique in contemporary French writing, it is thanks not only to his extraordinary success, but to the unparalleled scope of his narrative ambition. In the work which most forcefully marked his breakthrough to the mainstream – Les Particules élémentaires – Houellebecq made a significant appeal to the science-fiction genre in order undergird his critique of contemporary society. For Houellebecq presents humanity – at least modern, western humanity – as in a terminal state of decadence and decline and ripe for replacement by its post-human successor. His novels narrate a metaphysical mutation or paradigm shift through which humanity as we know it ceases to be the over-riding value or focus of our world when it comes into conflict with a competitor in the form of a post-human or neo-human species.It is the aim of this book to appraise the global significance of Houellebecq's novelistic visions while at the same time situating them within the context of French literature, culture and society.Less
Michel Houellebecq is perhaps the single most successful and controversial of all contemporary novelists writing in French. Houellebecq has become a global publishing phenomenon: since the success of Les Particules élémentaires (1998), his books have been translated worldwide, three film adaptations of his work have been produced, and the author has been the subject of million-euro publishing deals and of successive media scandals in France. If Houellebecq is unique in contemporary French writing, it is thanks not only to his extraordinary success, but to the unparalleled scope of his narrative ambition. In the work which most forcefully marked his breakthrough to the mainstream – Les Particules élémentaires – Houellebecq made a significant appeal to the science-fiction genre in order undergird his critique of contemporary society. For Houellebecq presents humanity – at least modern, western humanity – as in a terminal state of decadence and decline and ripe for replacement by its post-human successor. His novels narrate a metaphysical mutation or paradigm shift through which humanity as we know it ceases to be the over-riding value or focus of our world when it comes into conflict with a competitor in the form of a post-human or neo-human species.It is the aim of this book to appraise the global significance of Houellebecq's novelistic visions while at the same time situating them within the context of French literature, culture and society.
