The French Critic 1549-1967

Fülszöveg

The past four hundred years have seen French literary criticism as a cherished tradition. Wallace Fowlie illustrates the various changes with a review of major critics to the twentieth century and a concentrated examination of contemporary critics. Jodchirr^ du Beliay in 1549 sought to prove the French language equal in dignity to Greek and Latin; Sainte-Beuve considered biography of primary value to criticism. With Bauçlelaire, ,Mçillarrné, and Valéry cqme creative criticism. Since 1940 philosophy has merged with criticism in the commentaries of Sartre, Péguy, Bernanos, Malraux, and Camus. In the past twenty years the human sciences have propagated a new hybrid criticism of surrealism and psychoanalysis/that is indeed a new literature. And Mr. Fowlie sees it growing rigid in formâlismr._

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The French Critic
1549-1967
By Wallace Fowlie Preface by Harry T.... Tovább

Fülszöveg

The past four hundred years have seen French literary criticism as a cherished tradition. Wallace Fowlie illustrates the various changes with a review of major critics to the twentieth century and a concentrated examination of contemporary critics. Jodchirr^ du Beliay in 1549 sought to prove the French language equal in dignity to Greek and Latin; Sainte-Beuve considered biography of primary value to criticism. With Bauçlelaire, ,Mçillarrné, and Valéry cqme creative criticism. Since 1940 philosophy has merged with criticism in the commentaries of Sartre, Péguy, Bernanos, Malraux, and Camus. In the past twenty years the human sciences have propagated a new hybrid criticism of surrealism and psychoanalysis/that is indeed a new literature. And Mr. Fowlie sees it growing rigid in formâlismr._

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The French Critic
1549-1967
By Wallace Fowlie Preface by Harry T. Moore
In the past thirty years Wallace Fowlie has made major contributions to aid our understanding of French literature. His overview of the past four hundred years of French literary criticism provides convincing argument that the human sciences popularly used by critics may well stifle literary criticism as a growing art. His introduction gives a history of the doctrinal theories from 1549 through the nineteenth century, several chapters treat criticism of the twentieth century, and a large discussion is devoted to French criticism of the past twenty years.
When Joachim du Bellay wrote Défense et Ulustrafion de la langue française (1549) to prove that French was equal in dignity to Greek and Latin, he began a cherished tradition In French letters. Mr. Fowlie contends that far greater changes have taken place in criticism than in any other writing form. He explains the evolution from the 1549 work to present treatises by critics whose vision must match that of the artist's.
The early French cfitics argued for the application of literary rules; with Sainte-Beuve came a concern with biography and literary criticism as an art form; and Taine scientifically narrowed the critical method with emphasis on "the race, the moment, and the milieu." Baudelaire and his followers, Mallarmé and Valéry, brought creative criticism to the fore. And Thibaudet assumed the attitude of the professional critic, while Du Bos and Maritain imposed Catholic views. Since 1940 philosophy has merged with literary criticism, producing the idea of a committed literature upheld by Péguy, Bernanos, and Malraux. The existentialist critics, Sartre and Camus, further united criticism and a philosophical understanding of man.
At midcentury, criticism began to be a source of knowledge about man. The development of the human sciences— sociology, psychology, and psychoanalysis—has allowed
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an approach of more depth than before. Striving to achieve goals of surrealism, depth of psychoanalysis, unity of theme, and completeness of structure, the French critics have indeed created a new literature. Mr. Fowlie believes the change will continue until the philosophical jargon substituting for literary language causes a rigid formalism—and a new literary crisis.
As a comprehensive commentary on criticism ingrained in the French literary world, Mr. Fowlie's historical analysis is for the reader curious about new modes of literary expression, the critic interested in current vistas of his art, and the specialist in criticism and French literature.
Wallace Fowlie took his degrees from Harvard. He presently holds the James B. Duke Professorship of French Literature at' Duke University. Recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, he traveled in France while researching this book.
Harry T. Moore is Research Professor at Southern Illinois University. Among his recent books are Twentieth-Century French Literature to World War II, Twentieth-Century French Literature since World War II, and Twentieth-Century German Literature.
Other Crosscurrents/Modern Critiques of Interest
For a complete list of Crosscurrents titles, please write to Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, Illinois 62901
Siegfried Mandel. Contemporary European Novelists Sergio Pacific!. The Modern Italian Novel from Man-
zoni to Svevo Harry T. Moore. Twentieth-Century French Literature to World War II and Tv/entieth-Century French Literature since World War II Frank Rosengarten. Vasco Pratolini: The Development
of a Social Novelist Ben F. Stoltzfus. Alain Robbe-Grillet and the New French Novel Vissza