Details

Subject(s)

• French literature—20th century—History and criticism [Browse]
• Journalism and literature—France [Browse]
• Sensationalism in literature [Browse]
• Violence in literature [Browse]

Series

Berg French studies [More in this series]

Summary note

• The Papin sisters, two maids who shocked France by savagely butchering their mistress and her daughter; Violette Nozieres, arrested for poisoning her mother and father; the serial murderer Eugen Weidmann, the last man to be publicly guillotined in France; Pierre Bastian, accused and tried for keeping his sister imprisoned in the same room for twenty-five years in conditions of unspeakable squalor; the mysterious 'affaire Gregory' which involved Marguerite Duras in a nationwide scandal for publishing an article in a national daily accusing a mother of murdering her own infant son: these sordid tales, widely disseminated by the French press in articles known as 'faits divers', have inflamed the imaginations of French writers and intellectuals from Zola and de Beauvoir to Barthes, Foucault and Lacan.
• Such news reports are the basis for some of the most enduring characters in French fiction - Julian Sorel, Emma Bovary and Therese Desqueyroux - and continue to enthrall readers on a daily basis. This rigorous and fascinating book is the only systematic study of the creative relationship between French writers and intellectuals and the 'fait divers'. In addition to finding inspiration in these items, many French novelists and intellectuals have been moved to comment on the psychological, social and judicial issues to which they habitually give rise. The study of this phenomenon underscores the powerful hold the sensational has exerted on the nation's psyche and shows how the more lurid aspects of popular culture have fired the imaginations not only of the 'masses' but of the intelligentsia as well.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (p. 254-262) and index.

Contents

• Introduction: The Fait divers
• pt. 1. Writers and journalism: From Fin de siècle to Fait divers: Alfred Jarry, Charles-Louis Philippe and Le Canard sauvage
• Cultivating the Fait divers: Détective
• pt. 2. Culture and criminality: Old masters: trials, tales, and sequestration in Gide and Mauriac
• Young iconoclasts: surrealism and the scene of the crime
• pt. 3. Literature, history and 'La factidiversialité': Literature, history and factidiversiality
• The news and the war
• The aftermath of calamity
• pt. 4. Facts, fictions and rumours: Albert Camus: the eye of the reporter
• Jean genet: life among the Faits divers
• pt. 5. Fantasies of violence: female intuitions: Consuming news: Simone de Beauvoir
• Consuming passions: Marguerite Duras
• pt. 6. Fantasies of violence: male perversions: Anything can happen: Jean-Paul Sartre
• Textual hide-and-seek: Alain Robbe-Grillet
• pt. 7. Setting the record straight: Setting the record straight: J.M.G. Le Clézio
• Conclusion.

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ISBN

• 085496780X ((paperback))
• 9780854967803 ((paperback))

LCCN

95021066

OCLC

32590583

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