French Studies

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, 1900-45 By OwEN HEATHCOTE and DAVID LoosE LEY, LecturersinFrenchStudiesat the University ofBradford

I. EssAYs, STUDIES Angles, Circumnavigations, posthumously reprints articles on, among others, Alain, Aragon, Claudel, Copeau, Drieu la Rochelle, Du Bos, Fernandez, Gide, Giono, Larbaud, Paulhan, Riviere, Supervielle, Valery. Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank: Paris, rgoo-1940, Austin, Texas U.P., 5I8 pp., is an original study which, though chiefly concerned with the lives and works of American expatriates (Colette is an exception), sheds light on the modernist culture of literary Paris by investigating the contribution of women to it and the specificity of their experience within it. Claudel Studies, I 3, no. 2, I I I pp., subtitled 'Satan, Devil, or Mephistopheles?', addresses the problem of evil conceived as existing independently of the individual: A. Espiau de la Maestre on Satan in Claudel's theatre, S. Maddux on Bernanos, M. M. Nagy on Valery, C. S. Brosman on Gide, L. M. Porter on Mauriac's Les Anges noirs, P. Brady on Proust and Des• vignes, M.G. Rose on Green, and B. Stiglitz on Malraux. Hommage Dicaudin is a rich volume focusing on the birth of the modern and straddling I 9th and 20th cs. Of relevance to our period are the third section, 'de !'esprit nouveau', the fourth, devoted naturally to Apollinaire, and the fifth, 'derives de l'esprit nouveau', containing pieces on the unconscious in Soupault, and on Apollinaire andjouve. Others figuring here arejammes, Cendrars, Reverdy, and Aragon. Hommages Petit•contains inidits by Green, Claude!, and Mauriac and eight articles on C. by Ubersfeld, Autrand, and others. Further items are also included. Jean-Franvois Hugot (see YWMLS, 47: I84 and I97), includes chapters on Gide, Riviere, and Rolland. Mortimer, Cloture, has short sections on Le Temps retrouvi, Le Diable au corps, Les Faux-Monnayeurs, and Voyage au bout de la nuit in a chapter entitled 'Le Texte inepuisable'. Mythe-Rite-Symbole contains 'La dynamique spatiale dans les Calligrammes de G. Apollinaire de I' envoi ala chute', 'Blaise Cendrars, dix-neuf poemes elastiques', 'Lecture "Duran• dienne" de trois pages du grand Meaulnes', 'Construire au son de la lyre: le mythe d'Orphee dans la poesie de Valery', 'L'itineraire initiatique dans Le Voleur d'enfants de]. Supervielle', and 'Humour et structure anthropologique de l'imaginaire dans Le Chiendent de Queneau'. Jean-Marie Rouart, lis ont choisi la nuit, Grasset, I985, I 79 pp., is a highly personal reflection on the attraction of suicide for a number of writers, with a chapter on Drieu la Rochelle and passing The Twentieth Century, 190o-45 233 reference to Surrealists like Crevel and Vache. Milusine, no. 8, 'L' Age ingrat', 266 pp., contains eleven articles on Surrealists and other sundry items. Whitney Chadwick, Women Artists and the Surrealist Movement, London, Thames and Hudson, I985, 256 pp., is an illuminating illustrated history, from a generally sympathetic view• point, of the contradictory roles assigned to women in the movement (I 924-4 7): erotic muse or Jemme-enfont on the one hand, autonomous creative artist on the other. Albert Cook, Figural Choice in Poetry and Art, Hanover and London, New England U.P., I985, ix + 256 pp., works from a broad theoretical base, defining literature as usually involving the confluence of conceptual thought, image, and story. Image and story, essentially self-subsistent in that they remain irreducible to mere thought, may none the less combine with it in literature. The result is an overriding 'sense of plenitude'. This principle is applied to a number of modern poets and painters, wi"th a chapter on Apollinaire and one on 'Surrealists and Surrealisms'. Jean-Franc;ois Fourny, '"Un jour ou l'autre on saura": de Dada au Surrealisme', RHLF, 86:865-75, attempts to resolve the problematic relationship between the two movements by applying the sociologist Bourdieu's concept of'champ' (never adequately explained) both to Dada's emergence as a distinct cultural force and to the struggle for power between Tzara and Breton which led to its eclipse in favour of Surrealism. Louisjanover, Le Reve et le plomb: le surrialisme de l'utopie a l'avant-garde, Jean-Michel Place, I 77 pp., is a difficult but rich work, both essay and critical study, which distinguishes between Surreal• ism's original non-conformist avant-gardism and its post-war mani• festations as a cultural institution. The most interesting section deals with the relation between the Surrealist revolutionary utopia and the 'logorrhee contestataire' of May 1968. Bernard Noel, *Une Liaison surrialiste: Marseille-New York (194D-45), Marseilles(?), Andre Dimanche, 1985, 143 pp. La Planete a.ffolie: surrialisme, dispersion et influences I9J8-I947, Flammarion- Musees de Marseille, 343 pp., is the richly illustrated product of a 1986 exhibition tracing the evolution and international impact of French Surrealism in exile. Chapters focus on the countries involved and are accompanied by documents and reproductions. Le Siecle iclati, 3: Le texte et son double, RLMod, Minard, 1985, 213 pp., contains five essays on Surrealism and pieces on Tzara (reprinted), Peret, Daumal, Bataille, Michaux, and Limbour. David Wills, SelfDe(con)struct: Writing and the Surrealist Text, Queensland, james Cook Univ., 1985, 183 pp., is a stimulating study which, debunking the myth of Surrealism as propagated by Breton, relates the recent critical theory of Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze to the 'surrealist' (the small 's' is intentional) texts produced by Desnos during the 1920s, since both have at least