Description
Book SynopsisOffers an account of French writers and literary institutions from the beginning of the German Occupation through France's passage of amnesty laws in the early 1950s. To understand how the Occupation affected French literary production as a whole, this book uses Pierre Bourdieu's notion of the "literary field."
Trade Review“Gisèle Sapiro’s
La Guerre des écrivains originally appeared in 1999. This welcome, if belated, translation after a gap of fifteen years reflects its considerable impact on literary and cultural studies of the Occupation of France since then….What undoubtedly accounts for much of the success of
The French Writers’ War 1940–1953 is its impressive mastery of a huge amount of data on French literary production of the interwar years and the aftermath of the Occupation: publishers, literary journals and reviews, and a near exhaustive coverage of the writers themselves.” -- Nicholas Hewitt * TLS *
“
The French Writers’ War is an ambitious project. Sapiro has amply succeeded in providing a comprehensive study of four literary institutions, the writers who composed them, and the decisions these figures made before, during, and after the occupation….
The French Writers’ War is an illuminating book and Sapiro deserves to be warmly thanked for her contribution.” -- Mattie Fitch * H-War, H-Net Reviews *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix Introduction 1 Part I. The Literary Logics of Political Engagement 11 1. Choices under Constraints 13 2. The Responsibility of the Writer 81 3. Literary Salvation and the Literature of Salvation: Francois Mauriac and Henry Bordeaux 158 Part II. Literary Institutions and National Crisis 187 4. The Sense of Duty: The French Academy 191 5. The Sense of Scandal: The Goncourt Academy 243 6. The Sense of Distinction: The "NRF Spirit" 293 7. The Sense of Subversion: The Comite national des ecrivains (CNE) 362 Part III. Literary Justice 437 8. The Literary Court 439 9. Literary Institutions and National Reconstruction 491 Conclusion 537 Appendix 1: Presentation of the Survey 551 Appendix 2: The Social Recruitment of the Literary Field and of Its Institutions 561 Notes 573 Bibliography 677 Name Index 721
