Fiction In The Historical Present: French Writers And The Thirties
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
In the turbulent decade between two world wars, French literature became a battleground of ideas — and Fiction in the Historical Present: French Writers and the Thirties by Mary Jean Green maps that contested terrain with precision and scholarly authority. Green examines how major French writers of the 1930s — including Louis-Ferdinand Céline, André Malraux, Simone de Beauvoir, and Georges Bernanos — grappled with the seismic political and social upheavals of their era, arguing that their fiction was not merely a reflection of history but an active, urgent response to it. Situating each author within the volatile interplay of fascism, communism, and existential anxiety, Green illustrates how the historical present became both subject and formal challenge for a generation of novelists writing at the edge of catastrophe. Green's critical methodology is rigorous yet deeply attuned to the literary texture of each work, drawing on close reading and cultural history to reveal how narrative form itself became a site of ideological struggle. Her analysis transcends the conventional boundaries of period study, presenting the 1930s not as a prelude to World War II but as a richly significant literary moment in its own right. For scholars of French literature, intellectual history, and the relationship between politics and prose, this work raises a question that lingers long after the final page: when history accelerates beyond comprehension, what can fiction — and only fiction — tell us?
Author: Mary Jean Green
Format: Hardback
Published: 1986, University Press of New England
Genre: Literary theory
Condition remarks:
Book: Very good
Jacket: Very good
Pages: Good
In the turbulent decade between two world wars, French literature became a battleground of ideas — and Fiction in the Historical Present: French Writers and the Thirties by Mary Jean Green maps that contested terrain with precision and scholarly authority. Green examines how major French writers of the 1930s — including Louis-Ferdinand Céline, André Malraux, Simone de Beauvoir, and Georges Bernanos — grappled with the seismic political and social upheavals of their era, arguing that their fiction was not merely a reflection of history but an active, urgent response to it. Situating each author within the volatile interplay of fascism, communism, and existential anxiety, Green illustrates how the historical present became both subject and formal challenge for a generation of novelists writing at the edge of catastrophe. Green's critical methodology is rigorous yet deeply attuned to the literary texture of each work, drawing on close reading and cultural history to reveal how narrative form itself became a site of ideological struggle. Her analysis transcends the conventional boundaries of period study, presenting the 1930s not as a prelude to World War II but as a richly significant literary moment in its own right. For scholars of French literature, intellectual history, and the relationship between politics and prose, this work raises a question that lingers long after the final page: when history accelerates beyond comprehension, what can fiction — and only fiction — tell us?