春雨直播app

This book project began with a request from the publisher to write a history of French literature that was “full of personal distortions.” A literary history in the academic world would typically feature a division of labor, with specialists writing on their respective eras or genres of expertise. When an individual writes the history of a literature, it is inevitable that biases, omissions, and errors will find their way into the mix, but the publisher embraced the idea of a literary history that took such “distortions” as a selling point.
 
I, too, thought that this might be an interesting approach. The literary history textbooks I relied on while preparing for my entrance examinations to study French literature at graduate school were essentially lists of authors and their works. While they may have been useful as sources of information, it would be going too far to describe them, even generously, as engaging reads. I realized that I had also wished I could have read a literary history written with more personal authenticity, even if it covered fewer authors and works, or if the descriptions lacked objectivity.
 
Nevertheless, I was still somewhat hesitant to push my own “tastes” to the surface and judge the material as I saw fit. There had, of course, been books of this type previously. In their case, however, what attracts readers is not so much the authors or works covered as the critic, unencumbered and able to let their views loose. Seeing myself as having neither a strong enough personality nor resolve to take on such a mantle, I was not ready to accept the project immediately. But, as I was holding off on my answer, it struck me that the “distortions” that publisher was seeking did not necessarily have to be my own—why not leave those to the authors I hold dear? And the result is this book, A Distorted History of French Literature: Viewing the world through the prism of Oulipo.
 
Readers may not be familiar with the term “Oulipo,” which appears in the subtitle. This is the name of an experimental literary group founded in 1960 by writer Raymond Queneau and mathematician François Le Lionnais, together with a gathering of friends they invited—namely, writers and mathematicians—and it continues to exist to this day. Though labeled as experimental literature, their style feels more relaxed and playful than radically avant-garde. For forerunners of this playful spirit, one can look to figures such as François Rabelais from the Renaissance, Denis Diderot from the 18th century, and Raymond Roussel from the early 20th century, and this book discusses their work in consideration of their connection to Oulipo. However, one point of pride in this book is how it also features authors with no apparent link to Oulipo’s practices, and draws out commonalities, even if they sometimes feel a bit of a stretch. For example, I invite readers to take a look at the section that compares the art collection in Balzac’s late masterpiece Le Cousin Pons with the collection of bizarre objects (including an obscene automaton clock) in George Perec’s La Vie mode d’emploi, one of Oulipo’s most prominent works, highlighting the historical backgrounds of both texts (turmoil after the French Revolution, and losing the sense of being alive, respectively). 
 
This book offers a glimpse of the landscape of French literature from a side street, from a tributary. Although heavily distorted, perhaps this ambitious project could tentatively be described as a success if it has scooped up some of the missing pieces that had fallen through the cracks of more mainstream literary histories. 
 

(Written by SHIOTSUKA Shuichiro, Professor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology / 2024)