The colloquium organized at the University of Rennes III by Michèle Touret (1945-2017) and Francine Dugast-Portes (1938-2023) invited us to define the historical characteristics of the 20th century. A fine opportunity for me to test, on an informed public, the qualities of the Literary History Database (BDHL) on which I have never ceased working since its creation. Text available here: Le temps des lettres - Le casse du siècle. Pour une périodisation multicritères du xx e siècle - Presses universitaires de Rennes (openedition.org)

Table of contents Francine Dugast-Portes and Michèle Touret: Foreword 1st part. General questions Cross periodizations Jacqueline Sainclivier: A historian's view Pierre Brunel: Music and literature: parallel for an attempt at periodization in the 20th century Aporias and openings Emmanuel Bouju: Achilles and the tortoise: some (untimely) considerations on the periodization of literature First consideration: Achilles in pieces/critique of segmentation Second consideration: Achilles and articulations, or cross periodizations Third consideration (and conclusion): Achilles on all fours, or the rules of the periodization game Yves Baudelle: Periodization and synchronic cuts: the history of literature in question Bruno Blanckeman: A historical axiology for the twentieth century: identification of poles Corpus and methods Henri Béhar: The heist of the century. For a multicriteria periodization of the 20th century Chronology Chronology of political, social and literary events Published works Authors in production Movements Symbolism Naturalism Dadaism and Surrealism Existentialism New Novel, New Theater Generations The Apollinaire generation The 1917 generation The Sartre generation The 1968 generation Genres Dominants Phases Themes Conclusion Guy Larroux: Periodization and memory of works: about the critical half-century The orders of time Relevant articulations Charlotte Andrieux: Transfers from linguistics to literary criticism Formalism in linguistics and New Criticism from the 50s The triumph of structuralism and the "text" in the 60s Semantics, Semiology and new rhetoric or stylistics: return to "meaning" Pragmatics and study of reading: taking enunciation into account Periodization practices Anne-Rachel Hermetet: Italian discourses on contemporary French literature in the interwar period Jean-François Massol: What periodization of the 20th century for high school students? Place of Literary History and didactic reflection on it at the time of methodical reading The evolution of literature textbooks in high school: from exogenous to endogenous periodization. Historical and literary periodizations: consensus and problems. Historical or exogenous periodization Literary or endogenous periodization 2nd part. Diachronic examinations Generic crossings: poetry Christine Dupouy: The poetry of place in 20th century literature Jean-Pierre Zubiate: Poetry in the 20th century: from avant-gardes to over-reflection The time of avant-gardes: power of the verb and designative powerlessness Early century vitalism or the power of reconfiguration (1899-1916/1918) Around surrealist power and Valéryan mastery (1916/1918-1940) The contestation of poetic creation as power The precipitation of war (1940-1946) Post-war and the will to demythify (1946-1950) The time of over-reflection: 50s to 80s Demythification, transitive presence (1950-1966) Metonymic-metaphorical figuration (1966-1980) The resistance of avant-gardes (1950-1980) The 80s: between neo-lyricism and textualism Ambiguities of neo-lyricism Between dramatism and tragic writing Anne Malaprade: What paths to circulate in contemporary French poetry of the last thirty years: periods, avant-gardes and/or extreme contemporaneity? Stéphane Bikialo: Stylistics and periodization of poetic prose. The subject(s). The "new realism" First half and "turn" of the century

Michel Bernard: When does the literary 20th century begin? Statistical response attempt Michèle Touret: Is the 1914-1918 war a literary period or a factor of periodization? Jacques Poirier: 1930 The twenties decade or the reign of the I The thirties, or the advent of the WE Jean-Yves De Breuille: At the turn of the century: the poetry of the earth element Bruno Curatolo: The noir current in the French novel from the thirties to fifties From the 1950s to contemporary aesthetics Marc Dambre: The hypothesis of layered writing: about the "fifties" Fifties and mid-century according to Literary Itineraries Three methodological remarks First remark Second remark Third remark Layered writing, sequences and long periodization Dominique Denès: The new novel: problematic of institutionalization Didier Alexandre: Dating the new novel? Marc Gontard: Postmodernism in France: definition, criteria, periodization Definition Criteria Discontinuity Metatextuality Renarrativization Periodization Jacqueline Bernard: The return of narrative: the choice of ludic aestheticism in the last years of the 20th century Reconquest of diegesis Ludic aestheticism Authorial presence Anne Cousseau: The literature of small happinesses and minuscule pleasures, a new prose of the world? Dominique Viart: Writing in the present: contemporary aesthetics Contemporary literature as critical object The "contemporary period" Return to "transitive" literature The turn of the 1970s-1980s The waltz of labels From "new" to "post-" Attempts at regrouping The "contemporary" approach "The extreme contemporary" "Where is literature?" The disenchantment of literature The impassive disenchantment Various uses of nostalgia Memory works The present on trial Conclusion

See also: Henri Béhar, Le casse du siècle. Pour une périodisation multicritères du xxe siècle | isidore.science as well as: Le casse du siècle. Pour une périodisation multicritères du xxe siècle | Semantic Scholar (semanticscholar.org)

The text appears in the collection: La Littérature et son golem, tome II, Classiques Garnier, 2010, pp. 73-100. Collection: Studies of 20th and 21st century literature, n° 10

On BDHL, see on this same site: "A literary history database project", in Méthodes quantitatives et informatiques dans l'étude des textes, Genève, Slatkine, Paris, Champion, 1986, pp. 43-54. "The Literary Database (BDHL) today via Internet", in: Wieslaw Kroker, Histoire et critiques littéraires en mouvement, Mélanges Chudak, Université de Varsovie, 2009, p. 28-46. "Of measure before everything else", preface to Étienne Brunet, Comptes d'auteurs I, statistical studies, from Rabelais to Gracq. Paris, Honoré Champion, 2009, p. 8-17. And, of course, use the said database: http://www.phalese.fr/bdhl/bdhl.php