"There Are Only Two Genres, the Poem and the Pamphlet", in The Explosion of Genres in the 20th Century, edited by Marc Dambre and Monique Gosselin, Presses de la Sorbonne nouvelle, 2001, pp. 61-80.
This categorical assertion by Tristan Tzara in L'Antitête certainly convenient for classifying Dadaist production, is it relevant to all French literature of the 20th century? This is the question I attempted to answer during the conference organized by Marc Dambre and Monique Gosselin at the Sorbonne by using, once again, the data provided by the BDHL (Literary History Database): Text (partially) readable on Google Books:
Presentation
In the 20th century, literature (poses) the question of genres (fiction, poetry, reportage, correspondence...) and seems to find in the notion of explosion a qualification, if not a quality, proper to present it. The work first opens with a historical presentation and a theoretical evaluation of the notion, which presupposes a priori literature as a homogeneous whole. To this first part follow two others which study the great creators of genres of the 20th century. From 1890 to 1950, from Proust to Ponge, the contributions focus on the novel, poetry and theater. Then from 1950 to the present day, the studies focus on contemporary authors, from Duras to Frédéric-Yves Jeannet, passing through Malraux and Koltès. All genres or almost all are considered here: those that are subverted (in poetry for example by Apollinaire) to the point of exhausting their forms (texts by Duras); those that enter and add to others (dreams, songs... by Breton and the surrealists); those still that are mixed, blended (for example, intimate journals and critical reflections by Queneau).
This is a way of relaunching, at the very beginning of the 21st century, the question of the link between form and meaning, situation and vision.
Download my intervention PDF (this is the text prepared for the conference, planning the projection of slides)