A. Jefferson, Genius in France: An Idea and its Uses

Ann Jefferson, Genius in France: An Idea and Its Uses

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2014.

EAN 9780691160658

Prix $39.50 / £27.95

Présentation de l'éditeur :

This engaging book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, Ann Jefferson examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. She traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others.

Jefferson considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. She then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. She shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and she discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept.

Rich in narrative detail, Genius in France brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Part I: Enlightenment Genius
Chapter 1: The Eighteenth Century: Mimesis and Effect
Chapter 2: Genius Obscured: Diderot

Part II: Nineteenth-Century
Genius: The Idiom of the Age
Chapter 3: Language, Religion, Nation
Chapter 4: Individual versus Collective Genius
Chapter 5: The Romantic Poet and the Brotherhood of Genius
Chapter 6: Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, and the Dynasty of Genius

Part III: Genius in the Clinic
Chapter 7: Genius under Observation: Lélut
Chapter 8: Genius, Neurosis, and Family Trees: Moreau de Tours
Chapter 9: Genius Restored to Health

Part IV: Failure, Femininity, and the Realist Novel 1
Chapter 10: A Novel of Female Genius: Mme de Staël's Corinne
Chapter 11: Balzac's Louis Lambert: Genius and the Feminine Mediator
Chapter 12: Creativity and Procreation in Zola's L'OEuvre

Part V: Precocity and Child Prodigies
Chapter 13: Exemplarity and Performance in Literature for Children
Chapter 14: Alfred Binet and the Measurement of Intelligence
Chapter 15: Minou Drouet: The Prodigy under Suspicion

Part VI: Genius in Theory
Chapter 16: Cultural Critique and the End of Genius: Barthes, Sartre
Chapter 17: The Return of Genius: Mad Poets
Chapter 18: Julia Kristeva and Female Genius
Chapter 19: Derrida, Cixous, and the Impostor

Ann Jefferson is professor of French literature at the University of Oxford and fellow and tutor in French at New College, Oxford. Her books include Reading Realism in Stendhal and Biography and the Question of Literature in France.