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Overview"A new strain of realism has emerged in France. The novels that embody it represent diverse fears-immigration and demographic change, radical Islam, feminism, new technologies, globalization, American capitalism, and the European Union-but these books, often best-sellers, share crucial affinities. In their dystopian visions, the collapse of France, Europe, and Western civilization is portrayed as all but certain and the literary mode of realism begins to break down. Above all, they depict a degenerative force whose effects on the nation and on reality itself can be felt. Examining key novels by Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Aurélien Bellanger, Yann Moix, and other French writers, Christy Wampole identifies and critiques this emergent tendency toward ""degenerative realism."" She considers the ways these writers draw on social science, the New Journalism of the 1960s, political pamphlets, reportage, and social media to construct an atmosphere of disintegration and decline. Wampole maps how degenerative realist novels explore a world contaminated by conspiracy theories, mysticism, and misinformation, responding to the internet age's confusion between fact and fiction with a lament for the loss of the real and an unrelenting emphasis on the role of the media in crafting reality. In a time of widespread populist anxieties over the perceived decline of the French nation, this book diagnoses the literary symptoms of today's reactionary revival." Full Product DetailsAuthor: Christy WampolePublisher: Columbia University Press Imprint: Columbia University Press ISBN: 9780231185165ISBN 10: 0231185162 Pages: 296 Publication Date: 23 June 2020 Audience: Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , Professional & Vocational , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Out of stock  The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available. Table of ContentsAcknowledgments Introduction. What Is Degenerative Realism? 1. Demography and Survival in Twenty-First-Century France 2. Endarkenment from the Minitel to the Internet 3. Real-Time Realism, Part 1: Journalistic Immediacy 4. Real-Time Realism, Part 2: Le roman post-pamphletaire Conclusion. Novel as Nation: Forms of Parallel Decay Notes Bibliography IndexReviewsThis book is timely in its intervention, and it offers a bracing portrait of the new degenerative realists. Wampole makes a persuasive case for the coherence and significance of this reactionary literary tendency. -- Lee Konstantinou, University of Maryland In the wake of the cultural and economic crises that hit France through the era of post-truth and social media, contemporary French literature invented a new form of realism, which Wampole calls degenerative realism. A challenging, stimulating book on a controversial literary trend. -- Alexandre Gefen, CNRS-Universite Paris Sorbonne One of the smartest books I've had the pleasure to read in recent years. Compelling, stimulating, far-reaching, and indispensable. Degenerative Realism is a rich, illuminating concept, plugged into the French national psyche while capturing the zeitgeist of our globalized economy, and full of potentialities for related fields. A must-read in a world caught between alternative facts and dire predictions. -- Philippe Met, editor of <i>The Cinema of Louis Malle: Transatlantic Auteur</i> This book is timely in its intervention, and it offers a bracing portrait of the new degenerative realists. Wampole makes a persuasive case for the coherence and significance of this reactionary literary tendency. -- Lee Konstantinou, University of Maryland Author InformationChristy Wampole is associate professor of French at Princeton University. She is the author of Rootedness: The Ramifications of a Metaphor (2016) and The Other Serious: Essays for the New American Generation (2015). Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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