Genette biography

Gérard Genette is a literary scholar and structuralist theorist who has had a broad impact on the development of narratology. Although narratology was established as a field of study before Genette, he developed a terminology to describe the functioning of narrative that has become universal. His work on transtextuality is still ubiquitously referred to in the field of literary studies. Genette's classifications were rigorously formulated, and his gift for typology has gained him widespread acknowledgement among scholars of poetics in general and of narratology in particular.

Genette is a writer and teacher, and is currently a professor of French literature at the Sorbonne and a senior lecturer at the École normale supérieure. He has also served as an academic dean at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, and is the founder and director of the Poetics collection for the Seuil publishing house.

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French, structuralistliterary theorist. Born in Paris, Genette studied at the École Normale Supérieure, where his classmates included Jacques Derrida and Pierre Bourdieu. After an obligatory period of teaching in lycées, Genette obtained a position at the Sorbonne in and then a more permanent post at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Together with Tzvetan Todorov and Hélène Cixous, he founded the journal Poétique in , which became a key organ of the structuralist and post-structuralist movements in Paris and a significant rival to Tel Quel. Genette's work focuses on the question of how literary writing works, that is, what sets it apart from other forms of non-literary writing, but also how does it achieve certain of its effects. His approach, consistent with Lévi-Strauss's original geological inspiration for structuralism, tends to be stratified: he investigates the ways different parts of the literary text interact and devotes considerable attention to identifying and analysing these parts. He enlarges the Russian Formalist binary of fabula and sjužet to a trinity by adding what he calls the narrative instance, namely the act of telling the story itself, thus taking into account its performative dimension. Genette's star has waned in recent years with the movement away from such purely formal questions towards more politically motivated problems in literary theory. His key works are collected in a series of volumes entitled Figures I (), Figures II (), and Figures III (), a selection of which has been compiled and translated into English as Figures of Literary Discourse ().

French literary theorist (–)

"Genette" redirects here. For the disappeared person, see Genette Tate.

Gérard Genette (French:[ʒeʁaʁʒənɛt]; 7 June – 11 May ) was a Frenchliterary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and with figures such as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, from whom he adapted the concept of bricolage.

Life

Genette was born in Paris, where he studied at the Lycée Lakanal and the École Normale Supérieure, University of Paris.

After leaving the French Communist Party, Genette was a member of Socialisme ou Barbarie during –8.

He received his professorship in French literature at the Sorbonne in

In with Hélène Cixous and Tzvetan Todorov he founded the journal Poétique and he edited a series of the same name for Éditions du Seuil.

Among other positions, Genette was research director at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales and a visiting professor at Yale University.

Work

Genette is largely responsible for the reintroduction of a rhetorical vocabulary into literary criticism, for example such terms as trope and metonymy. Additionally, his work on narrative, best known in English through the selection Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, has been of importance. His major work is the multi-part Figures series, of which Narrative Discourse is a section. His trilogy on textual transcendence, which has also been quite influential, is composed of Introduction à l'architexte (), Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree (), and Paratexts. Thresholds of Interpretation ().

His international influence is not as great as that of some others identified with structuralism, such as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss; his work is more often included in select

PERSONAL: Born June 7, , in Paris, France; son of Gaston and Rose (Darnon) Genette; married Raymonde Debray, June 18, ; children: Christine, François; Nathalie. Education: Sorbonne, University of Paris, degree, , Litt.D.,

ADDRESSES: Home—7 rue Saint-Gilles, Paris, France.

CAREER: Teacher in LeMans, France, –63; Sorbonne, University of Paris, Paris, France, assistant professor, –67; École Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, professor, –

WRITINGS:

Vertige fixé, bound with Dans le labyrinthe, Dans les souloirs du Métropolitain, La chambre secrète, by Alain Robbe-Grillet, Union Générale (Paris, France),

Figures: Essais, five volumes, Éditions du Seuil (Paris, France), –, translation by Dorrit Cohn published as Essays in Aesthetics, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE),

Mimologiques: Voyage en Cratylie, Éditions du Seuil (Paris, France), , translation by Thais E. Morgan published as Mimologics = Mimologiques: Voyage en Cratylie, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE),

Introduction à l'architexte, Éditions du Seuil (Paris, France), , translation by Jane E. Lewin published as The Architext: An Introduction, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA),

Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, translation by Jane E. Lewin, , revised edition of the original French published as Nouveau discours du récit, Éditions du Seuil (Paris, France) , published as Narrative Discourse Revisited, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY),

Figures of Literary Discourse, Columbia University Press (New York, NY),

Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degré, Éditions du Seuil (Paris, France), , translation by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky published as Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE),

Seuils, Éditions du Seuil (Paris, France), , translation by Jane E. Lewin published as Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, Cambridge Universi