Literary Histories of Literatures

Academic literary history, written by professors and scholars, has experienced its autonomous development, both as a discipline and as a genre, from the end of the 19th Century, and its advancement has been widely researched. In contrast, not much attention has been paid to an alternative history of literature, which is told by the authors themselves. However, writers, just as scholars, keep producing histories of literature. In their works just as in their writings or interviews on their works, they give shape to their collective venture, create genealogies and invent precursors, in a global construction which can either complement or compete with the “official” scholarly history.

The purpose of this colloquium is to examine the literary history of writers – writerly literary history vs. scholarly literary history – as a creative one, that is, to analyze the formative role of this other literary history and literary memory for literature itself, for literature in progress. One can indeed consider that literature constantly re-invents itself while constructing its own past and that it gives shape to its own present and future through such gestures as: inventing traditions, re-evaluating ancient works and, above all, locating contemporary works within long-term history.

What makes the past relevant for a writer? How did Surrealist genealogies, for instance, affect Surrealism itself? How did Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past reorganize and rearrange the 17th and 19th Centuries for 20th-Century literature and thought? This colloquium follows a series of conferences devoted to the “literary history of writers.” This series started in May 2005 with the colloquium “Classicism and the Moderns,” that was held at Reid Hall and at the Bibliothèque municipale de Versailles. After two conferences devoted to collective works (“Collections d’écrivains” and “Anthologies d’écrivains,” held at Paris-Sorbonne University in June and September 2006), the colloquium “Literary Histories of Literatures” aims to go beyond the conventional opposition between writers and scholars and to show that literature is based upon a constant mixing of memory and a continuous re-invention of the past – in other words, that literature itself is producing history. This colloquium will consider not only French literature in the strict sense, but also American and Francophone literature. American literature will furnish a powerful point of reference, since such notions as national literature or patrimonial literature are not as pervasive in the United States as they are in France. As for Francophone literature, it will serve to remind us that progressively throughout the 20th Century, literatures have lost their national roots and that, in a post-modern world, literary history always implies literary geography as well.

We propose a four-part event. The first morning will be centered on the theoretical issue of the relationships between invention and memory. We will examine a series of contrasts: from literature as a heritage to the idea of a post-modern collection of quotations, or from the notion of national canon to the idea of world literature, we will question the geographical and historical variations of the relationship to the past. The afternoon will be devoted to the forms taken by criticism by writers (narratives, interviews, forewords, “souvenirs,” etc.). Those forms are often neglected, but they create a particular relationship to the past and play a crucial role in the constitution of the history and the memory of literature. The second day will concentrate on case studies, and will distinguish between positions – specific representations of the past, competing with scholarly literary history – and interventions – which give shape to the history of literature and prepare its future. Each day of the conference will end with a keynote speech by a writer – namely Assia Djebar and Edmund White – who will discuss his relationship with the history of literature.

• Sterling Currier Fund
  The Sterling Currier Fund, a bequest from Mrs Edith Sterling Currier, supports program of adult education at Columbia University and at Reid Hall for the futherance of Franco-American understanding.


• French Ministry of Research and Higher Education
  The French Ministry of Research and Higher Education awarded the research group “Littératures françaises du XXe siècle” at Paris-Sorbonne University a grant to conduct an international program also involving the following institutions: the Jacques-Petit Center (Franche-Comté University, Besançon, France); the Centre for the Study of Arts and Language (CRAL, CNRS-EHESS, Paris); the Department of Romance Philology of Bonn University (Germany); the Department of French and Romance Philology of Columbia University. The conference “Literary Histories of Literatures” is the final event held within this program entitled “L’histoire littéraire des écrivains”.