Gérard Genette
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Gérard Genette (born 1930) is a French literary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and such figures as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, from whom he adapted the concept of bricolage. He is largely responsible for the reintroduction of a rhetorical vocabulary into literary criticism, such terms as trope and metonymy now used as frequently in American universities as those in France; additionally his work on narrative, best known in America through the selection Narrative Discourse: An Essay on Method, has been of considerable importance. His conscious influence in America is not as great as that of Barthes and Lévi-Strauss, as his work is more often included in selections or discussed in secondary works than studied in its own right, but even for those outside of the study of structuralism it is difficult not to encounter terms and techniques originating in his vocabulary and systems. His most important work is the four-part Figures series, of which Narrative Discourse is a section, but he has continued teaching and writing up to this day.
Timeline
- 1930: Born in Paris.
- 1967: Receives professorship in French literature at the Sorbonne.
- 1970: Founds French journal Poétique.
Selected Works
- Figures I-III, 1967-70. (selections of Figures III translated and published as Narrative Discourse: An Essay on Method, 1979)
- Mimologiques, 1976. (translated as Mimologics, 1995)
- Introduction à l'architexte, 1979.
- Seuils, 1987.
- Fiction et diction, 1991.
- Figures IV, 1999.sk:Gérard Genette
