Histoire de la littérature française: voyage guidé dans les lettres du xi e au xx e siècle by Michel Brix (review)

This survey by the dix-neuviémiste Michel Brix has appealing aspects. It pulls together a wide range of works and is at its best when it gets a narrative going, as when, for example, it outlines the history of religious dissent in France, to-and-fro influences between early modern England and France, or clashes between encyclopédistes and court. Brix respects the complexity of literary practice during given periods, conveying well the diverse overlaps between older and experimental forms; and many comments on individual works are pertinent and appreciative. However, the book is problematic. It is apparently aimed at students but is unlikely to be recommended in (to start only with these) anglophone universities. Good histories of French literature in English already exist, from Denis Hollier’s to David Coward’s (and most recently Brian Nelson’s). But, apart from this, Brix’s book does not meet the needs of most current anglophone syllabuses—it excludes virtually all overseas francophone literature (only one paragraph touches on this); and, although female authors put in an appearance from time to time, Brix at no point hints at the troubled history of women’s writing in France, nor (say) mentions the various querelles des femmes. As for French colleagues: Brix’s latest works have not been well received. Books of his published in the last three years were criticized by, for example, Fanny Lorent (‘Brix, contre la modernité’, COnTEXTES (2014) <http://contextes.revues.org/5988>) and Bertrand Bourgeois (‘Michel Brix fait de la résistance’, Acta fabula, 15.9 (2014) <http://www.fabula.org/acta/document8987.php>) [both accessed 11 January 2016]. While acknowledging Brix’s eminence as a Nerval specialist, these reviewers stressed his ideological biases, his moralizing, and his implicit homophobia (Lorent); he is a ‘critique amer’ whose ‘diatribe antimoderne’ is repetitive (Bourgeois); also cited were the absence of precise textual analysis in Brix’s recent work, his scant bibliographies, his ‘biographisme saintebeuvien’, and the dismaying ‘mépris ironique’ he displays towards post-Baudelairean poetry, indeed towards Baudelaire himself (Bourgeois). The present work has similar defects (perhaps Brix is writing his books too quickly to find time to read reviews of them)—and adds others. It overlooks or actively deprecates the humour and parodic verve so important in French writing; it asserts more than once that literature should be ‘moral’, show us how to live our lives. Local generalizations, too, are simple-minded: seemingly no author since Balzac has duly heeded historical or physical circumstance. And misjudgements are rife. Here is just one: ‘L’œuvre de Ponge condense les orientations les plus déprimantes de la modernité et l’auteur lui-même — en faisant parade dans ses recueils d’une cérébralité pontifiante et prétentieuse, que n’aurait pas reniée le Trissotin de Molière — semble avoir nourri pour objectif de décourager le public de le suivre’ (p. 335). The arch-villain is Proust, who spread the ‘illusion pernicieuse’ that to be a writer you need only talk about yourself, but whom Brix also attacks for his comments that individuals see the world in different ways (no contradiction is perceived here); Proust’s work is ultimately ‘mortifère’ (pp. 353–55). The hero is de Gaulle, the last French writer to be preoccupied with ‘grandeur’ (p. 352). This book is surely destined for a very short shelf-life.