Genesis: aux sources de la litterature europeenne (review)

Genesis: aux sources de la littérature européenne, by Albert Gérard. Bibliothèque de littérature générale et comparée. Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998. 507 pp.

This book, published posthumously under the guidance of Pierre Halen, Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Metz, and the writer Michèle Fabien, is the first work by Albert Gérard to be published in Paris and constitutes, in essence, a long-planned synthesis of the earlier works of the comparatist from Liège. It will not enjoy wide circulation due its cost; that is a shame, and we hope that it will see a new life in an academic paperback format.

To begin with, Gérard read or reread numerous authors who are no longer or only rarely read, for example, Paulinus of Nola, Sidonius, Boethius, Bede, and Alcuin . He organizes his subject-- nothing less than the history of twenty centuries of literature from Europe and in Europe's major languages--in a series of synthetic chapters: orality, Latinities, the Celtic contribution, the Anglo-Saxon contribution, and finally, modern literatures (starting with the Middle Ages), which are obviously more accessible. His tour de force is presenting texts, from a critical and comparative perspective, that are known by specialists--taking these Fathers of the Church and progenitors of our literatures from their specialists and showing precisely how their material is part of literature as we know and love it today. This is a task at which very few indeed could succeed! Gérard took the terms "general" and "comparative" literature seriously; he did not limit himself to one region or one era: he was an explorer. He was not a specialist of twentieth-century African literature, but rather a comparatist reflecting on the links between literature and culture from the vantage of an impeccable historical erudition and exceptional breadth. His work is inscribed in the tradition of open reflection found in Auerbach, who investigates the birth of forms, such as narrative prose in popular language, from the perspective of textual analyses; in Gérard, the questions emerge from a general overview: for example, those dealing with the epic genre. In chapter 20 of his Vita Karoli Magni-Imperatoris, composed ca 820, Einhard states that the emperor arranged for the translation of very old poems of the barbarians that recounted the history and the wars of ancient kings, so that their memory would not be lost (409).

Gérard uses the past tense to frame questions to which his experience in African research has given a new pertinence: who was the first to write in the common language in Europe, for example? Has Wulfila been sufficiently honored, as the first to have translated the Bible into a common language--Gothic, in what was then Dacia (Roumania)? Gérard e is thus led to clarify the theological debates of the era of the Fathers of the Church by linking them to political debates translated into contemporary terms. He interrogates the past from the present; for example, he asks Pelagius and Augustine the questions that interest us about grace and freedom and does not hide his Pelagian sympathies: we must have faith in human nature. In summary, all the questions of classical philology are reprised in a new framework that is fed subterraneously by that experience in true grandeur, the creation of modern African literatures, whether in African or European languages. The result of this work is astonishing. Both meticulous and fervent, Gérard does not compel recognition through an Establishment posture, but instead through an erudite authority based on documentation, correspondence, library research. He knew the extent of what remained to be done, and was modest.

This book also offers reflection for the future: "La vernacularisation de l'écriture est un premier pas, indispensable, vers la démocratisation de notre sociéte" 'Vernacularization of writing is a first step, an indispensable step, toward...