Ismes: du réalisme au postmodernisme par Anna Boschetti (review)

practice than the more commonly considered Proust and Joyce. And the great originality and importance of Bolin’s critical framework is largely found in his rigorous and careful use of notes from the lectures Beckett gave on Gide and the modern novel in 1930, as he demonstrates how instrumental Beckett’s readings of Gide (and key antecedents and inheritors such as Dostoevsky and Sartre) were on his own developing novelistic practice. Bolin’s study then offers compelling readings of each of Beckett’s novels from Dream of Fair to Middling Women through the breakthrough of the Three Novels, showing in every chapter just how much was learned from Gide’s ironic art of failure. This study fills a major gap in current Beckett studies, and it will be of great interest to any reader interested in Beckett’s place in the history of novelistic form. I hope that it proves influential in forging exciting new directions in scholarship on Beckett. Towson University (MD) Jacob Hovind Boschetti, Anna. Ismes: du réalisme au postmodernisme. Paris: CNRS, 2014. ISBN 978-2-271-07438-6. Pp. 352. 25 a. When we think about the history of art and literature, as Boschetti reminds us, we are inevitably led to rely on “isms” that have become an ingrained part of our intellectual formation. Yet, as Boschetti argues in her highly readable and richly documented survey, this habitual manner of approaching these disciplines has also served to occlude the complexity and sometimes paradoxical effectiveness of the processes at work behind the formation of the various modes of representing the evolution of art and literature in our culture. The purpose of her book is thus to “denaturalize” some of the most familiar “isms” to have emerged over the past two centuries by taking into account the temporal, geographical, cultural, social, and political circumstances attending the formation of these conceptual labels. In carrying out this task, Boschetti makes use, in particular, of the notions of habitus and champ, two of Bourdieu’s best known theoretical and methodological devices. Consequently, and specifically, the“ensemble des champs, des agents et des institutions”she proposes to study will include such areas as “champ du pouvoir, marché, éditeurs, revues, journaux et autres médias, critiques, importateurs, traducteurs, réseaux de sociabilité, système d’enseignement, champs artistiques, etc.” (11). Equally important, are the mutual influences that mark the relations between these agents and institutions not only within the boundaries of a national culture but also in the context of international and global developments. The first “ism” to be dissected is Realism, the most widely and commonly used category and, consequently, the most readily naturalized. Central to its development in the aftermath of the revolution of 1848 is the close relationship linking Gustave Courbet to two influential literary figures: Champfleury and Baudelaire. Boschetti devotes the next chapter to the notion of avant-garde as it has been applied 208 FRENCH REVIEW 89.3 Reviews 209 in a variety of literary and artistic contexts from Futurism to Surrealism and highlights the role of Marinetti as well as the international scope of these movements. Following the Second World War, the two“isms”whose prestige and influence extend worldwide are Existentialism and Structuralism. What is noteworthy this time is a major change in the intellectual content and purpose of the two movements. While the reigning “isms”prior to 1940 involved literary and artistic agendas, leading intellectual figures such as Sartre and Lévi-Strauss inaugurate modes of thought that seem to provide “des instruments conceptuels pour penser les problèmes de l’actualité” (174). When the time came for Structuralism to be questioned and repudiated in France, it had migrated to the United States, where it established its hegemony as “French Theory” in literature departments across the country and Boschettti underscores“l’échelle sans précédent, d’emblée continentale, gigantesque, de l’usine théorique américaine”(314). Postmodernism, in turn, devalued a key feature of “isms,”namely“la croyance dans la possibilité d’un renouveau esthétique ou théorique radical”(345). Nevertheless, given our irresistible tendency to think in terms of “isms,”and given the globalization of the cultural marketplace, Boschetti is...