Ann Jefferson – författare

The definitive biography of a leading twentieth-century French writerA leading exponent of the nouveau roman, Nathalie Sarraute (1900–1999) was also one of France''s most cosmopolitan literary figures, and her life was bound up with the intellectual and political ferment of twentieth-century Europe. Ann Jefferson''s Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between is the authoritative biography of this major writer.Sarraute''s life spanned a century and a continent. Born in tsarist Russia to Jewish parents, she was soon uprooted and brought to the city that became her lifelong home, Paris. This dislocation presaged a life marked by ambiguity and ambivalence. A stepchild in two families, a Russian émigré in Paris, a Jew in bourgeois French society, and a woman in a man’s literary world, Sarraute was educated at Oxford, Berlin, and the Sorbonne. She embarked on a career in law that was ended by the Nazi occupation of France, and she spent much of the war in hiding, under constant threat of exposure. Rising to literary eminence after the Liberation, she was initially associated with the existentialist circle of Beauvoir and Sartre, before becoming the principal theorist and practitioner of the avant-garde French novel of the 1950s and 1960s. Her tireless exploration of the deepest parts of our inner psychological life produced an oeuvre that remains daringly modern and resolutely unclassifiable.Nathalie Sarraute: A Life Between explores Sarraute''s work and the intellectual, social, and political context from which it emerged. Drawing on newly available archival material and Sarraute''s letters, this deeply researched biography is the definitive account of a life lived between countries, families, languages, literary movements, and more.

This engaging book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, Ann Jefferson examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. She traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others.Jefferson considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. She then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. She shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and she discusses the different ways major theorists—including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva—have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept.Rich in narrative detail, Genius in France brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.

Plus de deux décennies après la disparition de Nathalie Sarraute, l’ambition de ce volume est d’ouvrir des perspectives nouvelles d’interprétation de son écriture. Il s’agit, au moyen des travaux d’une nouvelle génération de sarrautiens, de replacer cette œuvre dans des contextes historique, social et littéraire, et tout particulièrement de se confronter à tous les tabous dressés par Sarraute elle-même autour de son univers. Sa biographie était-elle réellement de si peu d’importance dans son travail d’écrivain ? Était-elle si objective en présentant son travail comme un travail solitaire ? Son genre était-il réellement sans rapport avec son écriture ? Les comparaisons avec d’autres écrivains étaient-elles vraiment mal venues ?Dans une volonté de renouvellement des grilles de lecture de cette œuvre, ce livre se concentre sur la recherche de l’origine toujours à trouver de l’extraordinaire fraîcheur de cette écriture. Il tente de s’aventurer dans « cette fausse direction » qu’elle-même indiquait par où toutes les certitudes s’estompent et où l’interprétation trouve à se défaire pour se tisser d’un geste neuf.