Figures of Literary Discourse (European Perspectives) (English and French Edition)

Literature & Fiction

Genette, Gérard

Genette, G-Erard

History & Criticism

Columbia Univ. Pr.

This work presents a systematic approach to the study of literature using extensive questioning. Many consider this to be structuralist poetics at its best.

Figures of Literary Discourse (European Perspectives: a Series in Social Thought & Cultural Ctiticism)

World Literature

In this essential theoretical essay, Gérard Genette asserts that the object of poetics is not the text, but the architext—the transcendent categories (literary genres, modes of enunciation, and types of discourse, among others) to which each individual text belongs. In seeking to link these categories in a system embracing the entire field of literature, Western poetics has divided literature into three kinds: dramatic, epic, and lyric. This division, generally accepted since the eighteenth century, has been wrongly attributed to Aristotle with great detriment to the development of poetics. Here Genette disassembles this burdensome triad by retracing its gradual construction and distinguishes among the architextual categories that this division has long obscured. In so doing, Genette lays a firm foundation for future theorists of literary forms.

The Architext: An Introduction (Quantum Books)

University of California Press

In this essential theoretical essay, Gérard Genette asserts that the object of poetics is not the text, but the architext—the transcendent categories (literary genres, modes of enunciation, and types of discourse, among others) to which each individual text belongs. In seeking to link these categories in a system embracing the entire field of literature, Western poetics has divided literature into three kinds: dramatic, epic, and lyric. This division, generally accepted since the eighteenth century, has been wrongly attributed to Aristotle with great detriment to the development of poetics. Here Genette disassembles this burdensome triad by retracing its gradual construction and distinguishes among the architextual categories that this division has long obscured. In so doing, Genette lays a firm foundation for future theorists of literary forms.

Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Literature, Culture, Theory, Series Number 20)

Paratexts are those liminal devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that mediate between book, author and reader: titles, forewords and publishers' jacket copy form part of a book's private and public history. In this first English translation of Paratexts, Gérard Genette offers a global view of these liminal mediations and their relation to the reading public. With precision, clarity and through wide reference, he shows how paratexts interact with general questions of literature as a cultural institution. Richard Macksey's foreword situates Genette in contemporary literary theory.

Cambridge University Press

Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method

Cornell University Press

Narrative Discourse Revisited

Fiction and Diction

The Work of Art: Immanence and Transcendence

What art is―its very nature―is the subject of this book by one of the most distinguished continental theorists writing today. Informed by the aesthetics of Nelson Goodman and referring to a wide range of cultures, contexts, and media, The Work of Art seeks to discover, explain, and define how art exists and how it works. To this end, Gérard Genette explores the distinction between a work of art's immanence―its physical presence―and transcendence―the experience it induces. That experience may go far beyond the object itself.
Genette situates art within the broad realm of human practices, extending from the fine arts of music, painting, sculpture, and literature to humbler but no less fertile fields such as haute couture and the culinary arts. His discussion touches on a rich array of examples and is bolstered by an extensive knowledge of the technology involved in producing and disseminating a work of art, regardless of whether that dissemination is by performance, reproduction, printing, or recording. Moving beyond examples, Genette proposes schemata for thinking about the different manifestations of a work of art. He also addresses the question of the artwork's duration and mutability.

Arts & Photography

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Genette, Gérard. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Genette, Gérard