Beyond Return: Genre and Cultural Politics in Contemporary French Fiction

Contemporary French literature is often said to embrace more traditional or readable novelistic forms, rejecting the radical aesthetics of mid-century French literature. Lucas Hollister's book Beyond Return proposes new perspectives on the cultural politics of such fictions, examining adventure novels, radical noir, postmodernist mysteries, war novels, and dystopian fictions. He argues for the need to move beyond the nostalgic, anti-modernist rhetoric of the 'return to the story' to appreciate the potentialities of innovative contemporary genre fictions.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 304 pages
Publication date: 01 March 2022
Publisher: Liverpool University Press

After the flourishing of experimental literature and theory that marked the Trente Glorieuses (1945-75), contemporary French literature is often perceived as embracing more traditional or accessible novelistic forms. This shift away from the radical aesthetics of mid-century French literature, this reclamation of fictional forms that have been labeled as sub-literary, regressive, or outdated, has been given a term: the 'return to the story. In Beyond Return, Lucas Hollister offers fresh perspectives on the cultural politics of these fictions. By examining adventure novels, radical noir, postmodernist mysteries, war novels, and dystopian fictions, Hollister demonstrates how authors like Jean Echenoz, Jean-Patrick Manchette, Jean Rouaud, and Antoine Volodine develop radically different notions of the aesthetics of 'return, thus re-defining the boundaries of the contemporary, the French, and the literary in distinct ways. Throughout his analysis, Hollister advocates for moving beyond the nostalgic, anti-modernist rhetoric of the 'return to the story in order to fully appreciate the potentialities of innovative contemporary genre fictions.

Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781802070057