The Tel Quel Reader
Excerpted from the French journal Tel Quel (1960-82) and ably translated by two lecturers in French at University College, London, these articles demonstrate French poststructuralist radical literary theory as practiced in France during the 1960s and 1970s by some of its major proponents, e.g., Julia Kristeva, Michel Foucault, Philippe Sollers, Marc Devade, Marcelin Pleynet, and Roland Barthes. The articles explore literature and culture, gender, film, semiotics, and psychoanalysis. Critics have detected a progressive movement in the journal itself from literature tel quel, "such as it is," toward the avant-garde and toward a scientific analysis of literature. The translators group the articles under three major headings?Science, Literature, and Art?but several of the articles defy this classification. Marcel Pleynet's article, "Thetic `Madness,' " for example, deals primarily with religion as it relates to art. This reader will prove extremely valuable to structuralist and post-structuralist literature scholars but will have little appeal to broader audiences.?Robert T. Ivey, Univ. of MemphisCopyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.