The Cultural Politics of Tel Quel Literature and the Left in the Wake of Engagement (Studies in Romance Literatures) by Danielle Marx-Scouras

ISBN: 9780271015750

Penn State University Press, November 1996

Paperback, 268 pages

Founded in 1960 by a group of relatively unknown young writers, Tel Quel quickly became one of the most influential literary journals and controversial intellectual movements in France. During the following two decades Tel Quel published the best in French intellectual thought and writing, including Roland Barthes, Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Pierre Faye, Michel Foucault, Gérard Genette, Julia Kristeva, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Marcelin Pleynet, Philippe Sollers, and Tzvetan Todorov. By focusing on Tel Quel as an instrument of cultural renewal, Danielle Marx-Scouras demonstrates that literature―even when it claims to be disengaged―can never escape its historical ties.