Toward an anatomy of French publishing: Les Editions de Minuit and literary value.

Abstract

The history of the Paris publishing house Editions de Minuit presents an exceptional vantage point from which to investigate recent formations of French literary culture. The place and value---social, political, and economic---of literature has changed radically from the era of Samuel Beckett's early success to our own, and the history of Editions de Minuit is an excellent measure of those changes. Editions de Minuit has twice radically altered conceptions of literary value in France, once under the rubric of the New Novel and again by constituting a new ecole de Minuit in the 1980s and 1990s. This dissertation focuses on the first of these phenomena, tracing the publisher's efforts and fortunes from the immediate postwar into the late 1960s. Minuit's New Novel generation became emblematic of France's post-war literary modernity, achieving international status for both authors and publisher. The New Novel propelled a reconfiguration of literary institutions, displacing Sartre as the prevailing national and international figure of literary authority. Its theoretical complexity became an ideal object of study for the literary criticism of the sixties and well beyond, securing a reputation for Minuit as producer of intellectually challenging novels. My dissertation examines the role played by a number of key literary figures, including Jerome Lindon, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Jean-Paul Sartre, Samuel Beckett, Vercors, Jean Paulhan, Claude Simon and Marguerite Duras. In addition, I address the strategies involved in publishing Minuit's younger generation of authors, such as Jean Echenoz and Jean Rouaud. Concepts borrowed from Pierre Bourdieu, in particular his notions of cultural capital and symbolic value, as well as his work on the literary market, form a framework for my discussion of literary value. The history of Les Editions de Minuit is an integral part of the history of the literary field: my work captures many of the cultural dimensions of literary production and dissemination at the height of France's post-war intellectual and literary effervescence.