French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Gefen, Mending the World: French Literature in the Face of the 21st Century
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Mending the World: French Literature Facing the 21st Century
Alexandre Gefen
Publication date: 09/11/2017
Publisher: Corti (Editions José)
Series: les essais
ISBN: 978-2-7143-1191-7
EAN: 9782714311917
To save, to heal, or at least to do good—these are the frequently explicit watchwords at the heart of contemporary literary projects. Refusing to become a postmodern game or a mere rear-guard pastime, today's French literature aspires to care for the self, but also for vulnerable individuals, those overlooked by history, devastated communities, and our troubled democracies.
Critically engaging with this collective therapeutic imaginary where culture, taking the place of religion and political projects, seeks to redress our condition as victims, serve our "personal development," foster our capacity for empathy, and heal the traumas of individual memory or the social fabric, this essay offers a foundational reflection on 21st-century French literature.
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Introduction
An Aesthetic-Ethical Turning Point
The End of Literary Intransitivity
Remedying Literature?
I) Facing the Self
Chapter 1. The Quest for Visibility
The Empire of the First Person
A Literature for the Democratic Age
From Expressivity to Contemporary Autobiography
Chapter 2. The Quest for Singularity
Literature and the Idealization of Difference
Wild Intimacy
Be Yourself: The Burden of Social Assignment
II) Facing Life
Chapter 3. Reassuring the Subject
The Culture of Personal Development
The Narrativist Principle
The Ambiguity of Genealogies
Chapter 4. Recomposing the Self
Writing as Resistance
Eradication and Reinvention of the Self
The Perfectionist Quest
III) Facing Trauma
Chapter 5. The Powers of Writing
The Culture of Trauma
From Historical Suffering to Private Trauma
Autobiography and Psychotherapy
Chapter 6. The Virtues of Reading
The Bibliotherapeutic Dream
The Model of Catharsis
Literature as Exorcism
IV) Facing Illness
Chapter 7. Literature in the Clinic
AIDS Autopathographies
Illness as an Opportunity for Writing
Medical Humanities and Narrative Medicine
Chapter 8. The Work of Mourning
The Voice of the Dead
The Difficulties of Writing
The Origin of Literature
V) Facing Others
Chapter 9. Projectionist Ethics
The Powers of Empathy
The Altruistic Ideology
Literature and the Ethics of Care
Chapter 10. Equipping Knowledge
Semantic Education
The Social Virtues of Literature
The Powers of Irony
VI) Facing the World
Chapter 11. Reweaving Territories
The Geographical Question
Thinking the Global
Protecting the World
Chapter 12. Rebuilding Community
The Clinic of the Precarious
The Literature of the Invisible
In Search of a "We"
VII) Facing Time
Chapter 13. Retrospective Justice
The Specters of History
The Work of Recognition
Victims in the Present
Chapter 14. Substitutive Memory
The Era of Hypermnesia
Literature Considered as a Museum
The Resurrection of the Anonymous
Conclusion
Practices and Mystics of Repair
A New Ethical and Political Doxa
Therapeutic Interpretations and Reinterpretations of Literature
Bibliography
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The Fabula Literary Theory Workshop offers the full text of the book's introduction…
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You can read an interview with the author on nonfiction.fr (March 2018)
and a review of the book on en-attendant-nadeau:
Alexandre Gefen’s study situates contemporary French writing within a significant paradigm shift, marking the end of what literary theorists called literary intransitivity—the modernist and postmodernist view of literature as an autonomous, self-referential game. Instead, 21st-century authors are turning toward an aesthetic-ethical framework. This transition is deeply influenced by the global rise of the ethics of care, narrative medicine, and bibliotherapy. By examining these frameworks, Gefen shows how contemporary narratives seek to address vulnerability, illness, and historical trauma, repositioning the literary work as an active agent of individual and collective repair.
This volume helps readers and scholars address critical questions about the social utility of art in a secularized, democratic age. It investigates how writing can serve as a form of retrospective justice for marginalized voices and how reading functions as a therapeutic tool. *Mending the World* is an indispensable resource for students and researchers of contemporary French literature, cultural studies, and the medical humanities. It offers a vital roadmap for anyone interested in how creative writing engages with empathy, memory, and political responsibility in our troubled modern world.