French Literature Reviews - 2026
W. Marx, New Stars: When Literature Discovers the World
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
One can read in Acta Fabula (vol. 22, no. 3, March 2021)
an interview with William Marx by Perrine Coudurier & Matthieu Vernet: "Around the Stars"
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New Stars: When Literature Discovers the World
William Marx
Les Editions de Minuit, 2021
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128 pages
ISBN : 9782707346834
16.00 €
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DESCRIPTION :
Do stars rise in the west? And can a poem spark controversy in newspapers for several weeks? What does the Earth's roundness owe to elephants? And what does Star Wars owe to Dürer? Which of the two is the greater semiologist, Tintin or Snowy? Do a lock of hair and a soap bubble deserve to ascend to the heavens? And what unreleased lines of Shakespeare in Hamlet would have been enough to alter Proust's work?
To these and many other fundamental questions, this book provides precise and well-reasoned answers, as well as to the one that encapsulates them all: what can an image do? Starting from two words taken from one of the most celebrated poems in the French language, the work recounts the discovery of the world, of earth and sky, through language and literature.
For this book deals with stars and poetry. It speaks of what is furthest from us, the firmament, and what touches us most closely, the poet's words—words that sometimes reveal the sky to us. It is a book about everything and the inaccessible, about alterity and North-South relations, about aesthetics, science, and power, about memory and the possibilities of history. From just two words, it unveils the metamorphoses of poetry alongside those of our understanding of the world.
View the book on the publisher's website...
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William Marx explores the relationship between literature, science, and the cosmos, examining how poetic language records the discovery of the earth and the sky. Published by Les Éditions de Minuit, the volume reflects upon the enduring capacity of texts to address foundational questions regarding aesthetics, knowledge, and historical consciousness. By following the trajectory of select expressions and motifs through various cultural landscapes, the study considers how creative writing intersects with broader shifts in human perception and representation.
Readers interested in the intersections of poetry, visual culture, and intellectual history may find this short volume relevant to their inquiries. Scholars of modern literary studies often investigate these thematic dualities to better understand the evolving role of art in shaping human encounters with alterity across different historical and cultural traditions.
One can read an interview with the author on Diakritik.com… as well as a review by Jacques Dubois.