French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Voegele, De l’unanimisme au fantastique. Jules Romains devant l’extraordinaire
Novel and Narrative Prose
Augustin Voegele,
De l’unanimisme au fantastique. Jules Romains devant l’extraordinaire,
Oxford/New York: Peter Lang, "Modern French Identities" series, 2019.
EAN13: 97817887451301788745132.
Jules Romains is known as a writer of "good will", reasonable and rationalist. There is, however, a dark and lesser-known Jules Romains: a creator of ill-willed characters—even criminals; a Jules Romains who does not hesitate to pepper his work with lengthy erotic chapters; and above all, a Jules Romains fascinated by everything related to the parapsychological and the extraordinary.
But where does this attraction to the abnormal and paranormal come from? By placing Romains' work in the context of an era confronted with the death of God and scarred by two World Wars, we can explain the shift that occurs from La Vie unanime (1908) to his post-war works—from an optimistic and humanistic Unanimism to a fantastic mode that, while proving to be scientifically and politically militant, is nonetheless despairing.
Table of Contents
Introduction. A writer of the fantastic in spite of himself?
Part One. Situating the Romainsian Fantastic
Chapitre 1. The Fantastic Between Epistemology, Politics, and Poetics
Chapitre 2. Unanimisms
Chapitre 3. The Fantastic as an Extraordinary Activity
Part Two. Virtues and Vices of the Fantastic
Chapitre 4. Rhetoric of the Extraordinary
Chapitre 5. Musical Magic
Chapitre 6. Presumption of the Fantastic: Romains' Double Game
Part Three. The Fantastic as a Means of Survival
Chapitre 7. Mimetic Fantastic, Militant Fantastic
Chapitre 8. An Author Complicit with His Criminal Creatures
Chapitre 9. Presence
Chapitre 10. Absence
Conclusion. What Does the Fantastic Think About?
*
An article about this book can be read on Nonfiction:
Jules Romains is widely recognized in French literature as a rationalist author associated with the optimistic and humanistic principles of Unanimism, notably expressed in La Vie unanime. Yet this established perception often overlooks a darker dimension of his writing that engages with criminal characters, erotic elements, and parapsychological phenomena. Augustin Voegele examines this tension by tracing the trajectory of Romains's career through an era marked by deep historical trauma, including the aftermath of two World Wars and the broader intellectual challenges of a secularizing age. Readers interested in the evolution of twentieth-century French narrative and the complexities of canonical authors may find this contextual study relevant.