The Stories of Jean Paulhan

The figure of Jean Paulhan (1884-1968) is cluttered with myths which mask his work and contribute to a singular glory: Paulhan is an illustrious little-known figure. The correspondence, widely published, means that its major role and status in the French literary twentieth century continue to be underlined. But the work is poorly known - the stories even more so, sometimes unobtainable, rarely read, little edited and disseminated, neglected by French-speaking university research.
This book is a response to this night which surrounds Paulhan's works, and among them, even darker, his stories. For the first time, based on the documents and preliminary texts deposited at the IMEC, the author offers a rigorous and methodically progressing critical examination of Paulhan's work of fiction. The chosen method borrows from genetics, poetics and narratology to construct a coherent vision of Paulhan's stories, placed in the context of a history of forms and in that of the entire work. It shows how Paulhan was able to fit into the literature of his time by offering a unique art of fiction resulting from a reflection on language and painting.

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Cf. Paulhan, the writer, by Éric Trudel (about the work of Julien Dieudonné)