Literature under Constraint

In recent years, arguments about the decline of French literature in terms of readership and quality have become ever more prominent in France. Some commentators have echoed Philip Roth's pessimistic views that in thirty years, there will be as many people reading serious fiction as now read Latin poetry. Others have bemoaned the fact that the current literary field lacks writers with intellectual clout such as Gide, Valéry and Sartre. Just as there have been major changes in terms of global politics and technological advances, the production of literature has evolved considerably in France over the last thirty years. The Literature under Constraint (LUC) project examines these changes in relation to various factors. Specifically, the LUC project assembles a cutting-edge network of researchers and stakeholders (publishers, writers and librarians) from the UK, Europe and North America to investigate how literary production in France from 1980 to the present has been shaped by political, cultural and socio-economic constraints. To do so, the project will develop a robust methodology that combines textual analysis with sociohistorical study.

Over the course of 18 months, the network will assemble a cross-disciplinary research team that includes experts in French literature, sociology and related fields (translation studies, book history). The research team will meet for three study days to examine evolutions of style and genre with respect to the shifting constraints on writers. The aim is to elucidate which factors (mind-sets, political context, social environments, intermediaries) shape and constrain literary production, but also to explore whether constraint bolsters creative activity. The first study day, 'Mediating Literature', considers the importance of agents, publishers and journalists on the production of literature. The second, 'Allegory: Literature and Reality', examines the shifting relationship between literature and reality in recent years, notably in relation to the marked interest in journalistic realism. The third, 'Literary schemes', explores how mind-sets shape the use of certain stylistic devices such as metaphors. The research team will also exchange papers and reading materials by remote means (JISC-Mail list and wiki) throughout the duration of the project. Two edited collections and a special issue of a journal will result from these exchanges. Furthermore, the Principal Investigator (PI) and Co-Investigator (Co-I) will submit a proposal for a co-authored monograph at the end of the project.

The project intends to stimulate reflection on the importance of intermediaries on the production of literature, and to consider the relationship between texts and constraints. As a result, it will highlight the importance of archives of publishing houses and authors held at the French national library (BNF), the Institut Mémoires de l'Edition Contemporaine (IMEC), the British Library (BL), Senate House Library, University of London (SHL), and the Penguin archives at the University of Bristol. These archives provide access to the primary sources of literary production (manuscripts, correspondence with publishers and distributors). The project also addresses professionals and future professionals of the book trade (librarians, booksellers and publishers) through participation in colloquia and training events at the Pôle Métiers du Livre (PML). Furthermore, it engages with new publics via events at the annual Being Human (national festival for the Humanities) and Bloomsbury festivals, and the Salon du Livre in France, as well as through close collaboration with the Institut français du Royaume-Uni (IFRU), and the French community in the UK. These events complement online activities via social media and blogs that promote UK-led research in contemporary French Studies globally.

The Literature under Constraint project has been designed to be outward-facing from the academy. The research it produces will impact on a range of non-academic beneficiaries, starting with the professionals of the book trade involved in the research network.

The way writers are presented in the media is often shallow. Romantic conceptions of the writer working in a bubble, disconnected and disinterested in the workings of the publishing industry, still prevail. The celebration of an author's genius via the awarding of literary prizes such as the Nobel does much to reinforce this idea. It is still often assumed that a reader of literature is in direct, unmediated contact with an author's thoughts. The Literature under Constraint project will show how this is not the case by demonstrating the influences of intermediaries, and by conjoining textual analysis with sociohistorical study. Before a book is published it undergoes a chain of modifications (cuts, grammatical and spelling corrections, typesetting, packaging) that make the final product very different from the original manuscript submitted. The project will also highlight the fallacy of the idiomatic expression: "don't judge a book by its cover". Evidence shows that cover design and typographic design have a significant impact on how a book is received.

By working closely with those involved in promoting French contemporary literature (publishers, cultural services, translators, librarians, booksellers), the project aims to raise awareness of their importance on the final product. As part of this move to underscore that literature is a collaborative process, the project seeks to valorise the importance of libraries housing archives of publishers and authors in their collections. It is for this reason that several librarians are participating in the network, and it is hoped that authors and publishers will be encourages to deposit their archives in major libraries such as the French national library (BNF) or the Institut Mémoires de l'Edition Contemporaine (IMEC) in France, and the British Library, Senate House Library, and the University of Bristol Library in the UK.

To generate impact and facilitate the transfer of knowledge, members of the network will present their findings at public engagement festivals, such as Being Human, the national festival for the humanities. The principal investigator will lead book clubs (at the Institute of Ideas) and Reading Groups (at the Institut français du Royaume-Uni). With the help of the librarians involved in the network, presentations of collections will be organised, notably at Senate House Library (SHL) and the IMEC. Public discussions featuring authors and translators, as in the "Encounters series" organised by the Institute of Modern Languages Research (IMLR) will also be set up. Moreover, the network will publish a series of online blog articles on sites such as Talking Humanities, Culturethèque and Living Languages, and stimulate social media discussions (on twitter and Facebook) about the process of producing literature today in France.

Further information about public engagement and means to generate and measure impact are provided in the Pathways to Impact section.