French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Cape, Les Frontières du délire : écrivains et fous au temps des avant-gardes
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Review published in Acta Fabula: "Fous & folies au temps des avant-gardes" by Marc Décimo.
Anouck Cape, Les Frontières du délire : écrivains et fous au temps des avant-gardes
Paris : Honoré Champion, coll. "Poétiques et esthétiques, XX-XXIe siècle", 2011.
EAN 9782745321619.
280 p.
Price 55 EUR
Publisher's overview:
Madness, understood as a cultural fantasy shaped by both psychiatry and literature, was foundational to the discourses and textual practices of avant-garde writers. It serves as a guiding thread to closely examine one of the major cultural shifts of the first half of the 20th century, which saw the madman emerge as the quintessential figure of the modern artist.
This book traces the history of a profound upheaval in values—a shift in the boundary between the literary and the pathological—following which aesthetic judgments and literary norms were thoroughly transformed.
Anouck Cape holds a PhD in literature. Her research focuses on cultural representations of madness and the concept of authorship.
This scholarly study examines the intersection of psychiatry, cultural fantasy, and literary creation during the first half of the twentieth century. By focusing on the historical figure of the madman as the embodiment of the modern artist, author Anouck Cape investigates the shifting boundaries that separate conventional literature from the pathological. The volume provides a nuanced perspective on how early twentieth-century artistic movements redefined aesthetic judgment, subverted traditional literary norms, and integrated clinical conceptions of mental alienation into their creative practices and theoretical discourses.
Researchers in twentieth-century French literature, cultural history, and the sociology of authorship will find this volume particularly valuable for understanding avant-garde aesthetics. It addresses essential questions regarding the cultural construction of mental illness and the romanticization of psychological extremity within modernist artistic circles. Scholars investigating the genealogy of modern literary subversion and the evolving relationship between clinical psychiatry and creative expression will benefit from Cape's thorough exploration of these foundational historical shifts.