French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Ganjipour, Le Réel et la Fiction, Essai de poétique comparée
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Anoush Ganjipour, Le Réel et la Fiction, Essai de poétique comparée

Paris : Hermann, "Échanges Littéraires" series, 2014.

EAN 9782705688455.

433 p.

Price : 39EUR

Publisher's description :

The significant advancement of verisimilitude mechanisms, the imposing combination of art and the virtual, the concern for archives, and the drive for reality that characterize our time have placed the question of "why fiction?" at the center of poetic and philosophical reflection. At both of its extremes, this question involves both literary and historiographical discourse. To address it, Western thought traditionally appeals to its Greek origins. Almost invariably, the answer has been sought within a bipolar, referential framework consisting of the real and the fictional. The present work traces its way back to the Greeks in search of a way of thinking about art and the fictional that is not satisfied with this referential framework. Thus, it identifies the elements of an alternative Greek reading that lies at the origin of the poetics developed within Iranian Islam—an Eastern poetics that must be considered as another becoming of Greek poetics. Drawing on Iranian-Islamic theoretical, literary, and historiographical discourses, the author demonstrates how this Eastern poetics requires us to conceptualize fiction within a tripartite scheme: the relationship between the real and the fictional inevitably brings into play a third pole, termed truth or the reality of reality. From a comparative perspective, this tripartite scheme allows us to view the question of fiction in a new light.

Published by Hermann in the Échanges Littéraires series, this comparative study re-examines the Western reliance on a bipolar framework when analyzing art and narrative. By revisiting classical Greek thought, the author uncovers an alternative hermeneutic tradition that migrated into Iranian-Islamic philosophy and literature. This perspective challenges conventional aesthetic models by demonstrating how theoretical and historiographical discourses from the Islamic East conceptualize imaginative literature beyond the traditional dichotomy of mimesis and reference.

Central to the book is the introduction of a tripartite scheme that incorporates a third pole concerning the reality of reality. This conceptual framework invites scholars of comparative literature, philosophy, and poetics to rethink the foundational questions of narrative theory. Researchers in cultural history and comparative thought will find this study particularly useful for expanding their understanding of how different intellectual traditions articulate the complex relationship between artistic creation and historical truth.