French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Simon, A Beast Between the Lines: An Essay in Zoopoetics
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
Review published in Acta Fabula, critical dossier "Ecopoetics for Extreme Times" (December 2021, vol. 22, n°10): Zoopoetics & Humanimalness: Beasts Between the Lines by Élisabeth Plas
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A Beast Between the Lines
An Essay in Zoopoetics
Wildproject ed., Tête nue series
April 2021
EAN: 9782381140-025 — 400 p. — 25 €.
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Between the lines of our texts, our cultures, and our lives, beasts slip in—familiar, indifferent, or terrifying. Anne Simon explores the richness of our relationships with animals through the stories and dreams of writers.
If literature is capable of evoking the power and profusion of animal lives, it is because language and writing themselves—often considered unique to the human species—reveal themselves to be shot through with animality. Poetic language provides access to the beasts who, breathing and tracing their stories of life and survival directly onto the world, may have taught us how to read.
Between the immemorial time of our evolution alongside wild beasts and the contemporary era of the destruction of the living world, Anne Simon explores the book-arks that unfold the fascinating worlds to which animals open our eyes.
These imaginary journeys—in dialogue with the work of historians, anthropologists, and philosophers—expand our mental galaxies and allow us to renew our entanglement with other living beings.
A work to (re)discover Marcel Proust, Jean Giono, Maurice Genevoix, Béatrix Beck, Jacques Lacarrière, Andrzej Zaniewski, Jean Rolin, Olivia Rosenthal, Yves Bichet, Maryline Desbiolles, Tadeusz Konwicki, Henrietta Rose-Innes, Marie Darrieussecq, Éric Chevillard, Svetlana Alexievitch, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Christophe Bailly…
Anne Simon is a Senior Researcher at the CNRS. A specialist in Proust, to whom she has dedicated four books, she has also focused her work over the past two decades on the living world and animality in literature, pioneering and developing zoopoetics in Europe.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Animal Raptures
1 Stories of Breaths
The Birth of Zoopoetics (Derrida, Kafka)
From zôion to poiein: The Jungle of Etymologies
Adam and the Beasts
Dislodging Oneself in One's Language, Pluralizing Worlds
Literature Between Relation and Disjunction
Looking Closely to Re-envision
From Hybridization to Zoomorphism
Other Vital Temporalities
An Animal Poetics Directly in the World
Verbal Thought, Adjectival Thought
Alphabet-Worlds
Secreting/Writing
Following, Wandering, Gathering, Watching
2 From Life: Hybrids and Elusive Beings
Proust's Menagerie
The Unusual Treasures of Natural History
Centaurs and Blood Plants in Giono
Wolf-Seal Hybrids of Béatrix Beck
The Gills of Marie Darrieussecq
Under the Bark with Jacques Lacarrière
Zoomorphizing with Cyril Casmèze
Seeking the Clue, Writing the Evasion
3 To the Quick: Animal Politics
Discontent in Domestication
Tadeusz Konwicki, or Nature Grappling with History
Deadly or Subversive "Bird Names"
Vermin in the Folds of Our Cities
Digging the Earth, Digging the Language
Conclusion: The Ark and the Fable
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Press kit, including a presentation by the author and an excerpt…
See the book on the publisher's website…
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You can watch a video interview with the author on Diacritik.com…
Read on en-attendant-nadeau.fr:
"Beasts in Full Letters", by Nadia Tazi (online June 2, 2021)
According to its author, Anne Simon, A Beast Between the Lines is a "monster-book": an ambitious, lengthy, highly stylized essay on "animots" or what literature owes to beasts.
On nonfiction.fr:
"Anne Simon: Reading in the Belly of the Whale", by Augustin Voegele (online June 8, 2021).
Review by Cristina Álvares, online journal 2i, "Estéticas e Políticas da Moda", vol. 3, no. 3, June 2020.
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Podcast/Radio:
"The World is a Great Animated Book", interview with Anne Simon about A Beast Between the Lines: An Essay in Zoopoetics by Céline du Chéné, on the show "Par les temps qui courent" on France Culture.
"One can absolutely be a humanist while taking animals and animality into account", show "Une journée particulière" with Anne Simon, produced by Zoé Varier, on France Inter.
"Zoopoetics", interview with Sylvain Bourmeau and Anne Simon, show "La suite dans les idées" on France Culture, June 19, 2021.
An interview with Anne Simon as part of "Rencontres sauvages" [Wild Encounters], a podcast series from the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature produced by Céline du Chéné and Laurent Paulré for Studio Radio France, on the occasion of the reopening of the Museum on July 3, 2021.
The emerging field of literary criticism investigates how texts represent animals and human-animal relations, questioning traditional divisions between nature and culture. This critical approach connects aesthetic forms to broader philosophical inquiries concerning the living world. The volume at hand engages with these theoretical coordinates by reading a diverse corpus of writers through the lens of animal studies, cultural history, and contemporary ecological thought.
Specifically, the book explores relationships between humans and animals through the stories and dreams of authors such as Marcel Proust, Jean Giono, Maurice Genevoix, and Jacques Derrida. The author investigates how poetic language and writing reveal an underlying animality, suggesting that literature provides access to animal lives and survival. Moving from evolutionary ties to the contemporary destruction of the living world, the study examines book-arks, hybrid beings, and animal politics across various literary texts. Readers interested in contemporary French literary criticism, ecopoetics, and human-animal studies may find this essay a relevant contribution to these discussions.
"Ecology of Narrative, Ecological Narrative", a dialogue between Jean-Christophe Cavallin and Anne Simon moderated by Stéphane Durand, "Agir pour le vivant" festival, Arles, August 24, 2021.