French Literature Reviews - 2026

Y. Séité, Le jazz, à la lettre
Other Literary Studies

Review published in Acta Fabula: "Le jazz à l'écoute de la littérature" by Pascal Rannou.

Yannick Séité, Le jazz, à la lettre

Paris: P.U.F., coll. "Les Littéraires", 2010.

352 p.

ISBN: 978-2-13-058239-7

25 euros

Publisher's overview:

Through the analysis of key moments and works, this essay highlights the critical scope of jazz: an aesthetic critique of established literary and musical forms, but also a social critique, insofar as this music is carried by people who, through their "way of being in the world" (Ph. Soupault), embody an attitude toward the body and the law that offers an alternative to post-1918 France—those whom Aragon called "the jazz Negroes."

The heroes of this book are thus individuals—famous or unknown, untimely or expected, writers or musicians: Michel Leiris and Vance Lowry, René Crevel and Eugene McCown, Cocteau and Dan Parrish, Maurice Sachs and Snakehips, Shakespeare, Céline, Louis Armstrong, Georges Perec, Mac Orlan, Alain-René Lesage, Paul Whiteman, Pierre Reverdy, Mazie Mullins, Duke Ellington, Jean Vilar, Johnny Hudgins, Beckett, or Bechet.

Table of Contents

Notice

Part One. — Jazz or Literature

I. What Jazz Thinks of Literature

II. Portrait of the Writer as a Jazzman

Part Two. — Phonograph / Typograph

III. Cocteau, Phonograph Poet

IV. Reverdy, Typograph Poet

Part Three. — The Mysterious Wind

V. Automatism and the Improviste

VI. Surrealist Eros and Jazz

VII. Leiris I: Leiris as Synthesis

VIII. Leiris II: A Scruple

Part Four. — Readings of Ellington

IX. Such Sweet Thunder

XI. Turcaret

XI. The Sound of Sense

For the Record

Yannick Séité, a graduate of the École Normale Supérieure, teaches literature at Paris Diderot University (Paris 7). His publications include Du livre au lire. La Nouvelle Héloïse, roman des Lumières (Champion, 2002).

The relationship between jazz and French literature gained significant momentum in the interwar period, as the arrival of African American musicians challenged existing aesthetic and social hierarchies. This study highlights the critical scope of jazz as an aesthetic critique of established literary and musical forms, and as a social critique in post-1918 France. By analyzing figures such as Michel Leiris, Jean Cocteau, and Louis Armstrong, the text explores how jazz offered an alternative to traditional structures, reflecting an attitude toward the body and the law.

The intersections between musical performance and the written word have long occupied a central place in studies of the avant-garde. The work examines the interplay between the phonograph and the typograph, and investigates how jazz functioned as a social and artistic catalyst in the cultural landscape of post-1918 France. Readers interested in the history of transatlantic cultural exchanges and the influence of musical improvisation on narrative prose may find this analysis relevant to their research.