French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Ettlin, Le Double Discours de Mallarmé. Une initiation à la fiction
Poetry and Poetics
Annick Ettlin
Le Double Discours de Mallarmé. Une initiation à la fiction
Geneva: Ithaque, "Terra Incognita"
Published on 24/10/2017
153 x 220 mm, 352 p.
ISBN 978-2-916120-89-8
26 €
For a long time, Mallarmé’s name served as a banner for the avant-garde in their struggle for the radical autonomy of the poetic work: no author, no everyday language, no political commitment! Yet, in Mallarmé’s thought, there lies an idea of literature that escapes such modernist regimentation.
The man long believed to have “retired to the top of his tower” was actually a thinker of poetic action. By engaging in a radical and sometimes fierce demystification of literature, against all “essentialism,” he measured the powers of poetry with lucidity and pragmatism. If he invested any belief in fiction, he did so in a decisive, joyful, and ambivalent manner.
Rereading his texts and grasping their astonishing theoretical relevance means understanding what our new critical horizon allows us to love and think about literature today.
Published with the support of the University of Geneva.
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A review of this book can be read in Acta Fabula:
"Mallarmé et la crise de la littérature : le rire, le langage et la cité", by Sandra Poujat…
This volume examines the complex theoretical framework of Stéphane Mallarmé, a central figure of nineteenth-century French poetry and symbolism. Long associated with the doctrine of art for art's sake and the absolute autonomy of the text, Mallarmé is here reconsidered through his engagement with the pragmatic dimensions of writing. Annick Ettlin explores how the poet interrogated the function of language and demystified traditional notions of literature, revealing a thinker deeply attuned to the active role of fiction and the precarious status of the author.
The study addresses enduring questions concerning the relationship between aesthetic form, critical theory, and the social role of the writer. By revisiting Mallarmé's writings with modern critical perspectives, this book will be of particular value to scholars and students of nineteenth-century French literature, poetics, and the historical avant-garde. It offers fresh insights into how canonical texts can be reread to illuminate contemporary debates surrounding the nature, value, and future of literary creation.