Une institution française : La nouvelle revue française de Jean Paulhan

Aujourd’hui La NRF est reconnue pour avoir constitué l’un des plus grands phénomènes culturels de la France moderne. Au sortir de la guerre de 1914-1918, la revue fondée en 1908-1909 par André Gide et ses amis est déjà en voie d’institutionnalisation. Dans cette contribution, on va tenter une analyse du rôle de Jean Paulhan dans le remarquable succès de cette revue entre 1925 et 1940. D’abord, on voit par quels chemins Paulhan arrive à la revue pour y apporter l’influence d’une nouvelle génération d’écrivains d’avant-garde. Ensuite, on va explorer comment Paulhan travaille à la consolidation du succès de la revue, et dans un dernier temps, on va découvrir comment le directeur de La NRF affronte les défis idéologiques des années précédant à l’éclatement de la guerre en 1939.Today LaNRF is recognised as one of France’s greatest cultural phenomena. Immediately after the First World War, the review founded in 1908-1909 by André Gide and his friends was already well on the way to becoming an institution. In this article we shall attempt an analysis of Jean Paulhan’s role in consolidating the remarkable success of the review between 1925 and 1940. First we examine how Paulhan arrived at the review, bringing with him the influence of a new generation of avant-garde writers. Thereafter we explore how Paulhan consolidated the success of LaNRF, and finally we shall suggest how he steered the review through the dangerous ideological waters of the 1930s towards the outbreak of war in 1939

Historical and political preoccupations in "La nouvelle revue française" under the editorship of Jean Paulhan, 1925 to 1940

Within the range of literary reviews in Twentieth-Century France, none has a more highly-esteemed reputation than la Nouvelle Revue Francaise, originally founded in 1909 by Andre Gide and his friends. Resuming in 1919 in a world profoundly shaken by the upheaval and consequences of the First World War, the NRF, at first under Jacques Riviere and then, from 1925 (for the rest of the Inter-War period), under the editorial control of Jean Paulhan, re-established itself at the forefront of literary and critical creativity. Informed by much of the unpublished correspondence of Paulhan, this thesis shows that the NRF was not exclusively literary. An examination of Paulhan's role, and of his editorial policy (Chapter One) precedes the identification of a number of themes. Already sensitive to topical questions, the NRF debated the role and responsibilities of the intellectuals (Chapter Two), whose attitudes tended to become more politicized as they grew more aware of the deficiencies of the Third Republic (Chapter Three). Their preoccupations reflected major themes, in particular Franco-German relations (Chapter Four), Franco-Soviet relations (Chapter Five), and the Jewish question (Chapter Six). Of course the writers involved with the NRF continued to consider political and international issues in the light of their own preferences and prejudices.; yet their reactions and interpretations show that they were ever-more conscious of the crucial, historical importance of the period. Indeed its nature was such that History forced the NRF, eventually, into adopting a partisan position which was Antifascist, anti-Munich, and which even prefigured the Resistance (Chapter Seven)

A history of the French in London: liberty, equality, opportunity

This book examines, for the first time, the history of the social, cultural, political and economic presence of the French in London, and explores the multiple ways in which this presence has contributed to the life of the city. The capital has often provided a place of refuge, from the Huguenots in the 17th century, through the period of the French Revolution, to various exile communities during the 19th century, and on to the Free French in the Second World War. It also considers the generation of French citizens who settled in post-war London, and goes on to provide insights into the contemporary French presence by assessing the motives and lives of French people seeking new opportunities in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. It analyses the impact that the French have had historically, and continue to have, on London life in the arts, gastronomy, business, industry and education, manifest in diverse places and institutions from the religious to the political via the educational, to the commercial and creative industries

Writers into Intellectuals, Culture into Politics: Grappling with History in the NRF, 1920-1940

It is now commonplace to view the end of the Great War in 1918 as representing the beginnings of a new world order. The human losses, the vanished empires, the Bolshevik revolution and its lasting consequences, the collapse of the intellectual certainties of the pre-war order, all ensured the irruption of History and Politics into cultural spaces within the European public sphere. The politicisation of cultural spaces was inevitable, given that purveyors of culture—writers and intellectuals—w..