I am going to start, by giving you a quick historical perspective, in so far as, in our world culture and writing link has begun to unravel, we cannot stop letters to continue. But they do like a progressive displacement.
If you look French through ages, you will quick understand that that knowledge is obviously connected to the conditions that are culturally ours. Well, we should be aware that it is what we recently said: “In the Middle Ages, there were French texts which were worth. There was, for example, the Roland’s song, etc.” Medieval university has completely ignored these French texts, even those produced by Rutebeuf or Villon. And, why did the Middle Age deliberately put aside these texts? Because this was not made to know, but, as Nietzsche very nicely said: it was the “gay science,” or the anti-science, the science used to protest, not recognized by the university: the science of that time, and until the XVI century, was Latin, French and these sciences were not more than a gay science.
When was the first displacement, which led the birth of “French literature,” effectuated? In the Renaissance, when the “Modern Times” were appearing with Rabelais. If Rabelais is ludicrous, “Gallic,” a pig and everything you want, it is because he was just rehabilitating the medieval gay science, but in French. It was a very great revolution: before, French texts had any status, from now on, they have one. Of course, there were a few years that it was being prepared. There was a pre literature, a “protohistory” literature, if I can say, represented by those that has been called the major Rhetoric men, which rhyme in French and who began to try to place their productions into the refined society. But Renaissance is a breath of oxygen; it is the French all fronts, the gay science carefully promoted.
But what has done this gay science promotion? At the beginning, it was liberation, with all the excesses that all liberation has: a real passion! However, little by little, the passion had decreased, and this was the birth of what we have called “literature,” which consisted to express even the most serious things in French, things of that time, the science of that time. But this was not the science of the university, which continued to be expressed in Latin, but, in some way, a science for university, which was passed in French. In these circumstances, you understand that texts such as those of Madam de La Fayette, the tragedies of Racine, or the comedies of Moliere were literature, as well as the speech of the Descartes’ method, the thoughts of Pascal or the spirit of the laws of Montesquieu. When we see Descartes’ writings included in the XVII° manuals of literature, we can see this: “What can the speech of the method do for literature?” Well, the answer is that because Descartes expressed his method in French. It was the same, with Pascal. There are certainly many illegible things on his writings, but it was the theology in French. Do you understand now that what makes good a tragedy of Racine, Descartes, Pascal or Montesquieu, was that these authors expressed in French a science that, since the middle age to the XVIII° siècle, would not interest anybody, because the science was written in Latin. We must see the “French literature,” as a phenomenon in the margin of university, and almost in conflict with it. If you want to see like this, university was the science of the “right,” and literature, the science of the “left””: this literature consisted to speak like a “decent man,” and not like an old grimoire reader, and this was not a science the same as the one of the university. You understand, in these circumstances, why the ancestors of our current “human sciences” are the psychological novelists, the classical theater, the moralists’ writers, etc. We see these texts as works of art. They had certainly this character-here too, but they had mainly this particular nature of represent a science in separation with the University of that time, and not only one that was worth as a university science but one that had hoped too well exceeds it.
When was the second displacement, which superintended the birth of our “human sciences,” effectuated? In the XIX°, that was the époque of Balzac and the realism. From the realistic movement, things are starting to evolve. Literature becomes a “literature of message.” From that time, who has worked with sociology for example? Zola. It is the thesis message, if I dare to say: novel to thesis, theater to thesis, written by philosophers (at university, at this time there was a long time that we haven’t think!)
And we are in the third displacement, this means: the culmination of thoughts (this means the end of literature), like Sartre: read what he tells in Situations of the “committed literature.” From the moment where literature has been committed, this is no more than a war weapon, this is no more than a gay science (it is even terribly sadder!) and this is no more literature, it became another thing (it belongs to you to name this as you want). “And after Sartre, you will ask me, what remains of the French literature?” The answer is: nothing. It is Byzantine; I mean the “new novel”, the “absurd theater,” the “new criticism.” Nothing! One day, someone asked me what is left of the French literature since the end of the second war (1945) to now. My first reaction was, precisely, to answer “nothing!” And then, after a carefully thought, I replied: “perhaps the words of Sartre, and the memories of Hadrian of Marguerite Yourcenar.” You must admit that this is not very much! You must conceive that French literature is dead, when the Science of men born.
This does not mean that it does not present any interest. Because, who spoke of the man, until the middle of the last century? Well, literature did. For the reason that since Bacon, it was born what he called the naturalist philosophy by the time of the Renaissance, and from this philosophy it comes the issues of our “nature sciences.” And to make a science of Man (with a capital letter!) this creature quasi divine, was excluded. Consequently, literature (history and philosophy included), has filled the historic role of conservatory of the man (“pre human sciences,” or, the gay science of Modern Times). People sometimes ask me this question: “How is it that, after having done your humanities studies, then you devoted to linguistics, and then to anthropology?” You understand that the only thing that I was interested in life was the answer to this question: What is a man (with a tiny letter)? Literature gave me the first answers, then I started to be engaged to what are the highest antiquities and the first real science of Man (thinking that language was natural in men), to be exact it is grammar, called “linguistic” when I was teaching, linguistics took me, logically, to anthropology. You see that there is, in my route, an intellectual and a perfect consistency. I close parenthesis here and I return to my business.
You understand that when somebody says to you, “I teach French literature” (from Rabelais to Sartre!) It became completely clichéd (it is good to be on museum) and, above all, how would you like to put all of these works in the same cart? This is ridiculous!
In the other hand, we must see that the texts we continue to call “literary” are a mass of determinisms. That is what I blame to my childhood teachers because instead of deconstruct the text, they took it globally (it was the famous “text explanation”), but it should have different specialists who would have treated those texts with different methods: there is, indeed, in the literary text the sociologist works, the psychoanalyst, the historian, the psychologist, the linguist, etc. In a single literary text there is a lot for what to devote a full year, the year which would be more informative as the exam, more or less intuitive of a series of “chosen pieces.” But it is true that such as education would require, of the professor in French Literature, a series of knowledge and a synthesis gift which is quite unusual! You can believe me, this is what I have tried to practice while I was a student (a superior student, it is true). But, believe me, I do not regret this: I am proud to believe, I am proud of passionate my students of License while explaining them… “The rabbit and the turtle”! I have never stopped to teach them to read, but wearing another glasses (already!) This is why I have always thought, and continue to believe that the question of programs and schedules have no interest (this is the kitchen ones.) The content, in a general way, have too little to do with the spirit formation. What really counts are the glasses, this means what some people call the method. That is why I think that literary texts cannot be successfully used in higher education.
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Is it necessarily to remove the teaching of French Literature in our secondary education like some people, not without reason, want? I will answer: “no”, for the simple reason that, nobody (only a barbarian) is going to burn files. But if we do, we should also burn all our museums! But a museum, we can range that, we can range a few stops before to select certain oeuvres. I could take another example: the metropolitan. You go in the train and you browse the line, with the intention to stop in a few stations. Take again, these small tourist trains you make the “historic” tour of a city marking the time of stops before that or that monument. You all are going to laugh, but when I arrive in a city that I do not know; I borrow these small tourist trains and then I return to visit that or that monument which interested me the
