Jean Rousset facts for kids
Jean Rousset (born February 20, 1910 – died September 15, 2002) was a smart Swiss writer and literary critic. He studied and wrote a lot about French literature, especially the exciting Baroque style from the late Renaissance and early 1600s. He is sometimes linked to a group called the Geneva School and to an early way of studying literature called Structuralism.
Biography
Jean Rousset first started studying law, but he soon changed his mind and decided to study literature instead. He learned from famous professors like Albert Thibaudet and Marcel Raymond. After teaching French in cities like Halle and Munich, he became a professor at the University of Geneva.
His main university project was about French literature from the Baroque period. This work was published as La Littérature de l’âge baroque en France : Circé et le paon. It was a huge success! This book was one of the first to use the word "baroque" for literature. Before this, "baroque" was mostly used to describe art and architecture.
In his book, Rousset looked at how writers used movement, change, fancy decorations, and transformations in their plays, novels, and poems. He used the ideas of the sorceress Circe (who could change people) and the showy peacock to explain these styles. He also followed the ideas of art historian Heinrich Wölfflin. Rousset later wrote another book about the same time period called L’Intérieur et l’extérieur : essais sur la poésie et le théâtre au XVIIe siècle.
In 1963, his book Forme et signification explored new ways of thinking about literature. Another famous thinker, Jacques Derrida, even called it one of the most important early works of structuralism. Instead of focusing on how a reader felt about a book, Rousset looked at the structure of the story. He focused on things like how the story was told to understand its meaning.
He continued this way of looking at stories in his books Narcisse romancier : essai sur la première personne dans le roman and Le Lecteur intime. Narcisse romancier explored how stories are told from the first-person point of view (using "I"). His work during this time was similar to that of another critic, Gérard Genette.
Later in his career, his books were not as focused on just the structure. For example, his book "Leurs yeux se rencontrèrent" : la scène de première vue dans le roman looked at the common idea of "love at first sight" in novels. His very last book, Dernier regard sur le baroque, was his final thoughts on the Baroque period and the different ideas about it.
Works
- 1953 - La Littérature de l’âge baroque en France: Circé et le paon
- 1963 - Forme et signification, essais sur les structures littéraires de Corneille à Claudel
- 1968 - L’Intérieur et l’extérieur: essais sur la poésie et le théâtre au XVIIe siècle - about writers like Jean de Sponde and Jean de La Ceppède
- 1972 - Narcisse romancier: essai sur la première personne dans le roman - about stories told from the first person
- 1981 - "Leurs yeux se rencontrèrent": la scène de première vue dans le roman - about love at first sight in novels
- 1986 - Le Lecteur intime, de Balzac au journal
- 1988 - Anthologie de la Poésie baroque française - a collection of Baroque poems
- 1990 - Passages, échanges et transpositions
- 1998 - Dernier regard sur le baroque
See also
In Spanish: Jean Rousset para niños
- Structuralism
- New Criticism
