The Review of Contemporary Fiction

The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830 by Paul Bénichou
Monique Dufour

Paul Bénichou. The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830. Trans. Mark K. Jensen. Intro. Tzvetan Todorov. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1999. 454 pp. $25.00.

Don’t be put off by the dates in The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830. Paul Bénichou has written a book that will give readers a wider and deeper appreciation for both the historical continuity and profound originality of modern literature and its writers. The book studies their precursors: the men of letters and poets who lived and worked in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century France, and who attempted to ascend to secular authority by redefining writing as a spiritual ministry. As a historian of ideas, Bénichou traces the broad historical contours of the evolving mission of these writers, their sense of entitlement, their faith in language, and their longing for engagement with the people and affairs of their time; at the same time, he honors their individuality and their literary works, because he believes that “a work always bears witness to an essential freedom to create.”

Bénichou’s method alone is remarkable. In preparation for this book (and its companion, The Time of Prophets (1977) not yet translated into English), he read for twenty years; according to Todorov, “he read virtually everything that was published in France in the literary domain from 1760 to 1860; the great authors as well as the minor ones, the poets and the critics, both book and periodicals.” Yet Bénichou synthesizes this primary research in readable prose, even for readers who may not be familiar with the writers and works of the period. (The footnotes, however, do not provide the original publication dates of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts, which does make it difficult to map the historical arguments without doing some bibliographic homework.) Ultimately, the book shames contemporary critical trends of symptomatic reading and provincialism. [Monique Dufour]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830 by Paul Bénichou Monique Dufour Paul Bénichou. The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830. Trans. Mark K. Jensen. Intro. Tzvetan Todorov. Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1999. 454 pp. $25.00. Don’t be put off by the dates in The Consecration of the Writer, 1750-1830. Paul Bénichou has written a book that will give readers a wider and deeper appreciation for both the historical continuity and profound originality of modern literature and its writers. The book studies their precursors: the men of letters and poets who lived and worked in late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century France, and who attempted to ascend to secular authority by redefining writing as a spiritual ministry. As a historian of ideas, Bénichou traces the broad historical contours of the evolving mission of these writers, their sense of entitlement, their faith in language, and their longing for engagement with the people and affairs of their time; at the same time, he honors their individuality and their literary works, because he believes that “a work always bears witness to an essential freedom to create.” Bénichou’s method alone is remarkable. In preparation for this book (and its companion, The Time of Prophets (1977) not yet translated into English), he read for twenty years; according to Todorov, “he read virtually everything that was published in France in the literary domain from 1760 to 1860; the great authors as well as the minor ones, the poets and the critics, both book and periodicals.” Yet Bénichou synthesizes this primary research in readable prose, even for readers who may not be familiar with the writers and works of the period. (The footnotes, however, do not provide the original publication dates of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century texts, which does make it difficult to map the historical arguments without doing some bibliographic homework.) Ultimately, the book shames contemporary critical trends of symptomatic reading and provincialism. [Monique Dufour]

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