Literature and cinema : Imagining /Practising (1918-1948).

The aim of this research project is to study the impact of the emergence and development of cinema on the notion of literature advocated by French writers as well as on their actual writing practices, from the end of World War I to the post-World War II era. This project continues my PhD, which focused on the relation between silent cinema and French modernist poetry in the 1910s and 1920s. It will expand its chronological and generic scope, and deepen its theoretical framework. The project aims at bringing to light how referring to cinema enabled literature to redefine its role and prerogatives, in opposition to the cinematographic model (autonomy) or in rapprochement with it (heteronomy). It will also explore narrative and lyrical forms inspired by cinema (cine-novels, cine-poems), as well as the way in which writers became involved in cinema (from various forms of collaborations to film directing itself). The project’s originality lies in its globalizing perspective. It will attempt to establish a system entailing various forms of positioning for literature vis-à-vis cinema, from the end of World War I to the post-World War II era. The whole range of narrative and poetical genres will be considered and their mutations will also be taken into account. Moreover, the project will include all the writers belonging to the avant-gardes, notably modernist and surrealist writers, as well as authors deemed minor like George Duhamel, Colette, Henry Poulaille, Marcel Pagnol and Pierre Mac Orlan.