Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

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poetry was always private, centred on solitude,

with strong emphasis on enclosures (‘Le monde

est ma prison’ is a line from the poem ‘Outre

Mesure’) and spaces that separate and isolate.

There is in those poems a quiet anguish and a

sense of dread, which point toward a continu-

ing spiritual crisis. After 1926, he lived in re-

tirement near the famous Abbey of Solesmes,

as if to resolve a religious problem by living in

the vicinity of a monastery. His most famous

collections are Ferraille (Scrap-iron) of 1937,

Plupart du temps (Most of the Time) from

1944, and 1949’s Main d’oeuvre (Workman-

ship), along with prose works such as 1956’s

En vrac (Loosely Packed).

WALTER A.STRAUSS

revolutionary groups

Increasing dissatisfaction with the French Com-

munist Party, culminating in the events of May

1968, led to the emergence of a number of self-

styled revolutionary groups on the Left. These

rejected any suggestion of an electoral or par-

liamentary road to social change, seen as

doomed to neutralization or ‘recuperation’ by

the bourgeois state and the class interests un-

derlying it, and favoured direct action—fac-

tory occupations, general strikes, sometimes

even the taking of hostages. Groups of so-called

Maoist inspiration fell into two categories: the

unreconstructed Sinophile Stalinists of the Parti

Communiste François (Marxiste-Léniniste) and

the anarcho-spontaneists in such groups as

Vive la Revolution or the Nouvelle Resistance

Populaire, for whom France was occupied by

the forces of capital much as she had been by

those of Germany in the war years. The mur-

der of Maoist militant Pierre Overney by a se-

curity guard at the Renault factory near Paris

in 1972 led to the demise of the credibility of

such revolutionary rhetoric; it would now be

virtually impossible to describe oneself as a

‘Maoist’ in France, or indeed anywhere in Eu-

rope. The Trotskyist groups, the most endur-

ing of which remains the Ligue Communiste

Révolutionnaire, led by Alain Krivine, were

much more critical of individual acts of vio-

lence, advocating a Leninist strategy within an

internationalist perspective that refused iden-

tification with any existent forms of Socialism.

Less attention-attracting than the different va-

rieties of Maoism, they remain active and sub-

stantially loyal to their earlier principles and

programmes today.

KEITH READER

See also: Marxism; parties and movements

Further reading

Bourseiller, C. (1996) Les Maoistes, Paris: Plon

(an absorbing narrative which concludes

that Maoism meant so many different

things in different places that it cannot re-

ally be said to have existed at all).

Reyes, Alina

b. 1956, Soulac

Writer

Alina Reyes’s first novel, the prizewinning The

Butcher (Le Boucher), traces the sexual initia-

tion of a young woman with a lyrical and vis-

ceral sensuality which Reyes later applies to

other female voyages of self-discovery: for ex-

ample, Lucie/Mélusine in Lucie’s Long Voy-

age (Lucie au long cours) and Lucile/Alice in

Au corset qui tue (At the Sign of the Corset

That Kills). Women’s self-discovery creates life,

future and freedom from initially unappealing

flesh, from the remote past, from enclosed

spaces or from a seemingly hostile natural en-

vironment. Openness is also suggested by mul-

tiple narratives within narratives and Reyes’s

luminous style. Behind Closed Doors (Derrière

la pone) uses the tropes of pornography to

deconstruct the mechanisms of male and fe-

male desire.

OWEN HEATHCOTE

revolutionary groups

469

See also: erotic writing; women’s/lesbian

writing

Further reading

Heathcote, O. (1994) ‘Is There Abuse in the

Text? Legitimate and Illegitimate Violence

in La Question, Les Chiens, Le Boucher

and Mémoires d’une fouetteuse’, in

R.Günther and J.Windebank (eds) Violence

and Conflict in French Culture, Sheffield:

Sheffield Academic Press (a consideration

of the gender-political implications of

Reyes’s first novels).

ICA audio cassette 736: Alina Reyes, Kate

Campbell, 14 November 1991 (interview

and discussion).

Reza, Yasmina

birthdate unknown

Playwright

An actor graduate of Lecoq’s school, Reza has

written film scripts, adaptations and plays,

including Conversations après un enterrement

(Conversations After a Funeral); La Traversée

d’hiver (Getting Through the Winter), ‘Art’

[sic], her most successful theatre work to date,

and L’Homme du hasard (Man of Fate).

Patrice Kerbrat directs much of her work.

ANNIE SPARKS

Rezvani, Serge

b. 1928, place unknown

Playwright and writer

A writer of Persian and Russian origins, which

influence his forty-plus works. His plays in-

clude the famous Capitaine Shell, Capitaine

Ecco, Le Palais d’hiver (The Winter Palace)

and Le Camp du drap d’or (Camp of the

Golden Flag). Les Années lumière (The Light

Years), an autobiographical novel, is his

bestknown work.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Higgins, L.A. (1984) Parables of Theory: Jean

Ricardou’s Metafiction, Birmingham, AL:

Summa (the first book on Ricardou’s fic-

tion and theory).

Sirvent, M. (ed.) (1991) Studies in

TwentiethCentury Literature 15, 2 (a clus-

ter of articles including interview and bib-

liographies).

Richard, Jean-Pierre

b. 1922, Paris

Critic

A literary critic of the so-called Geneva School

of criticism, Jean-Pierre Richard’s first major

Richard, Jean-Pierre

470

publication, Poésie et profondeur (Poetry and

Profundity), appeared in 1955. After this, he

went on to produce several more books on

poetry. His work is characterized principally

by techniques of close reading, that is, of sub-

jecting segments of text to particularly detailed

interpretive scrutiny. This penetrating ap-

proach may be most readily appreciated in his

Proust et le monde sensible (Proust and the

World of the Senses) of 1974, Microlectures

(Microreadings) in 1979, and Onze études sur

la poésie moderne (Eleven Studies on Modern

Poetry) in 1981. He has also published works

on the novelist Céline and the poet Mallarmé.

MARTYN CORNICK

Major works

Richard, J.-P. (1961) L’Univers imaginaire de

Mallarmé, Paris: Éditions du Seuil.

——(1979) Microlectures, Paris: Éditions du

Seuil.

——(1996) Terrains de lecture, Paris:

Gallimard.

Ricoeur, Paul

b. 1913, France

Philosopher

Paul Ricoeur is one of the most respected

French philosophers. Trained at the Sorbonne,

he blended Husserl’s phenomenology with his

Protestant faith, and developed an ethical phi-

losophy much influenced by the Socialist ideas

of André Philip. After the war, he incorporated

elements of Freudian psychoanalyis into his

thought and, during regular visits to the

United States, explored analytical philosophy,

becoming a channel through which the ‘lin-

guistic turn’ of English-speaking philosophers

was introduced into French thought. He also

joined Mounier’s review Esprit, for which he

wrote the philosophy column. After the events

of May 1968, he supported university reform

and moved from the Sorbonne to become rec-

tor of Nanterre, but resigned after sustained

attacks from radical students and staff. There-

after, he mainly taught in the United States, at

Yale and Chicago, while still working in Paris

as a CNRS director of research, and from

1974 as editor of the prestigious Moral and

Metaphysical Review (Revue de métaphysique

et de morale). His three-volume Time and

Narrative (Temps et récit) published between

1983 and 1985 examines how time and nar-

rative are interlinked in historical, literary and

philosophical writing, and has become the

most influential of Ricoeur’s works, which are

widely read in the English-speaking world.

MICHAEL KELLY

Further reading

Leki, I. (1983) Alain Robbe-Grillet, Boston:

Twayne (introduction to Robbe-Grillet’s

work; contains bibliography).

Morrissette, B. (1975) The Novels of

RobbeGrillet, Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer-

sity Press (a novel-by-novel study by

Robbe-Grillet’s first exegete).

Robuchon, Joël

b. 1945, France

Chef

Perhaps the outstanding French chef to con-

centrate his activity in the kitchens of his

own restaurant (the Jamin, in Paris),

Robuchon is famed for the rigour and preci-

sion of his cooking. He obtained the coveted

three Michelin stars only three years after

opening the restaurant in 1981, and repre-

sents the opposite tendency to the ‘galloping

gourmet’ media stardom of such as Paul

Bocuse.

KEITH READER

Further reading

Schneider, R. (1987) Michel Rocard, Paris:

Stock (a favourable biography by a politi-

cal columnist).

Rochefort, Christiane

b. 1917, Paris

Writer

Through play with language, genre and

parody, Rochefort demystifies institutions

such as marriage and social services. Her femi-

nist, humorous, utopian and anarchic vision

constitutes a passionate plea for an end to ex-

ploitation of all kinds. Rochefort’s 1959 The

Warrior’s Rest (Le Repos du guerrier), her first

novel, made into a film by Roger Vadim in

1962, shocked in its portrayal of eroticism.

LYNN A.HIGGINS

See also: feminism (movements/groups); wom-

en’s/lesbian writing

Further reading

Constant, I. (1996) Les Mots étincelants

de Christiane Rochefort: langages

d’utopie, Amsterdam: Rodopi (the first

book on Rochefort, this studies her novels

in the context of utopias; contains bibliog-

raphy).

rock and pop

Since the late 1950s and early 1960s the

French pop scene has seen significant devel-

opments as well as the steamrolling invasion—

as everywhere else—of Anglo-American pop

music in its various, successive or overlapping

forms: rock and roll, rockabilly, West Coast,

progressive rock, decadent rock, punk rock,

hard rock, blues rock, indie pop, reggae, soul,

disco, rap. As consumers of pop music, the

French listen to more ‘Anglo-Saxon’ music

than their own, which could explain the lowly

status of French rock and pop.

The first French rock and roll number in

France was written as a humorous parody of

a genre with no apparent future by Boris Vian

and performed by Henri Salvador

(Rock’n’Roll Mops). But in the 1960s Elvis

Presley had his followers; their temple was Le

Golf Drouot in Paris. This venue saw the start

of the careers of Hallyday, Mitchell and

Dutronc. Rock and roll music represented a

political stance for a young and largely work-

ing-class generation and a medium for indi-

vidual liberation; it was cleverly harnessed by

managers and producers of show business and

generated the yé-yé phenomenon. The radio

programme Salut les copains (Hello, buddies)

on Europe 1 was their rallying point.

In the 1970s, rock music pervaded the

sounds of the folk music revival. Pure French

rock generated an extraordinary number of

groups who came and went, producing end-

less carbon copies of British or American mod-

els. At the end of the 1970s disco music

reigned—but, with a few exceptions, French

rock was in the doldrums.

Since the 1980s, authentic rock groups like

Telephone (highly popular at home and

abroad), Starshooter, Marquis de Sade,

Indochine, Les Rita Mitsouko and Les

Négresses vertes have shown that French rock

and pop is thriving, and have at last found

international recognition even if in France it-

self it has generally been American and British

artists who have attracted the biggest crowds.

The cultural establishment gave the home

Rochefort, Christiane

473

product a helping hand. In 1984, Jack Lang,

then Minister of Culture, officially inaugu-

rated the first Zenith, at the Porte de Bagnolet,

a new venue for rock and pop concerts, with

Jacques Higelin, the charismatic rock figure,

topping the bill. For a while, in 1989, there

was even a Chargé de mission pour le rock et

les variétés (a rock and pop official representa-

tive) within his ministry. Also significant is the

huge contribution to the French pop scene

from multiple ethnic communities and their

musical hybrids (jazz, rock, funk, reggae, raï):

Carte de séjour, Karim Kacel, Cheb Khaled,

Mano Negra, Kassav’s and West Indian Zouk.

French pop music’s success lies in the future

reconciliation of rhythms and sounds coming

from other continents and cultures.

GÉRARD POULET

See also: beur music; music venues; video im-

ports

Further reading

Poulet, G. (1993) ‘Popular Music’, in M.Cook

(ed.) French Culture Since 1945, London:

Longman (an informative and serious at-

tempt to cover the various facets of rock,

pop and variétés in postwar France).

Rohmer, Éric

b. 1920, Nancy

Director, real name Maurice Schérer

The only Nouvelle Vague director whose films

are still regularly distributed in English-speak-

ing countries, Rohmer has maintained remark-

able success through filming on often impos-

sibly tight budgets, using 16 mm film stock or

video—as for The Green Ray (Le Rayon vert)

of 1986, shown on French television before

its cinema premiere—and confining himself to

a miniaturist canvas in which ambiguities and

misunderstandings between (generally would-

be) lovers predominate. His literary anteced-

ents are such as Marivaux or Jane Austen; in

the cinema, though he has posterity (Chris-

tian Vincent or the American Whit Stillman

both owe an obvious debt), ancestors are

harder to find.

His first feature, Le Signe du lion of 1959

(but not released until 1962), is harsher than

his subsequent work. It tells of the agony of a

Bohemian musician (a distant cousin of

Renoir’s Octave in La Règle du jeu?) left

stranded and impoverished in a pitiless Au-

gust Paris. Thereafter, his feature films fell gen-

erally into two series, Six contes moraux (Six

Moral Tales) and Comédies et proverbes

(Comedies and Proverbs). Best known in the

first series is My Night with Maud (Ma nuit

chez Maud) of 1969, in which Jean-Louis

Trintignant’s sophistically Catholic engineer

hesitates between the supposedly nice girl in

the pew next door and the worldly wise

divorcée Maud. Few other films have focused

so closely on people talking themselves into

love yet out of bed together; it is not surpris-

ing that Rohmer’s major critical work, in col-

laboration with Chabrol, was a study of that

arch-exponent of Catholic sexual guilt,

Hitchcock.

The talkiness and insecurity masquerading

as sophistication of Rohmer’s characters is

marked in more recent films, such as 1982’s

Le Beau Mariage and 1984’s Les Nuits de la

pleine lune, in both of which the bourgeois

institutions of marriage and monogamy

prove more resistant to attacks upon them

than might be imagined. His most recent se-

ries, Contes des quatre saisons (Tales of the

Four Seasons), displays, along with the some-

what prurient attitude towards young women

for which he has earned predictable feminist

criticism, a turn towards belief—however

ironic—in destiny and the miraculous already

foreshadowed in The Green Ray. Félicie’s

reuniting with the father of her child at the

end of Conte d’hiver (1992) is among the

most moving moments in Rohmer’s entire

oeuvre.

KEITH READER

Rohmer, Éric

474

Further reading

Bonitzer, P. (1991) Éric Rohmer, Paris: Cahiers

du Cinéma (a subtle philosophical and the-

matic study).

Magny, J. (1995) Éric Rohmer, Paris: Rivages

(includes a full and up-to-date filmography

and bibliography).

romantic novels

Modern romantic novels (romans a l’eau de

rose) comprise 15 per cent of all paperback sales

in France. They are produced on a monthly basis

to a standard format and length, much like

magazines, and sell in supermarkets, railway

station kiosks and corner shops as well as by

mail order. Harlequin, owned by the Canadian

media group Torstar, is the market leader and

accounts for well over 60 per cent of sales of

romantic novels. It began publication in 1978

with four novels per month and its translations

of English-language contemporary romances

were so successful that in six years it had reached

a sales peak of 20 million books and a reader-

ship of 6 million. Harlequin’s success stimulated

emulation and a number of French publishers

followed with locally written contemporary

romances, notably J’Ai Lu (who also publish

Barbara Cartland), Presses de la Cité, Jean-

Claude Lattès and Tallendier.

The romantic novel is a love story, narrat-

ing the birth of an affective and sexual bond

between a man and a woman. The narrative

programme is organized by an initial meeting

of the protagonists, usually producing a con-

flict between attraction and repulsion. There

then follows the overcoming of obstacles, both

internal and external, and a resolution which

culminates in a happy ending. The roots of the

theme can be traced back to Ancient Greek

mythology, via medieval romances, the clas-

sics L’Astrée, La Princesse de Clèves, Manon

Lescaut, The New Heloise (La Nouvelle

Héloïse) and The Lady of the Camellias (La

Dame aux camélias). Its modern form, how-

ever, is more usefully seen as emerging in the

mass market for literature that developed in

the course of the nineteenth century, in the ro-

man-feuilleton (serial novel) appearing in the

popular press, via Georges Ohnet’s Le Maître

de forges (The Ironmaster) and continued into

this century by Delly, du Veuzit, Bernage,

Magali and Anne and Serge Golon’s Angélique,

writers whose books dominated the field till

the arrival of Harlequin. Thereafter, the domi-

nant model of the successful romantic novel

has been derived from the Anglo-Saxon world,

originally based on the books of the UK pub-

lisher Mills and Boon. The bulk are based on

the contemporary workplace, though recently

the romantic novel publishers have added se-

ries that evoke detective fiction. The central

focus of the narrative, however, remains the

love conflict of the two main characters, al-

though the social profile and position of the

heroine, as well as sub-themes, evolve to re-

flect the constantly changing expectations and

aspirations of women in our times.

GEORGE PAIZIS

Further reading

Bettinotti, J. (1990) La Corrida de l’amour,

Montreal: XYZ (a study of Harlequins in-

tended to discover how the texts function).

Coquillat, M. (1988) Romans d’amour, Paris:

Odile Jacob (an attack on the contempo-

rary romantic novel from a traditional

feminist point of view).

Péquignot, B. (1991) La Relation amoureuse,

Paris: L’Harmattan (a sociological study of

the modern genre).

Le Roman sentimental, actes du colloque

(1990/1) 2 vols, Limoges: PULIM (a vari-

ety of articles on romantic fiction).

Ronis, Willy

b. 1910, Paris;

d. 1972, Paris

Photographer

romantic novels

475

From the beginning of his career, Ronis was

ideologically attracted by assignments of a so-

cial nature, covering strikes and union activ-

ity for the Parti Communiste and, like

Doisneau, charting the urbanization of the

suburbs (in his case, those of Ménilmontant

and Belleville). In the 1960s, he produced pho-

tographic illustrations for many news stories

on Algeria and eastern Europe.

MICHAEL WORTON