Georges Poulet
Georges Poulet was a prominent Belgian literary critic born in Chênée in 1902, renowned for his contributions to the Geneva School of literary criticism and the development of "new criticism" in post-World War II France. He received his education at the University of Liège, earning both a law degree and a Ph.D. before taking on academic roles, notably serving as a Professor of French at the University of Edinburgh and later at Johns Hopkins University and in Switzerland. Unlike the American "new criticism," which emphasized textual form, Poulet's approach centered on the subjective experiences of the author and the reader, drawing on the philosophical ideas of phenomenologist Edmund Husserl. He posited that literary criticism should reflect the psychological state of the author and explore the joint endeavor between the creator and audience. In his influential works, such as "Studies in Human Time" and "A Phenomenology of Reading," he examined the creative process and the relationship between literature and human consciousness. Poulet's belief that a text comes alive only when read reinforced the notion that literature is a vital exploration of human existence, making his scholarship an essential part of 20th-century literary theory. He passed away in 1991, leaving a lasting impact on the field of literary criticism.
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Georges Poulet
Literary Critic
- Born: November 29, 1902
- Birthplace: Chênée, Belgium
- Died: December 31, 1991
- Place of death: Brussels, Belgium
Biography
Born in Chênée, Belgium, in 1902, Georges Poulet was the most influential of the Geneva School of literary critics, an exponent of the “new criticism” that arose in France after World War II. He attended the University of Liège where he received a law degree in 1925 and a Ph.D. in 1927. He was Professor of French at the University of Edinburgh from 1928 to 1951, then taught at Johns Hopkins University in the United States and then in Switzerland.
Poulet’s literary criticism directly opposed the very different “new criticism” that developed in the United States. Rather than focusing on the form of the work of art, Poulet concentrated almost entirely on the author’s and the reader’s consciousness as they experienced the interior world from which the work of art was created. In other words, his was a subjective criticism rather than an objective one. Indeed, the Geneva School relied on the philosophical principles of the phenomenologist Edmund Husserl, who believed that the individual consciousness was the only window through which reality could be comprehended. In fact, he believed that an object could only have meaning if the individual perceived it. Thus, for Poulet, literary criticism became a joint endeavor between author and reader. Rather than evaluating the text, the critic created a parallel text which attempted to intuit the psychological state of the author.
In his first two important critical works, Studies in Human Time (1949) and The Interior Distance (1952), Poulet was concerned not only with the creative moment and the shaping of the creative work but with the “interior vacancy” and timeless consciousness that preceded creativity: the pre- verbal state of the artist and the conditions under which a creative act occurred. In Metamorphoses of the Circle (1961), he moved from analysis of individual artistic consciousness to the commonality of consciousness among participants in the same literary movements. For example, he found that the Romantics shared an interest in the subjective impressions of the mind. Their common interest in nature only developed after withdrawing from reality into the inner self, which in turn was the point of departure for experiencing nature.
Perhaps the most concise expression of Poulet’s literary philosophy was contained in his essay “A Phenomenology of Reading” (1968). Here he described the communion between author and reader, the notion that the text was dead until someone read it, the conviction that books were more than simply their objective reality, and the fact that literary criticism was in itself literature. Finally, he argued that any immortality in the work of art existed because of the identification between reader and author. This communion—and not craftsmanship—gave literature the power to provide insights into human existence.
Poulet died on December 31, 1991.