The work of the French literary review, intellectual grouping, and publishing team Tel Quel had a profound impact on literary and cultural debate in the 1960s and '70s. THE TEL QUEL READER presents, for the first time in English, many of the key essays written by the Tel Quel group. The collection filled a much-needed gap in the literature available on the postculturalist movement.

The Tel Quel Readerpresents for the first time in English many of the key essays that played an instrumental role in shaping the contours of literary and cultural debate in the 1960s and 1970s. Tel Quelwas a French journal and publishing team that printed some of the earliest work by Derrida, Bataille, Kristeva, Barthes, Foucault and Deleuze. From its beginning in 1960 to its closure in 1982, TQpublished some of the key essays of major poststructuralist thinkers. The Readerincludes essays available in English for the first time by Kristeva and Foucault, and a fascinating interview with Barthes. It provides a unique insight into the poststructuralist movement and presents some of the pioneering essays on literature and culture, gender, film, semiotics and psychoanalysis. Although articles included here cover diverse areas--from the semiology of paragrams to the readability of Sade, a common perspective runs through them: the recognition of excess and the seduction of writing. The Tel Quel Readerfills a crucial gap in the English literature on literary and cultural theory and presents a case for the enduring value of the journal's enterprise.

* The first full-length study in any language of one of the most important elements in post-war French intellectual and cultural life. The journal Tel Quel was the focus of much of the intense theoretical activity of Paris in the 1960s and 1970s and played a vital role in the development of the key thinkers of the time: Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Jacques Lacan, Julia Kristeva, and Philippe Sollers. Patrickffrench traces its history, across the 'time of theory' and the catastrophe of May 1968, to the review's controversial affirmation of literature as akin to theology in the late 1970s. Beyond its documentary and historical significance, the book maps a 'genealogy' of theory, from its structuralausterity and 'terror' to a new time 'after theory'.

The Beginning: Tel Quel in the 1960s presents an overview of this literary journal in the first half of its history. Its book publications are taken as the primary source materials, and each chapter deals with one publication in particular in order to describe each author's respective writing style, being the primary trope in the theory of literary production underlying its approach to literary journalism. Demonstrating how this theory is an inherent contingency of its own mode of production, combining works of literature with literary theory, this serves as a practical inquiry into Julia Kristeva's semiotic theory of paragrammatic writing, a key insight into the Tel Quel's collective theories of the "text" and "poetic language." As a reaction to this semiotic approach, my argument proceeds by means of a self-conscious application of linguistics to works of literature that anticipate a reader's familiarity with their related theoretical works. As such, it elaborates the texts' own appropriation of linguistics in order to locate the basis of the various modes of interpretation they entail.

"A comprehensive encyclopedia of literary and cultural theory. Covers Literary Theory from 1900 to 1966, Literary Theory from 1966 to the present, and Cultural Theory. This encyclopedia provides accessible entries on the important concepts, theorists and trends in post-1900 literary and cultural theory. With explanations of complex terms and important theoretical concepts, and summaries of the work and ideas of key figures, it is a highly informative reference work for a multi-disciplinary readership"-- Nota de l'editor.

A rare and unique publication of Roland Barthes' notebooks from his travels in China. The notebooks document Barthes' thoughts during his 1974 visit to China, just as the last campaign of the Cultural Revolution was getting underway.