Rhythms: Essays in French Literature, Thought and Culture

As they oscillate and flow between action and aesthetics, habit and creativity, rhythms are vital to our understanding of how subjectivities are constructed upon the shifting borderlines between life and art. Yet whilst rhythm remains an established concept in studies of French poetry, this is the first major overview to address the centrality of rhythm in fields such as literature, philosophy, dance and film, and to link these debates across periods and disciplines within French Studies. Drawing on thinkers such as Deleuze and Guattari, Kristeva, Lefebvre, Meschonnic, and Virilio, the authors explore the concept of rhythms in relation to questions of temporality and the everyday, technology and the city, poetry and autobiography, space and the body in performance. In a wide-ranging series of innovative, theoretical and close readings, they examine issues which include the poetics of Mallarme and Bonnefoy, the writings of Ernaux, Perec, Reda and Zobel, the choreography of Merce Cunningham and the cinema of Chris Marker.