Yale French Studies, Number 91: Genet: In the Language of the Enemy

"I couldn't change the world alone, I could only pervert it: that is what I attempted by a corruption of language, that is to say from within this French language that appears so noble". It is in these terms that Jean Genet describes his ambiguous role in the French literary canon: that of an enemy within, one who puts the monuments and forms of the dominant culture in promiscuous contact with marginal languages and practices in a "war of words". This volume investigates the stakes and boundaries of this war for Genet and for his readers, offering new interpretations of his works and showing how they oblige us to rethink our own relations, as readers and interpreters, to literature itself.