Literature and the Right in Postwar France: The Story of the 'Hussards'

Description

It has long been assumed that France was dominated by the political left wing and by Existentialism throughout the 1940s and 1950s. This is the first book to re-evaluate the impact of the vigorous and unrepentant right-wing cultural and literary movement during the postwar period. In this revealing study, the author concentrates on three neglected but significant writers who constitute the group known as the 'Hussards': Roger Nimier, Antoine Blondin and Jacques Laurent. He offers a detailed analysis of the work of the 'Hussards' and others on the fringe of this iconoclastic group who aggressively (and sometimes violently) opposed Existentialism while adopting a tradition from the 1920s full of nostalgia for lost values. Students and scholars will find that this book fills an important gap in French literary and cultural history of the postwar period.

Nicholas Hewitt Professor of French,University of Nottingham

"Nicholas Hewitt is a splendidly clear and readable unpicker of the tangled history of the French Right, that "coalition of often conflicting ideologies and cultural mediations" ... Hewitt provides excellent introductions to these rebellious novelists ..." TLS "a thorough, scholarly treatment, combining cultural, intellectual and political angles in an historical approach, beginning the 'story' (as the subtitle has it) in the previous postwar to show the persistence of the right-wing tradition." Modern and Contemporary France "a balanced and well-written history of the cultural activities and political views of the postwar extreme Right. [...] For those who wish to understand French right-wing politics and culture in this century as well as the postwar period in all its diversity, Hewitt's book is indispensible." SubStance