Trois moments pour une histoire

Abstract

This article initially considers various ways to approach the relationship between literary studies and anthropology: as a national or a global phenomenon; considering the longue durée (from the 19th century on) or focusing on a narrower period. It then concentrates on the French-speaking world in the last decades and offers three snapshots in the recent history of this relationship: the 1960s and the structuralist moment; the 1990s, studied through the lens of a contrast between France and the US, especially in the reception of postmodernism; the 2010s and the recent revival of anthropological ambition in literary creation as well as literary studies. The point is less to identify disciplinary borrowings or transfers than to understand the role – at once theoretical and imaginary – that anthropology played for literary scholars in each of these moments.

Keywords

• Anthropologie
• Études littéraires
• Ethnologie