Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree, Vol. 8 Book

By definition, a palimpsest is “a written document, usually on vellum or parchment, that has been written upon several times, often with remnants of erased writing still visible.” Palimpsests (originally published in France in 1982), one of Gérard Genette’s most important works, examines the manifold relationships a text may have with prior texts. Genette describes the multiple ways a later text asks readers to read or remember an earlier one. In this regard, he treats the history and nature of parody, antinovels, pastiches, caricatures, commentary, allusion, imitations, and other textual relations. Gérard Genette is one of the most original and influential literary critics of modern France. He is the major practitioner of narratological criticism, a pioneer in structuralism, and a much-admired literary historian. Such works as Narrative Discourse and Mimologics (Nebraska 1995) have established his international reputation as a literary theorist of the first order.

Library Journal

French literary critic and historian Genette, a pioneer of structuralism, has given this literary study an appropriate title. A palimpsest may be defined as a "written document, usually on vellum or parchment, that has been written upon several times, often with remnants of erased writing still visible." Here Genette explores the interrelationships between literary works and explains literary devices such as parody, antinovels, pastiches, caricatures, commentary, allusion, and imitation. For the author, later literary works or "hypertexts" are transpositions of earlier "hypotexts." Thus, Joyce's Ulysses, a hypertext, can be viewed as a transposition of Homer's Ulysses and Vergil's Aeneid, both hypotexts. Unfortunately, Genette's rambling style, termed narralogical criticism, will appear incoherent and disorganized to the unfamiliar reader, and he poses more questions than he answers. This books will be very useful to comparative literature scholars familiar with Genette's style, but it will have little appeal to lay readers.Robert T. Ivey, Univ. of Memphis, Tenn.