Raymond Picard
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Raymond Picard (6 August 1917 – 5 September 1975) was a French author, prominent
Sorbonne Sorbonne may refer to: * Sorbonne (building), historic building in Paris, which housed the University of Paris and is now shared among multiple universities. *the University of Paris (c. 1150 – 1970) *one of its components or linked institution, ...
professor and
Jean Racine Jean-Baptiste Racine ( , ) (; 22 December 163921 April 1699) was a French dramatist, one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France, along with Molière and Corneille as well as an important literary figure in the Western traditi ...
scholar.


Work

Picard is noted for his scathing tract "Nouvelle critique ou nouvelle imposture?" (" New Criticism or New Fraud?"), which was aimed at the "subjective" analytical approach of
Roland Barthes Roland Gérard Barthes (; ; 12 November 1915 – 26 March 1980) was a French literary theorist, essayist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. His work engaged in the analysis of a variety of sign systems, mainly derived from Western popula ...
(as found in " On Racine") and other non-traditional approaches by writers and academics of " New Criticism", including
Lucien Goldmann Lucien Goldmann (; 20 July 1913 – 8 October 1970) was a French philosopher and sociologist of Jewish-Romanian origin. A professor at the EHESS in Paris, he was a Marxist theorist. His wife was sociologist Annie Goldmann. Biography Goldmann w ...
, Charles Mauron, Jean-Paul Weber and Jean-Pierre Richard. Barthes' response to this critique came in the form of '' Critique et vérité'', which postulated a 'science of criticism' to replace the 'university criticism' perpetuated by Picard and his colleagues The heated, public debate between Picard and Barthes became somewhat of a watershed moment in the development of literary structuralism. Picard felt that "Barthes was 'the instrument of a criticism that operates by instinct,' that uses a pseudoscientific jargon to make inept and absurd assertions in the name of biological, psychoanalytic and philosophic knowledge" and of "New Criticism" believed that "the mixture of impressionism and dogmatism set to a modernist rhythm of indetermination 'makes it possible to say absolutely any stupid thing'."Dosse, Francois & Glassman, Deborah. History of Structuralism. University of Minnesota Press, 1997.


Bibliography

*''The Career of Jean Racine'' *''The Complete Works of Racine'' *''New Criticism or New Fraud?''


References


External links


"New Criticism or New Fraud ?"

Essay touching on Picard's critique of so-called "New Criticism"
1917 births 1975 deaths Academic staff of the University of Paris French literary critics French male non-fiction writers 20th-century French male writers {{Academic-bio-stub