This engaging book spans three centuries to provide the first full account of the long and diverse history of genius in France. Exploring a wide range of examples from literature, philosophy, and history, as well as medicine, psychology, and journalism, Ann Jefferson examines the ways in which the idea of genius has been ceaselessly reflected on and redefined through its uses in these different contexts. She traces its varying fortunes through the madness and imposture with which genius is often associated, and through the observations of those who determine its presence in others.

Jefferson considers the modern beginnings of genius in eighteenth-century aesthetics and the works of philosophes such as Diderot. She then investigates the nineteenth-century notion of national and collective genius, the self-appointed role of Romantic poets as misunderstood geniuses, the recurrent obsession with failed genius in the realist novels of writers like Balzac and Zola, the contested category of female genius, and the medical literature that viewed genius as a form of pathology. She shows how twentieth-century views of genius narrowed through its association with IQ and child prodigies, and she discusses the different ways major theorists-including Sartre, Barthes, Derrida, and Kristeva-have repudiated and subsequently revived the concept.

Rich in narrative detail, Genius in France brings a fresh approach to French intellectual and cultural history, and to the burgeoning field of genius studies.

Ann Jefferson is professor of French literature at the University of Oxford and fellow and tutor in French at New College, Oxford. Her books include Reading Realism in Stendhal and Biography and the Question of Literature in France.

List of Illustrations ix
Preface xi
Introduction 1
Part I: Enlightenment Genius 17
Chapter 1: The Eighteenth Century: Mimesis and Effect 19
Chapter 2: Genius Obscured: Diderot 35
Part II: Nineteenth-Century
Genius: The Idiom of the Age 45
Chapter 3: Language, Religion, Nation 47
Chapter 4: Individual versus Collective Genius 61
Chapter 5: The Romantic Poet and the Brotherhood of Genius 67
Chapter 6: Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare, and the Dynasty of Genius 81
Part III: Genius in the Clinic 89
Chapter 7: Genius under Observation: Lélut 91
Chapter 8: Genius, Neurosis, and Family Trees: Moreau de Tours 104
Chapter 9: Genius Restored to Health 114
Part IV: Failure, Femininity, and the Realist Novel 123
Chapter 10: A Novel of Female Genius: Mme de Staël's Corinne 125
Chapter 11: Balzac's Louis Lambert: Genius and the Feminine Mediator 137
Chapter 12: Creativity and Procreation in Zola's L'OEuvre 146
Part V: Precocity and Child Prodigies 159
Chapter 13: Exemplarity and Performance in Literature for Children 161
Chapter 14: Alfred Binet and the Measurement of Intelligence 173
Chapter 15: Minou Drouet: The Prodigy under Suspicion 183
Part VI: Genius in Theory 193
Chapter 16: Cultural Critique and the End of Genius: Barthes, Sartre 195
Chapter 17: The Return of Genius: Mad Poets 204
Chapter 18: Julia Kristeva and Female Genius 212
Chapter 19: Derrida, Cixous, and the Impostor 219
Notes 227
Bibliography 251
Index 267