From Unanimism to the Fantastic: Jules Romains and the Extraordinary

Description:

Jules Romains is known as a writer of ‘good will’, a reasonable and rationalist figure. There is, however, a dark and little-known side to Jules Romains: a Jules Romains who creates characters of ill will – even criminals; a Jules Romains who does not hesitate to pepper his work with long erotic chapters – even pornographic ones; a Jules Romains, finally and above all, fascinated by everything related to the parapsychological and the extraordinary.

But where does this attraction to the abnormal and the paranormal come from? It is by placing Romains’s work within the context of an era confronted with the death of God and scarred by two World Wars that we can explain the shift taking place, from *La Vie unanime* (1908) to his post-war works, from an optimistic and humanist unanimism to a fantastical world which, whilst scientifically and politically militant, is nonetheless despairing.

Publisher’s website : https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/68296