Les idoles du crepuscule: Proust, Celine et la Grande Guerre

My dissertation proceeds from the premise that even in "victorious" France, the trauma experienced by its entire population during the Great War caused the wholesale abandon of Tradition as a viable foundation for the French national community.;Four different reactions emerge in response to this change, each attempting to answer the question of what the role of literature could be after the end of Tradition. Some, like Charles Peguy, Edmond Rostand and Maurice Barres, attempt simply to reinstate Tradition. Others, like Tristan Tzara, actively contribute to the dismantling of Tradition and Nation. Marcel Proust, third, trains his readers to assimilate Tradition into their interiority, thereby creating a "secret community" that displaces Tradition from the public sphere and maintains it within its individual members. And Louis-Ferdinand Celine, finally, rejects Tradition altogether and proposes in its place a return to a pre-traditional, archaic community founded upon mysticism and on a violence produced by the musical effects of his particular use of language.;Proust and Celine prove to provide the most influential answers. These two authors push the limits of literary language to its opposite extremes---essentially redefining it---in order to heal France's unprecedented trauma. Both Proust and Celine present a new vision of selfhood upon which they build different models of community. Indeed, each author creates a new entirely sensibility that endures to this day.