Literary theory’s becoming as a story
In the aftermath of the theoretical fashion in the human sciences, French literature metadiscourses come more and more from the historical fields and from ethics: history of ideas (history of the idea of literary theory and that of modern literature, or even of modernity, new historicism, foucauldian archaeology), ethics and pragmatics (what is it good and what is it correct to say about literature, in regard of literary theory, but also what are the heuristic limits of theory put in the day-to-day life context). In the light of these two outlooks, literary theory appears it its own historicity, and the efforts to reveal its historical determinations put modern literature in a more comprehensive light.
Keywords: literary theory, modern literature, French theory, William Marx