Venita Datta

Birth of a National Icon: the Literary Avant-garde and the Origins of the Intellectual in France Venita Datta

Birth of a National Icon examines the emergence of the intellectual in fin-de-siecle France, setting this important phenomenon against the backdrop of an emerging mass democracy and concentrating on the key role played by the avant-garde.

"Birth of a National Icon is an outstanding piece of scholarship. It makes a significant contribution to the history of the French intellectual for a number of reasons. First, Datta convincingly argues--against the long-standing conventional wisdom--that the birth of the French intellectual cannot be seen simply as a product of the Dreyfus Affair. In a richly textured survey of the 'little magazines' of the 1890s, she establishes that the set of concerns later attributed to the 'intellectual' were already very much in evidence in the years preceding the Dreyfus Affair. Second, she documents the role of the literary avant-garde in the construction of the French intellectual. Her impressive mastery of the avant-garde literary groups in the 1890s allows her to paint a portrait of their hopes and, even more importantly perhaps, their anxieties, both of which combined to give shape to the emerging intellectual. Third, in perhaps her most impressive contribution, she demonstrates that emphasis on the political division between Dreyfusard and anti-Dreyfusard obscures the degree to which each side shared a common outlook, especially in regard to the role of the intellectual." -- Paul Mazgaj, University of North Carolina at Greensboro