Gilles Philippe's 'Sujet, verbe, complément' Examines Grammar as Literary Paradigm

Gilles Philippe's book 'Sujet, verbe, complément', published by Éditions Gallimard, explores how grammar became the dominant paradigm for understanding literature in France during the Third Republic. Using a historical and archaeological method akin to Foucault's, Philippe traces this development from Sully Prudhomme to Sartre and Barthes, with key figures including Proust, Thibaudet, and Flaubert. Proust praised Flaubert's 'grammatical beauty', positioning him at the center of decisive literary positions. The study identifies traces of 'grammaticalization of literary questions' across criticism, grammar, stylistics, and education, revealing the concept of 'littérarité'. The author regrets not examining the historical conditions for the emergence and end of this 'grammatical moment', nor the transhistorical nature of a paradigm still at work in Derrida's 1970 notion of 'the irreducible excess of the syntactic over the semantic'. Reviewer: Emmanuel Tibloux.