Introduction - Marguerite Duras and the Media

Summary

The introduction considers Duras as an important literary persona in a critical period where rapidly changing media helped to enhance and alter the already elevated status of the French public intellectual. I argue that despite the apparent rise in media attention accorded the author after the publication of The Lover in 1984, Duras had in fact been extremely attentive to the media throughout her career. I outline how her oeuvre can be characterized as a porous interface between literature and mass media, reflecting the changing media landscape in the twentieth century. After an overview of the distinguishing characteristics and the cultural significance of the fait divers, I trace the rubric’s critical role as an inspiration in ninteenth- and twentieth-century French fiction. My interdisciplinary methodology allows us to see the compatibility between high literature and mass media and to imagine the future of serious thought in the public sphere.