French Literary Fascism by David Carroll

Carroll, David. French Literary Fascism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

David Carroll’s French Literary Fascism is a perspicacious reading of several figures whom Carroll designates as French literary fascists. The book is dvided into two parts. The first focuses on three “fathers”of literary fascism: Maurice Barrès, the anti-Semitic nationalist whom Pascal Ory and Jean-François Sirinelli call “the most admired writer of the young generation” of his day; Charles Maurras, founder of the royalist and nationalist Action Française; and Charles Péguy, whom Carroll characterizes as a republican who hated the republicans, a socialist who hated the socialists, a Dreyfusard who hated the Dreyfusards, and a virulent critic of anti-Semites who hated what he called “Jewish politics.”  The second part of the book focuses on the literary fascists of the interwar and Vichy periods.