Remembering and Forgetting Masterpieces: The Case of Joseph Malègue
Wojciech KUDYBA
Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw , Polandhttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-5868-3850
Abstract
The article describes the problem of marginalizing, in literary awareness, those contemporary works which may be regarded as deeply immersed in Christianity. A good example of such marginalization is provided by the fate of the output of Joseph Malègue, one of the most outstanding representatives of the French Catholic novel. The recent rediscovery of his works in France was particularly revealing about how deeply they had sunk into oblivion. Malègue’s oeuvre is absent from French textbooks of literature and from historical-literary syntheses, it has not been included in university courses and, in consequence, it has also failed to find its way to monographs and lexicons published outside France. For more than half a century, the writer’s works have neither appeared on the book market nor been discussed by scholars or literary critics. The author of the article attempts to answer the question why Malègue’s writings have been eliminated from the contemporary literary scene and from the scope of historical and literary memory.
Keywords:
Joseph Malègue, Catholic novel, cultural memoryCardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5868-3850
