Genetic Criticism and its Logics

Daniel Ferrer is Professeur Emeritus (and former director) at the Institut des Textes Modernes et Manuscrits, Paris. He is one of the leading proponents of genetic criticism and the author of Virginia Woolf and the Madness of Language (1990) and Genetic Joyce (2023). Rachel Bowlby is Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus at University College London. Most recently, she is the author of Unexpected Items: Shopping, Parenthood, Changing Feminist Stories (2024) and Émile Zola: Writing Modern Life (2025).

• List of Figures1. Eppur si muove2. Marey’s Cat and Moses’ Beard3. The Counter-Model of ‘Fable’4. The Raven and the Beetle5. Repetition vs. Invention: The Philological Counter-Model6. Repetition and Invention: Picasso’s False Draft7. Musical Score and Cookery Recipe8. The Raven and the Parrot9. The Art of Using up Leftovers10. Exogenous and Endogenous Accidents: Joyce’s Ink Blot and Stendhal’s Fountain11. The European Model12. Emerging Structure and Path Dependency13. Anamorphosis and Station Toilets14. Chryselephantine Charlie Chaplin15. Anti-Descriptivism and Retrospective Distribution16. The Model of Models: The Avant-texte17. The Aporias of the Avant-texte: The Shabby Gate and the Dripping Sketch18. Ulysses’ Scars19. Memories of the Context: The Clementis Effect (or Hat-Trick)20. Freudian Enunciation and Scrambled Eggs with Truffles21. Bathmology and Dialogism22. A Marginalist Economy of Writing23. Agrammaticalities and Diasystems24. Dialogism and the Genetic Process of Films25. Variants and Variations: The Beethoven Sonata and Hogarth’s Dog26. Possible Worlds: Jupiter the Genetic Critic27. Possible Worlds and Modal Logic28. Worlds Compared and Worlds Stipulated29. Textual Worlds and Fictive Worlds30. Incomplete Worlds?31. Enallages of Modality and Modal Realism32. Necessary?33. Accessibilities: The Symphony and the Telephone34. WorldmakingAnnotated List of the ModelsBibliographyIndex

This absorbing book, by one of the world’s leading exponents of genetic criticism, will dispel any idea that the study of writers’ and artists’ draft material is a dry and dusty topic. If you are going to read one book on genetic criticism, this virtuoso survey of its challenges and rewards should be it.