Professor Gerald Prince

About the Professor

Gerald Prince teaches courses on modern French fiction and narrative poetics. These include courses on Proust, Gide, Sartre, Camus, as well as Sarraute and Ernaux. He is the author of many books and journal articles about his field, and he is currently working on the second volume of his Guide de roman de la langue francaise. In addition, he has recently directed dissertations on visual representations in postmodern French literature, the reproductive body in contemporary fiction, the writings of children of collaborators, and Jean-Philippe Toussaint.

Personal Writing Process

“What I do is I set myself, believe it or not, a number of words to write. I don’t think a topic demands or dictates length. I think the first thing to do is think what do I need. Should I write 2500 words on this topic, for instance if I have to give a paper somewhere for 20 minutes. And I count words as I write them. If I find that I’m going to exceed because my introduction is already 2400 words, then I scrap it. I really do it very much by (1) imagining the size I want to have, and (2) thinking whether very explicitly or more generally of the three or four or five parts that the piece, whether it’s 2500 words or 100,000 words, what parts would it fall into. And this should always include some kind of introduction, setting out to tell what problems or texts or corpus are going to be explored and to what end, and some kind of conclusion. The conclusion should on the one hand, perhaps, recapitulate, but on the other hand, perhaps suggest further questions to be asked. And personally I do not simply write something and then go on to the next thing before I’m satisfied with what I have written. Also I do not have readers before I publish something. I do sometimes have listeners to what I have written because I sometimes deliver lectures based on something I have written. Indeed, I generally suggest to people not to have too many people read it because each one will give you a different thing...but that’s my view of things; it’s not a methodology.”

Examples of Professional Writing

Professor Prince admires the style of Denis Hollier, Philippe Bonnefis, and a former student, Warren Motte. He encourages students take a look at these authors.

© 2013 The University of Pennsylvania