Georges Poulet

Turning now to what we can know from others about this question, writing as phenomenology, we have these to consider. (For the latest, most accurate entry, details, and formatting, consult Wikipedia.)

This is from the Wikipedia entry for Geneva School (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_School, accessed 16/11/12).

The expression "Geneva School" (French: groupe de Geneve) is also applied to a group of literary critics in the 1950s and 1960s, of which the most important were the Belgian critic Georges Poulet, the French critic Jean-Pierre Richard, and the Swiss critics Marcel Raymond, Albert Béguin, Jean Rousset and Jean Starobinski. The critics Emil Staiger, Gaston Bachelard, and J. Hillis Miller are also sometimes associated with this group.

Growing out of Russian Formalism and Phenomenology (such as in the work of Edmund Husserl), the "Geneva School" used the phenomenological method to attempt to analyse works of literature as representations of deep structures of an author's consciousness and his or her relationship to the real world. Biographical criticism was however avoided, as these critics focused primarily on the work of art itself – treated as an organic whole and considered a subjective interpretation of reality (the German concept of Lebenswelt) – and sought out the recurrent themes and images, especially those concerning time and space and the interactions between the self and others.

Focusing next on Georges Poulet and his criticism of consciousness, we can read that

Like other Geneva School critics, Poulet rejects the concept of literary criticism as an objective evaluation of structural or aesthetic values. For critics such as Poulet and Raymond, literature is neither an objective structure of meanings residing in the words of a poem or novel, nor the tissue of self-references of a "message" turned in on itself, nor the unwitting expression of the hidden complexes of a writer's unconscious, nor a revelation of the latent structures of exchange or symbolization which integrate a society. Literature, for them, is the embodiment of a state of mind. (Miller 306-7) 

Lawall (1968) writes, "[Poulet] is not concerned with technical uniqueness, verbal manipulation of themes, or any aspect of art that may be called 'craftsmanship'. Instead, Poulet is interested in what he calls a 'criticism of consciousness.'"

Lawall (1968) describes criticism of consciousness as "a reading that explores the work’s expression of a conscious, perceiving being." Poulet's goal is to "[rethink] and [re-create] the author's own expression". It is possible for the reader to recreate the individual experience of the author because that experience is both personal and universal. For Poulet, the critic’s job is to "[empty] his mind of its personal qualities so that it may coincide completely with the consciousness expressed in the words of the author" (Miller 307). While reading a book, Poulet is "aware of a rational being, of a consciousness: the consciousness of another, no different from the one I automatically assume in every human being I encounter, except that in this case the consciousness is open to me" (Poulet 54). Poulet calls this consciousness the author's cogito. The cogito is "each person's perception and creation of his own existence" (Lawall 86).

In order to fully grasp an author’s cogito, it is important to examine all available examples of the author’s work. For Poulet, letters, journals, and unpublished manuscripts hold as much information about the author's cogito as published novels or poems (Leitch et al. 1318). He did not believe that these sources should be analyzed as objects, however. Instead, they should be used by the reader to "coexist with the author's developing grasp and formulation of his own existence" (Lawall 112). By examining an author's complete body of work, the critic begins to see patterns of expression not only in the work of one particular author but also across literary periods.

In addition to the cogito, Poulet looks for the "point of departure" in an author's body of work. The point of departure is a "structural and organizing principle" around which the author’s work is centered and which defines the author’s individuality (de Man 82). Poulet asserts that all narratives emerge from a preconceived world in which the author has already determined everything that will happen in the future. This static world is the point of departure for the fictional narrative. If the critic can identify the point of departure, he or she will have a key to the author's cogito.

The entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Poulet, accessed 16/11/12) goes on to note that

By the 1970s, Poulet, and other phenomenological critics, had given way to a new wave of young critics (Leitch et al. 1319). Meltzer (1977) writes, "many critics sense a confidence, or complacency, in Poulet's work, which they believe results from a deafness on his part to the recent problematization of the literary experience and the language of literature" (viii). Formalist critics disagreed with Poulet's disregard for objective standards of literary value while structuralist, poststructuralist, and deconstructionist critics rejected the importance Poulet placed on the role of the author and his belief in engaging with the text as a representation of the author's consciousness.

The subject and questions for this course are not new. And yet, how one comes, via tools in addition to a structural and organizing principle, to our tentative declaration are still to be explicated.