In the first volume of this work, Dosse (director, Paris Center for Critical Studies) chronicles with superb documentation the development of the structuralist movement as it was propelled by such forces as Claude Levi-Strauss (in anthropology), Jacque Lacan (in psychoanalysis), Michel Foucault (in literature and history), and many other French social scientists and humanists. Structuralism emerged as a reaction against the French university system's rigidity and refusal to accept, as philologist Leo Spitzer observed, Anglo-Saxon New Criticism and other didactic methodologies.

Here David Ellison explores the problems encountered by France's best experimental authors writing between 1956 and 1984, when faced with the question: "What should my writing be about?" These years are characterized by the rise of the "new novelists," who questioned the representational function of writing as they created works of imagination that turned in upon themselves and away from exterior reality. It became fashionable at one point to affirm that literature was no longer about the world but uniquely about the words on a page, the signifying surface of the text. Ellison tests this assumption, showing that even in the most seemingly self-referential fictions the words point to the world from which they can never completely separate themselves. Through close readings Ellison examines the novels and theoretical writings of authors whose works are fundamental to our perception of contemporary French writing and thought: Camus, Robbe-Grillet, Simon, Duras, Sarraute, Blanchot, and Beckett. The result is a new understanding of the link between the referential function of literary language and the problematic of the ethics of fiction.

In over 700 alphabetical entries on key aspects of French culture since 1945, this groundbreaking work provides valuable in-depth information on topics which traditional reference works often neglect. Reflecting the growth of cross-disciplinary concerns, the encyclopedia covers fields such as film and media, sports, gender, food and wine, education, literature, technology, politics and linguistic issues. The entries include short biographies of influential figures such as Jacques Brel, Coco Chanel, and Francois Truffaut as well as brief factual pieces, major articles and overviews on subjects across the entire spectrum of contemporary French culture: Abortion, Advertizing, Beur Cinema, Canal Plus, Francophone Press, Gay Activism, Green Politics, L'Equipe, Management Style, North Africa, Paris-Match and an inclusive range of other topics.