A short life of the author
Charles Mauron (1899–1966) was a French literary critic and translator who lived and worked in Provence. Despite going blind in his thirties, he produced a substantial body of critical writing and developed psychocritique — a method of literary analysis that systematically applies psychoanalytic theory to identify recurring unconscious patterns across a writer’s entire oeuvre.
Major Works
Mallarmé l’obscur (1941) was his first major critical study, seeking to make Mallarmé’s notoriously difficult poetry accessible through a combination of close reading and psychoanalytic interpretation.
Des métaphores obsédantes au mythe personnel (1963) — his theoretical masterwork, laying out the methodology of psychocriticism and applying it to Racine, Corneille, and other French writers.
Mauron also translated the works of Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and D.H. Lawrence into French, contributing to their reception in the French literary world.
Collecting Mauron
Mauron’s critical works are published by French academic presses (José Corti, Éditions du Seuil). They are collected by scholars of French literary criticism and psychoanalytic theory. First editions are modestly priced in the French academic book market.