Tel Quel was an avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

 magazine

Literary magazine

A literary magazine is a periodical devoted to literature in a broad sense. Literary magazines usually publish short stories, poetry and essays along with literary criticism, book reviews, biographical profiles of authors, interviews and letters...

 for literature

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, founded in 1960 in Paris (Éditions du Seuil) by Philippe Sollers

Philippe Sollers

Philippe Sollers is a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde journal Tel Quel , published by Seuil, which ran until 1982...

 and Jean-Edern Hallier

Jean-Edern Hallier

Jean-Edern Hallier was a French author.- Overview :Hallier was the son of World War I French General André Hallier. Jean-Edern was born in 1936 and lost an eye during the siege of Budapest, where his father was on diplomatic posting...

.

Overview

Tel Quel was influenced by a number of revolutionary writers who intended to drastically criticize the conditions of their time, such as Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant

Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....

, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of 18th-century Romanticism. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological and educational thought.His novel Émile: or, On Education is a treatise...

, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...

, Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

, Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Lenin

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

, Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

, Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a culturally influential German-language author of short stories and novels. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century...

, Antonin Artaud

Antonin Artaud

Antoine Marie Joseph Artaud, more well-known as Antonin Artaud was a French playwright, poet, actor and theatre director...

, Comte de Lautréamont

Comte de Lautréamont

Comte de Lautréamont was the pseudonym of Isidore Lucien Ducasse , an Uruguayan-born French poet....

, Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille

Georges Bataille was a French writer. His multifaceted work is linked to the domains of literature, anthropology, philosophy, economy, sociology and history of art...

, James Joyce

James Joyce

James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...

, Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...

. The foci of its writings varied, but, as one might read in its name, most writings meant to inscribe what is as it is, emphasizing the metaphor of all language and the deconstruction of control systems set to normalize the masses.

The editors committee included Philippe Sollers

Philippe Sollers

Philippe Sollers is a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde journal Tel Quel , published by Seuil, which ran until 1982...

, Jean-Edern Hallier

Jean-Edern Hallier

Jean-Edern Hallier was a French author.- Overview :Hallier was the son of World War I French General André Hallier. Jean-Edern was born in 1936 and lost an eye during the siege of Budapest, where his father was on diplomatic posting...

, Jean-René Huguenin, Jean Ricardou

Jean Ricardou

Jean Ricardou is a French writer and theorist of the nouveau roman literary movement. To date, only one of his books, Les lieux-dits has been translated into English.-Works:*L'observatoire de Cannes *La prise de Constantinople...

, Jean Thibaudeau, Michel Deguy, Marcelin Pleynet

Marcelin Pleynet

Marcelin Pleynet was born in Lyon, France in 1933. Writer, essayist, poet, he was Managing Editor of the influential magazine Tel Quel from 1962 to 1982, and co-edits the journal L'Infini with Philippe Sollers. He was Professor of Aesthetics at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in...

, Denis Roche, Jean-Louis Baudry, Jean-Pierre Faye

Jean-Pierre Faye

Jean-Pierre Faye is a French philosopher and writer of fiction and prose poetry.-Biography:Faye was a founding member of the avant-garde literary review Tel Quel, and later of Change. He received the Prix Renaudot for his 1964 novel L'Écluse...

, Jacqueline Risset

Jacqueline Risset

Jacqueline Risset is a French poet noted for her work on the board of the literary journal Tel Quel along with Julia Kristeva and Philippe Sollers, and for her translations of Italian poetry into French. Risset's books include Sleep's Powers and The Translation Begins.Risset was born in Besançon,...

, François Wahl

François Wahl

François Wahl is a French editor and structuralist.-Biography:François Wahl was editor at the Éditions du Seuil, a publishing company in Paris. He was the editor of Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida, among others....

, and Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...

. It aimed to reflect the avant-garde revaluation of classical literary history. Authors and collaborators include Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes

Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...

, Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot

Maurice Blanchot was a French writer, philosopher, and literary theorist. His work had a strong influence on post-structuralist philosophers such as Jacques Derrida.-Works:...

, Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...

, Jean Cayrol

Jean Cayrol

Jean Cayrol was a French poet, publisher, and member of the Académie Goncourt. He is perhaps best known for writing the narration in Alain Resnais's 1955 documentary film, Night and Fog...

, Jean-Pierre Faye

Jean-Pierre Faye

Jean-Pierre Faye is a French philosopher and writer of fiction and prose poetry.-Biography:Faye was a founding member of the avant-garde literary review Tel Quel, and later of Change. He received the Prix Renaudot for his 1964 novel L'Écluse...

, Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva

Julia Kristeva is a Bulgarian-French philosopher, literary critic, psychoanalyst, sociologist, feminist, and, most recently, novelist, who has lived in France since the mid-1960s. She is now a Professor at the University Paris Diderot...

, Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a French public intellectual, philosopher and journalist. Often referred to today, in France, simply as BHL, he was one of the leaders of the "Nouveaux Philosophes" movement in 1976.-Early life:...

, Marcelin Pleynet

Marcelin Pleynet

Marcelin Pleynet was born in Lyon, France in 1933. Writer, essayist, poet, he was Managing Editor of the influential magazine Tel Quel from 1962 to 1982, and co-edits the journal L'Infini with Philippe Sollers. He was Professor of Aesthetics at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in...

, Maurice Roche, Philippe Sollers

Philippe Sollers

Philippe Sollers is a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde journal Tel Quel , published by Seuil, which ran until 1982...

, Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov

Tzvetan Todorov is a Franco-Bulgarian philosopher. He has lived in France since 1963 with his wife Nancy Huston and their two children, writing books and essays about literary theory, thought history and culture theory....

, Francis Ponge

Francis Ponge

Francis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. In many ways, he combined the two — essay and poem — into a single art form.-Life:...

, Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco

Umberto Eco Knight Grand Cross is an Italian semiotician, essayist, philosopher, literary critic, and novelist, best known for his novel The Name of the Rose , an intellectual mystery combining semiotics in fiction, biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory...

, Gérard Genette

Gérard Genette

Gérard Genette is a French literary theorist, associated in particular with the structuralist movement and such figures as Roland Barthes and Claude Lévi-Strauss, from whom he adapted the concept of bricolage.-Life:...

, Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez

Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...

, Pierre Guyotat

Pierre Guyotat

Pierre Guyotat is a French writer. He was born on January 9, 1940 at Bourg-Argental, Loire.- Biography :In 1960, Guyotat wrote his first novel, Sur un cheval. He was called to Algeria in the same year. In 1962 he was found guilty of desertion and publishing forbidden material. After three months...

, Severo Sarduy

Severo Sarduy

Severo Sarduy was a Cuban poet, author, playwright, and critic of Cuban literature and art.-Biography:...

, and Shoshana Felman

Shoshana Felman

Shoshana Felman is Woodruff Professor of Comparative Literature and French at Emory University. She was on the faculty of Yale University from 1970 to 2004, where she became Thomas E. Donnelley Professor of French and Comparative Literature....

. Publication ceased in 1982, and the journal was followed by L'Infini

L'Infini

L'Infini is a French journal for literature, founded in 1983 in Paris by Philippe Sollers as a follow up of the magazine Tel Quel.The magazine was first published by Éditions Denoël but later on by Gallimard....

.

External links

• Presentation of the magazine L'Infini on the site of Gallimard (en)
• Further information from taalfilosofie.nl (in Dutch)
• Plus à propos de Tel Quel sur pileface.com/sollers (in French)
• Tel Quel versus Wiener Gruppe versus Dekonstruktion versus Neue Wiener Gruppe (in German)

Further reading

• Patrick Ffrench and Roland-François Lack (eds.), The Tel Quel Reader (London, Routledge, 1998)
• Patrick Ffrench, The Time of Theory: A History of Tel Quel (1960-1983) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995)