Introduction: Bypassing Paris? Se Passer de Paris?

Whether as capital of the nineteenth century or capital of the World's Republic of Letters, Paris is exceptional in terms of its centrality to French-language literature and thought, and this quasi-mythical status has caused an exceptional reliance within our discipline on a centre–periphery model as a prism through which to view cultural difference. In other words, if Paris is the uncontested centre, then everything else becomes periphery. In literary terms[…] Paris has been seen as performing a function within the World's Republic of Letters, dictating literary taste, sanctioning works, turning them from texts into 'literature' proper, as opposed to 'regional literature'. The alternative avenues suggested by this collection of articles challenge the rather stale dynamics of literary consecration and thus expand the corpus of what is worth including in our ever-expanding literary republics. In their mutually enriching plurality, they do so, it is hoped, whether bypassing Paris or not, without painting the real Paris, in turn, as a monolithic entity. At the same time, they surely set out to challenge its function as the sacred guarantor of literary worthiness.