Marcel Raymond

Marcel Raymond (December 20, 1897 in Geneva – November 28, 1981 in Geneva) was a Swiss literary critic who specialized in French literature. He is generally grouped with the so-called "Geneva School".

Marcel Raymond first studied in Geneva, and then moved to France to study at the Sorbonne in Paris under the scholars Henri Chamard (a specialist in La Pléiade) and Abel Lefranc. He received his doctorate in 1927 with a dissertation on the influence of Pierre de Ronsard on French poetry (1550–1585); published shortly after, the work has become a classic (it was republished in 1965). Raymond's subsequent study of French poetry from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth – De Baudelaire au surréalisme (1933) – brought him universal critical praise. In it he developed the idea that poetry is a fully engaged act and that a poem should be appreciated as an organic production that requires an intimate act of reading.

Raymond taught at the University of Leipzig, at the University of Basel and, in 1936, succeeded Albert Thibaudet at the University of Geneva, where he would stay until his retirement in 1962. At Geneva, he became friends with Georges Poulet and Albert Béguin, and along with Jean Starobinski and Jean Rousset they formed the core of what would come to be called the Geneva School of literary criticism.

During the Second World War, Raymond lost his father and several friends (including Benjamin Crémieux who died in a concentration camp), but he poured himself into essays, critical editions and anthologies on Montesquieu, Agrippa d'Aubigné, Victor Hugo and Paul Valéry. After the war, this work continued on Pierre Bayle, Pierre de Ronsard, Arthur Rimbaud, Paul Verlaine, Senancour, Baudelaire, etc. But the majority of his post-war work was focused on Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and he was asked to participate with Bernard Gagnebin on the critical edition of Rousseau's works for the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. His 1955 book, Baroque et renaissance poétique would complete his work on 16th and 17th century poetry.

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