Roman 20-50, n° 77/juin 2024

In 2021, the discovery of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's unpublished manuscripts, unparalleled in literary history, was a major literary event. After considerable editorial work, two previously unpublished novels, Guerre and Londres, were published in 2022. A medieval-inspired legend, La volonté du roi Krogold, followed by La légende du roi René, was published in 2023. The text of Casse-pipe, partially published in 1948, revised and expanded by four sequences in Volume III of the 1988 Pléiade edition, has been integrated into the 2023 Pléiade edition in a version expanded with fragments of a primitive state of the text published in 1988 and scenes discovered in the recovered manuscripts.

This latest publication by an author who, having died in 1961, continues to publish unknown texts, has led to the reworking of two volumes of the Pléiade. It has already considerably changed our understanding of one of the most important works in the history of the twentieth-century French novel, and will in part determine the course of Céline studies in the years to come.

The dossier L.-F. Céline. Manuscrits inédits, which appears today in issue 77 of Roman 20-50, is the first set of analyses to focus exclusively on the author's unpublished manuscripts. It brings together international Céline specialists who, while legitimately believing they knew the work, have worked on unknown texts. Céline readers will find documented analyses which, beyond the editorial adventure represented by these manuscripts, offer an informed and precise examination of their novelty, and assess their importance in relation to the work as a whole.