Apollinaire the novelist? La Femme assise, “the most beautiful novel of modern times”

How should we approach Apollinaire’s novels? While the reception of La Femme assise has long been problematic and focused on its genetic aspects, Apollinaire’s novelistic aesthetics is innovative in many ways. Juxtaposed with Jacques Rivière’s Roman d’aventure, the poet reinvigorated the genre in its proportions and composition. Far from being a marginal case, La Femme assise must be situated in the history of the early twentieth-century modernist novel.