Georges Poulet (French: [pulɛ]; 29 November 1902 – 31 December 1991) was a Belgian literary critic associated with the Geneva School.
Lawall (1968) identifies Poulet as "the first critic to develop Raymond’s and Beguin’s concept of experience in literature as a systematic tool of analysis.
In these four volumes, Poulet conducts an exhaustive examination of the work of French authors such as Molière, Proust, Flaubert, and Baudelaire to find the expression of what he calls the cogito, or consciousness, of each writer (Leitch et al. 1318).
For critics such as Poulet and Raymond, literature is neither an objective structure of meanings residing in the words of a poem or novel, nor the tissue of self-references of a "message" turned in on itself, nor the unwitting expression of the hidden complexes of a writer's unconscious, nor a revelation of the latent structures of exchange or symbolization which integrate a society.
(Miller 306-7) Lawall (1968) writes, "[Poulet] is not concerned with technical uniqueness, verbal manipulation of themes, or any aspect of art that may be called 'craftsmanship' (130).
For Poulet, the critic's job is to "[empty] his mind of its personal qualities so that it may coincide completely with the consciousness expressed in the words of the author" (Miller 307).
For Poulet, letters, journals, and unpublished manuscripts hold as much information about the author's cogito as published novels or poems (Leitch et al. 1318).
Meltzer (1977) writes, "many critics sense a confidence, or complacency, in Poulet's work, which they believe results from a deafness on his part to the recent problematization of the literary experience and the language of literature" (viii).
Formalist critics disagreed with Poulet's disregard for objective standards of literary value while structuralist, poststructuralist, and deconstructionist critics rejected the importance Poulet placed on the role of the author and his belief in engaging with the text as a representation of the author's consciousness.
De Man writes, "more than any other, the criticism of Georges Poulet conveys the impression of possessing the complexity and the scope of a genuine work of literature" (80).