Unanimism

Unanimism is a literary movement founded by Jules Romains that portrays groups as possessing a shared consciousness or collective soul.

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Jules Romains: Jules Romains was a French poet, novelist, and playwright who founded Unanimism. He formulated the movement and dramatized collective life in poetry and fiction.
Collective consciousness: Collective consciousness is the shared body of beliefs, values, and ideas that binds a group. It names the group-level reality Unanimist writing seeks to represent.
Soul: The soul is the immaterial or essential principle traditionally understood to animate a living being. The movement extends soul-like unity from individuals to groups.
La Vie unanime: La Vie unanime is Jules Romains’s 1908 poetry collection and a foundational work of Unanimism. Its poems present everyday human groups as sites of collective consciousness.
Individualism: Individualism gives priority to personal autonomy, interests, and distinct identity. Unanimism shifts literary attention from the separate individual to shared group experience.
Abbaye de Créteil: The Abbaye de Créteil was an artists’ community near Paris active from 1906 to 1908. Its communal ideals and gatherings helped shape Unanimism’s early identity.
Crowd psychology: Crowd psychology studies how people’s thoughts and behavior change in crowds. Unanimist scenes turn crowd behavior into evidence of a shared mental life.
Group mind: A group mind is a proposed shared mental life attributed to a social group. It captures the idea that a collective can feel and perceive beyond its members separately.
Les Hommes de bonne volonté: Les Hommes de bonne volonté is Jules Romains’s twenty-seven-volume novel cycle, published from 1932 to 1946. The cycle expands Unanimist attention to interconnected lives across French society.
Psychological novel: A psychological novel foregrounds characters’ inner thoughts, feelings, and motives. Its individual interior focus contrasts with Unanimism’s effort to represent a collective mind.