Unanimisme is a French poetic movement developed in c. 1908–11 by Jules Romains. It is based on ideas of collective consciousness and collective emotion, and on crowd behaviour, where members of a group think or act simultaneously. The movement draws inspiration from Walt Whitman’s vision of universal brotherhood and aims to express a shared human experience rather than individual subjectivity. It carries a didactic and reformist spirit, seeking to reveal the “soul” of the group and emphasize social unity—hence the concept of unanimity.
Beyond its thematic concerns, Unanimisme also represents a reaction against excessive individualism in late 19th-century literature, particularly against Symbolism. Instead of focusing on private emotions or obscure imagery, Unanimist poets attempt to capture collective life—urban crowds, communities, and social rhythms. Their poetry often portrays cities, workplaces, and public gatherings as living entities with a unified consciousness.
Several poets contributed to this movement, including Georges Duhamel, Luc Durtain, Charles Vildrac, René Arcos, and Georges Chennevière. They promoted what they called poésie immédiate—a direct, unornamented form of poetry stripped of symbolism and allegory, avoiding traditional devices like rhyme and assonance, and instead using flexible, accentual rhythms to reflect the natural flow of collective experience.
The most significant work associated with the movement is Les Hommes de bonne volonté (1932–47), which extends Unanimist ideas into a large-scale narrative of social life. Key theoretical texts include Notes sur la technique poétique (1910) and Petit traité de versification (1923), where the principles of Unanimist poetics are formally articulated.
Although the movement was relatively short-lived, its emphasis on collective identity and social consciousness influenced later modernist and sociological approaches to literature, making it an important bridge between Symbolism and more socially engaged literary forms.
