Unanimism is a movement in French literature

French literature

French literature is, generally speaking, literature written in the French language, particularly by citizens of France; it may also refer to literature written by people living in France who speak traditional languages of France other than French. Literature written in French language, by citizens...

 begun by Jules Romains

Jules Romains

Jules Romains, born Louis Henri Jean Farigoule , was a French poet and writer and the founder of the Unanimism literary movement...

 in the early 1900s. It is based on ideas of collective consciousness

Collective consciousness

Collective consciousness was a term coined by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim to refer to the shared beliefs and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society...

 and collective emotion, and on crowd behavior

Crowd psychology

Crowd psychology is a branch of social psychology. Ordinary people can typically gain direct power by acting collectively. Historically, because large groups of people have been able to bring about dramatic and sudden social change in a manner that bypasses established due process, they have also...

, where members of a group do or think something simultaneously. Unanimism is about an artistic merger with these group phenomena, which transcend the consciousness of the individual writer.

The primary unanimist work is Romains's multi-volume cycle of novels Les Hommes de bonne volonté (Men of Good Will).