Modern Languages Commons^™

Writing The Convent In New France: The Colonialist Rhetoric Of Canadian Nuns, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

Most writing by women that has survived from before the fall of New France—perhaps most writing by women during that period—was done by nuns in the seven communities founded before 1763: the Ursulines, the Hôtel-Dieu, and the Hôpital-Général in Québec; the Ursulines of Trois-Rivières; the Hôtel-Dieu and two uncloistered institutes, the Congrégation de Notre-Dame and Sisters of Charity of Marguerite d’Youville in Montreal.

While the nuns wrote above all to promote the spiritual vitality of their communities, they also provide a unique female perspective on the colonial milieu. Marie Guyart, Catherine Simon de Longpré, and Marguerite Bourgeoys are the best …

Aretino's Legacy: L'Ecole Des Filles And The Pornographic Continuum In Early Modern France, Russell J. Ganim

French Language and Literature Papers

The problematic reaction that pornography evokes as both a literary and cultural construct stems partially from the fact that it is as antimodern as it is modern. This paradox is implicitly outlined in Lynn Hunt's definition of pornography. The ironically traditional, if not presumably timeless, quality of pornography she describes as "the explicit depiction of sexual organs and sexual practices with the aim of arousing sexual feelings"; at the same time, however, the "modernity" of pornography, especially in the early modern period, stems from the fact that such works, "us[ed] the shock of sex to criticize religious and political authorities' …

From The Cloister To The World: Mainstreaming Early Modern French Convent Writing: An État Présent, Thomas M. Carr

French Language and Literature Papers

The article is an overview on recent scholarship dealing Ancien Régime convent writing. Although nuns constitute a large percentage of the seventeenth-century women authors whose writings were published, except for a few figures like Marie de l’Incarnation Guyart or the Port-Royal nuns, their texts have been largely ignored, even by scholars engaged in the retrieval of women’s writing during the period. This is in contrast to Italian and Hispanic studies, where the contribution of convent writing is acknowledged as central. The état present discusses reasons for this neglect, the methodological challenges and perspectives for further research, along with a 120 …

A Checklist Of Published Writings In French By Early Modern Nuns, Thomas M. Carr

French Language and Literature Papers

The great amount of writing by early modern nuns that was published during the Ancien Régime is underexploited because no master list of it exists. For example, at least ninety books by some sixty different nuns were published between 1600 and 1700, and many more that have been published since. The Checklist of over 300 items is an effort to fill this gap. Besides books authored by nuns, it includes many biographies that contain samples of their writings. Short occasional texts, such as death notices, lettres circulaires, and legal factums have generally been excluded, however. Unless another location is noted, …

Introduction To Emf 11: The Cloister And The World, Thomas M. Carr

French Language and Literature Papers

Early modern nuns seem poles apart from women in the West today. They strove after an ideal of perfection that stressed humility, intellectual simplicity, asceticism, and submission that is the opposite of the autonomy and empowerment the contemporary feminist movement proposes for women. Even during the Ancien Régime nuns were isolated from their own society by the Council of Trent's revitalization of clausura. To modern eyes, the cloistered nun epitomizes a hierarchical church that cut a woman off from her own society, leaving her little initiative or voice. However, a burgeoning number of books and articles published in the …

Fact Or Fable? Female Gender And Sexuality In Villedieu’S Histoires Allégoriques, Russell J. Ganim

French Language and Literature Papers

In many respects, the Fables ou Histoires allégoriques of Marie-Catherine Desjardins, more commonly known as Madame de Villedieu (1640?–1683), can be read in terms of the sexual politics of neo-classical France. Unlike many of her other works, the Fables serve in part as a defense and illustration of female presence and sexuality. A moral that emerges in the nine tales she classifies as “fables” is that the female gender proves as authoritative and as intelligent as the male and that female sexuality should be considered as natural and as legitimate as its masculine equivalent. In her dedication to Louis XIV, …

Theatre And The Rwandan Genocide, Marie-Chantal Kalisa

French Language and Literature Papers

In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of genocide, or more precisely in French, “le théâtre du génocide” (theatre of genocide). Perpetrators and victims played their role while the rest of the world watched the “spectacle” live on television. Perhaps because of its spectacular aspect, the Rwandan genocide has inspired a number of artistic materials. In the last decade, we have indeed witnessed the growth of literary and artistic expression in relation to the Rwandan genocide. Survivors and witnesses have told their stories in books and songs. Journalists, as well as other travelers “to the end of Rwanda,” to use Véronique …

Literary Symbolism, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

As a school of literature, Symbolism refers to three phases of a vital part of the development of literary modernism: first to an artistic movement in France and Belgium during the last decade and a half of the nineteenth century; then, retrospectively and most importantly, to its immediate sources in French poetry beginning in the 1850s; and finally to the influence that both of these had on European and American literatures throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The designation then, had its original and official application to the second and, it must be owned, from a literary point …

«L’Arbre» De Gabrielle Roy: Une Hirondelle D’Hiver Dans Un Chêne Vert De Floride, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

On connaît bien les voyages de Gabrielle Roy au Manitoba pour rendre visite à sa famille et ses séjours à Petite-Rivière-Saint-François dans Charlevoix. C’est seulement depuis la publication de ses lettres à son mari qu’on commence à mieux apprécier ses séjours en Floride dans les années cinquante et soixante. Au moins une nouvelle, écrite semble-t-il en Floride en 1967-1968, s’inspire de ces voyages, mais puisqu’elle n’a été reprise dans aucun recueil, elle reste mal connue. Elle n’a généralement été étudiée que dans le cadre du symbolisme du monde naturel chez Roy (Gagné, 1973; Harvey, 1993). Pourtant, François Ricard a attribué …

Review Of Jean-Nicolas Illouz, Le Symbolisme, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

As emphases in literary studies have shifted away from structuralist, semiotic, and other modes of reading informed by theory toward historically-oriented esthetic and cultural analysis, we have needed a new examination of Symbolism that would account for its complexities both as a literary and artistic movement and as a “compound moment” in literary and cultural history. Jean-Nicolas Illouz has provided the foundation for such a reexamination. His study is, to my knowledge, the most complete and nuanced overview of the movement that we have, bringing together in a historically informed and carefully researched reading of Symbolism as both the point …

Globalisation And 'La Pièce De Cent Sous': Balzac's Nation-State, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

Seen from an Olympian perspective, globalisation in today's world denotes the use of a standard model to establish relationships economic, cultural, and moral—across peoples in the absence of national boundaries capable of restraining the formation of such ties. From the national, or local, perspective, it is the invasive imposition of foreign influence in the form of a single model. From either vantage point, change and adaptation are the order of the day. Take-overs of one culture by another, whether hostile or friendly, are not historical novelties; what seems to distinguish globalisation is its planetary scope and impetus to take over …

Théâtre Et Théâtralité Chez Flaubert, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

De tous les écrits dits secondaires de Gustave Flaubert, c'est incontestablement son théâtre qui a été le dernier à susciter un examen critique sérieux. Dans l'immense bibliographie consacrée au romancier et à son oeuvre, les études sur le théâtre ont, jusqu'à très récemment, occupé peu de place : quelques pages, lues ça et là dans les analyses des romans ou dans les biographies, un nombre infime d'articles consacrés aux caractéristiques théâtrales de l'oeuvre romanesque, la publication très irrégulière d'inédits de projets de théâtre ou de notes de lecture théâtrale dont les manuscrits font surface de temps en temps dans le …

Visual Culture: The Later Mallarmé And Japonisme, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

Like his painter-contemporaries, Mallarmé’s attention to japonisme was to a visual phenomenon. Like them, he had a strong visual sense, and one could argue that even the early poems that tried to apprehend nothingness did so as if the problem were a visual one even if the results were more the ideas of things seen, rather than the creation of images. His visual orientation did change dramatically, however, by the time of La Dernière Mode in 1874, readying him for the acculturation to be provided first by Manet, and then by others, notably Whistler. The esthetics of japonisme is a …

Review Of Mannerism And Baroque In Seventeenth-Century French Poetry: The Example Of Tristan L’Hermite, By James C. Shepard, Russell J. Ganim

French Language and Literature Papers

Interest in Tristan L’Hermite has not only been sustained, but has grown considerably since 1955, when Amédée Carriat published Tristan ou L’Eloge d’un poète and his Bibliographie des oeuvres de Tristan L’Hermite. Carriat’s work on the Cahiers Tristan L’Hermite, as well as the scholarship of Claude Abraham, Catherine Grisé, and Jean-Pierre Chauveau among others, has laid the groundwork for a number of new inquiries into Tristan’s oeuvre. Colloquia on Tristan have been organized in France and the U.S. in recent years, and the Tristan “revival” reached an apex of sorts in 1999 with Champion’s publication of his Oeuvres complètes …

Les Abbesses Et La Parole Au Dix-Septième Siècle: Les Discours Monastiques À La Lumière Des Interdictions Pauliniennes, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

One tends to take for granted that in women’s monasteries the only voices raised were those of its masculine directors and preachers. However, while sermons by priests were generally reserved for Sundays and feast days, the abbesses addressed their communities several times a week or even daily. Although the Pauline prohibitions restricted women from speaking on religious topics in public or to mixed groups, within the walls of the convent that was assimilated to the private domain of a household, abbesses exhorted, instructed and rebuked their nuns at chapter meetings or during recreation sessions. Many such talks might have been …

L'Identité Québécoise En Ligne, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

Le présent article se composera donc de deux parties. S'organisant autour de plusieurs tensions dans les valeurs québécoises, la première passera en revue le contenu de nombreux sites Internet. Elle mettra ainsi en lumière certains choix culturels des Québécois qui caractérisent leur mode de vie de ceux des Français, des États-Uniens et des Canadiens anglais. On trouvera ensuite, en appendice, une évaluation critique des principaux portails et sites Web généralistes qui traitent du Québec dans les domaines de la langue, de l'histoire, de la culture et de la géographie. L'interprétation de l'identité québécoise dans la première partie est proposée comme …

Rewriting For Redemption: Adapting The Epic In La Ceppède's Théorèmes, Russell J. Ganim

French Language and Literature Papers

Jean de La Ceppède's Théorèmes ( 1613, 1622), raise intriguing issues concerning the question of generic adaptation. Elsewhere, I have shown that the Théorèmes can be classified under the rubric of the lyric not merely because the text consists of 520 sonnets on Christ's Passion, but because these sonnets, both individually, and within the collective context of the sonnet sequence, often represent appropriations of common Renaissance lyric subgenres such as the blason, the baiser, and the pastoral/pastourelle. La Ceppède's structural adaptation of the lyric is supplemented by the presence of the je/poète who internalizes the narrative …

Marivaux's Comedy Of Loss: La Double Inconstance, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

Marivaux's treatment of losing love in one of his favorite plays, La Double Inconstance (1723), is a double tour de force. Not content to show that grieving or offering sympathy for lost love can be intimately tied to the awakening to love that is at the center of his theater, he also turns them to comic advantage. The classic accounts of the role of sensibility in Marivaux, such as Ruth Jamieson's, have pointed out how love strains against pride in his plays as lovers summon amour-propre to resist acknowledging that they are in love (97,105) and noted the comic …

Le Palimpseste Et Le Roman Africain: Le Cas Des Romans Xala De Sembène Ousmane Et La Grève Des Bàttu D’Aminata Sow Fall, Marie-Chantal Kalisa

French Language and Literature Papers

Les romans Xala de Sembène Ousmane et La grève des Bàttu d’Aminata Sow Fall mettent en scène quelques uns des personnages les plus mémorables de l’Afrique postcoloniale en proie à des crises individuelles mais dont l’impact se fait sentir partout dans la communauté. A la différence des études déjà faites sur ces romans qui se concentrent sur leur thématique, dans cet essai, je propose d’examiner le processus de création littéraire qui unit les deux romans dans un jeu intertextuel. Les relations palimpsestiques entre ces deux romans mettent en valeur la dimension esthétique, souvent mise à l’écart, de la littérature africaine.

Separation, Mourning, And Consolation In La Route D'Altamont, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

In discussing Bonheur d'occasion Patrick Coleman has identified Gabrielle Roy's difficulty finding a vehicle to convey convincingly her insight that "an awareness of separation is a necessary condition of any moment of real connection" as one of her chief esthetic problems (77). Her successful negotiation of this tension in La Route d'Altamont owes much to presenting consolation as an antidote to separation. First, rather than deny the reality of separation, consolation mediates between it and union by allowing Roy to portray separation coexisting with communion; even the most stable consolations must be constantly renewed since consolation is more a process …

Under Mallarmé'S Wing, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

The following was presented as a lecture in conjunction with the exhibit of 18th-century European fans, held at the McMullen Art Museum of Boston College, September, 2000. The author is Professor of French at the University of Nebraska. He is the author of books and articles on French literature, and the editor of Nineteenth- Century French Studies.

To have 19th-century French poetry breeze into this exhibit of beautifully crafted fans from the 18th century should be viewed as a complementary and friendly action. Indeed, the exhibition title, "Hand-held Delight," is especially apposite for our topic today, for the poet in …

Prévert Reads Shakespeare: Lacenaire As Iago In Les Enfants Du Paradis, Russell J. Ganim

French Language and Literature Papers

First impressions seem to suggest little more than a casual link between Othello and the film Les Enfants du Paradis despite multiple references to Shakespeare’s tragedy in Jacques Prévert’s screenplay. Many glaring differences present themselves with respect to both works. The Elizabethan drama appears to have little in common with a film made and released in France during the Occupation that focuses on a troupe of actors, a petty criminal, and an aristocrat in early nineteenth-century Paris. Yet, Prévert’s numerous appropriations of Shakespeare are crucial to the film’s meaning. Edward Baron Turk, who mentions the film’s allusions to Shakespeare, argues …

Review Of Renaissance Studies: Articles 1966–1994, By Malcolm Smith., Russell J. Ganim

French Language and Literature Papers

Malcolm Smith’s untimely death in 1994 left a serious void in French Renaissance scholarship. This loss to the profession has in part been compensated by a remarkable volume that assembles nearly thirty articles written by Professor Smith over a twenty-eight-year period. The volume also includes an extensive bibliography that lists Professor Smith’s books and critical editions. Professor Smith’s essays, published in journals such as Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, Revue de Littérature Comparée, and The Sixteenth Century Journal, reveal a scholar whose meticulousness and originality remain exemplary for those devoted to research in the humanities. What is particularly striking …

Foreword To Gayle A. Levy, Refiguring The Muse, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

In the study that follows, Professor Levy explores the historically grounded topos of the Muse figure as it was developed by poets in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is a movement of renewal, and one that could occur in large part because of a revolution in thinking-both poetic and social-about issues related to gender and representation. She has asked that I write a brief foreword, which I am happy to do with an observation prompted by reading her book.

Value And Social Mobility In Flaubert, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

L’Education sentimentale may be construed as an historical novel at least insofar as it addresses questions of social change and enduring value as they are related to those of history and individual memory. As in Balzac and later in Proust, what is true for the individual applies to society. There is an especially Flaubertian understanding of movement in society and movement across time that remains tied more to demands of diegetic coherence than to laws of historical necessity, however. Singulative narration as it appears in the novel is a kind of smoke screen hiding a more pervasive iteration whereby the …

Future Mallarmé (Present Picasso): Portraiture And Self-Portraiture In Poetry And Art, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

Let us turn to what might at first seem the improbable encounter between Stéphane Mallarmé and Pablo Picasso. On the face of it, so much separates them: the one patiently mining a limited set of aesthetic notions, spending years perfecting some of his major works, the other incessantly exploring all possibilities of visual representation, moving through styles sometimes weekly, creating prodigiously in different media, living dozens of careers. In their separate ways, though, they both were extreme examples of creativity. Whether or not for that reason, Picasso turned toward (if not to) Mallarmé at two distinct points in his career: …

Consolation And The Work Of Mourning In Angéline De Montbrun, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

The dynamics of this foundational text of Canadian literature come from its heroine's drive to resolve her overwhelming sense of loss. Angéline loses her father, her beauty, and the love of her fiance Maurice within the space of three pages against a backdrop formed by memory of the loss suffered at the Conquest. Indeed, reading the novel under the sign of resignation is a commonplace. Critics as diverse as the early Catholic reviewers, more recent biographically-oriented researchers, and Freudian and feminist commentators have underscored Angeline's attempts to resign herself to this succession of losses. To a lesser extent they have …

Review Of Emblems And Alchemy, By Alison Adams & Stanton J. Linden, Eds., Russell J. Ganim

French Language and Literature Papers

Combining revived interest in both the emblem and alchemy, this volume is the third in a series of works on emblem studies published by the French Department at the University of Glasgow. Its ten essays, divided among three major categories entitled, “A Theoretical Perspectives”, “The English Alchemists”, and “Continental Manifestations”, stress inter disciplinarity as they explore the relationships between text, image, and alchemical practice. Broad in scope but detailed in its analyses, the compendium raises several intriguing questions about the correspondence between literature, art, and pseudo-science. Despite the diversity of its topics, the collection is often surprisingly unified in its …

Se Condouloir Ou Consoler? Les Condoléances Dans Les Manuels Épistolaires De L'Ancien Régime, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

Si la lettre de consolation suscite l'intérêt des chercheurs depuis un certain temps, l'expression épistolaire des condoléances est moins étudiée, bien que la lettre de condoléance ait peu à peu supplanté celle de consolation. Le propos de cette enquête sera d'examiner l'interpénétration des deux genres et les tensions qui en résultent, en privilégiant les condoléances, le moins étudié des deux genres. Au fond, ces genres représentent deux façons différentes d'approcher le deuil. Se condauloir, c'est 'participer à la douleur de quelqu'un, témoigner qu'on prend part à son déplaisir'. Consoler, c'est 'soulager, adoucir, diminuer l'affliction, la douleur d'une personne' (Dictionnaire …

René Descartes (1596–1650), Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

Mathematician and founder of modern philosophy, known for his distrust of formal rhetoric. The Cartesian method and effort to achieve philosophic certainty are often cited as a challenge to rhetoric; yet, given Descartes's frequent deployment of rhetorical strategies, it is not surprising that his system makes provision for their provisional use. Furthermore, in spite of Descartes's aspiration toward a philosophy beyond rhetoric, postmodern critics find his system an entirely rhetorical construct.