French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Précisions Sur Les Vagues/On Waves, Marie Darrieussecq (Author), Peter Schulman (Translator)

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Books

Powerful and poetic prose meditation on oceanic energy by French author, Marie Darrieussecq. Translated from the French by Peter Schulman, ODU Professor of French and International Studies.

Untranslatable Desire: Inter-Ethnic Relationships In Franco-Arab Literature, Mehammed Mack

French Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay examines the sexualization of post-colonial relations at the level of literature, paying special attention to how post-colonial resentment is portrayed via the figure of the “Arab boy,” transplanted from an exploited status in colonial settings to an un-assimilated status in contemporary France. The difficulties of communication that occur, when certain French writers aim to depict this Arab figure, are then sourced to problems of cultural translation in a variety of instances. Gay-identified Moroccan authors like Rachid O. and Abdellah Taïa, who write in French from France, have responded to calls for sexual disclosure as "native informants," while simultaneously …

Another Verne Manuscript Translated, Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

Proust, The Suffering Artist, Matthew G. Buyachek

Calvert Undergraduate Research Awards

This thesis examines the interrelationship between suffering and art in the context of À la recherché du temps perdu by Marcel Proust. I first trace a lineage of suffering and art, conduct a literature review of relevant criticism on Proust's work and on suffering and art, and finally explicate volumes one and five of Proust's magnum opus. I interpret the scene of the goodnight-kiss to be the genesis of Marcel’s search and his path to artistry. In this scene, Marcel profanes his mother qua maternal and artistic ideal, and subsequently sublimates Mme de Guermantes and Albertine in an attempt to …

Joris-Karl Huysmans, Tome 1: Figures Et Fictions Du Naturalisme (Book Review), Juliana Starr

Foreign Languages Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

The Medieval Forms And Meanings Of Francois: The Political And Cultural Vicissitudes Of An Ethnonym, Levilson C. Reis

Modern Languages & Cultures Faculty Scholarship

The article looks at the evolution of the ethnonym Francois in the Middle Ages and its significance to Germanic peoples known as Franks in the context of their cross-cultural relations with Muslim, Byzantine and British people. The author analyzes chronicles of the First Crusade and examines the use of Francois as an exonym and an autonym, and its role in the development of the French identity.

Le Développement Du Moi Et Le Procédé Thérapeutique Dans Les Œuvres De Chrétien De Troyes, Clément Guillaume

Dissertations and Theses

While we can easily acknowledge that many aspects the texts written by Chrétien de Troyes have been studied and discussed through the centuries, it is always possible to apply a new reading to the author's work. Like many authors of the same time period, the author of Le Conte du graal and LeChevalier de la charrette was not only writing for the audience of his time but was also openly targeting an audience set in a different century and social context. This timeless aspect of Chrétien's work is part of what makes his texts intricate and still relevant to this …

Truth And Memory In Two Works By Marguerite Duras, Rachel Deborah Hunter

Dissertations and Theses

Published in 1985, Marguerite Duras' La Douleur is a collection of six autobiographical and semi-autobiographical short stories written during and just after the German Occupation. Echoing the French national sentiment of the 1970s and 1980s, these stories examine Duras' own capacity for good and evil, for forgetting, repressing, and remembering. The first of these narratives, the eponymous "La douleur," is the only story in the collection to take the form of a diary, and it is this narrative, along with a posthumously published earlier draft of the same text, that will be the focus of this thesis. In both versions, …

Translations From Allada And Experience D'Edward Lee, Versailles By Gérard Gavarry, Gérard Gavarry, Katina Rogers

Publications and Research

At the heart of Gérard Gavarry’s writing are the questions of what power language holds, and what remains beyond the reach of expression. The two translations included here, excerpts from Allada (P.O.L, 1993) and Expérience d’Edward Lee, Versailles (P.O.L, 2009), share little with each other in terms of setting or structure, but explore similar questions of the role and limits of language in relation to defamiliarization, power, and fear. The inventive reflection on the nature of language, identity, and power that, woven into the fabric of the novel, makes Gavarry’s work some of the most compelling fiction coming out of …

Jules Verne's Dream Machines: Technology And Transcendence, Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

This article discusses how Verne mythologizes and poeticizes his fictional machines. More than just a means for solving problems and/or for providing access to exotic geographical locales, Verne’s technology is portrayed as being intrinsically poetic. Bridging the worlds of the industrial and the artistic, Verne’s machines constitute a new kind of objet d’art. Anthropomorphized to make them seem less coldly mechanical, these devices take on a life of their own and exist in a richly symbiotic relationship with their creators. Such machines transport the readers of Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires beyond the mimetic, serving both as a means to build verisimilitude …

The Apocalyptic Science Fiction Of Jacques Spitz, Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.

Banlieues, Perspective Spatiale : Déterritorialisation Et Subjectivité Radicale Dans Banlieue Noire Et En Attendant Que Le Bus Explose De Thomté Ryam, Étienne-Marie Lassi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article studies the social process of the production of the banlieue as a space with a practical function and identifies some of the social itineraries that the young inhabitants of this marginal place can opt for. Using the concepts of territoriality and spatiality, it demonstrates that in Thomté Ryam’s novels, the banlieue is simultaneously a physical space and a social construct that works like a protection from the political power and a dominant public opinion portrayed as the forces of destiny.

Nos Ancêtres, Les Pervers: Reading Queerly And Constructing The Homosexual Before The Closet (1810-1830), Gary C. Kilian Mr.

Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Honors Projects

Homosexuality is, popularly imagined, a twentieth-century phenomenon wherein medicine created homosexual identity and society worked to stigmatize it. Yet the proto-homosexual role can be traced to several notable historical figures before the rise of medicine at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, especially through literature, and this is most apparent in France, which had been the first country to decriminalize same-sex relations in private after the adoption of the Napoleonic Code. But how do we understand same-sex desire and homosexuality before the homosexual existed as such while respecting the oftentimes-unclear nuances of human …

Molière’S Le Misanthrope, Ian B. Carlino

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

My Capstone project is a French-to-English translation of about 1,100 lines of Molière’s Le Misanthrope. I chose that play because I was interested in exploring translation theory and the act of translating — not because I wanted to contribute some revolutionary new work to the numerous translations of it that already exist. I had never tried to translate, so I wanted the project to be an exercise in the work.

I began by selecting the parts of the play I thought to be most significant and helpful in giving a feel for what the play means. The plot was …

Intersections In Immanence: Spinoza, Deleuze, Negri, Abigail Lowe

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The connection between French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Italian political theorist Antonio Negri has drawn attention in academic publications over the last decade. For both thinkers, the philosophical concept of immanence is central to how both respectively conceptualize the world. However, in order to consider their work with regard to a metaphysical grounding, one may benefit from turning to each thinker’s engagement with Jewish Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza whose immanent ontology, or monism, was indeed his Ethics. This essay concentrates on drawing out an ontological distinction between the philosophical projects of Deleuze and Negri by way of a close reading …

La Représentation Des Femmes Dans Perceval, Lisa Ames

Syracuse University French Colloquium

Perceval ou le conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes est un poème qui trace le développement d'un des chevaliers de la Table Ronde. Ce poème inclut aussi le récit d'un autre chevalier: Gauvain. Pendant beaucoup de ces épisodes, les deux chevaliers rencontrent et aident de nombreuses filles ou femmes. La fonction de la présence de ces femmes ainsi que ce qu'elle disent aux chevaliers est pluridimensionnelle. Cette étude va alors souligner quelques cas où les femmes ou bien leur discours a une fonction spécifique dans le poème.

Comme Pas Deux: France In The Sixties, Barbara Opar

Syracuse University French Colloquium

Many of the iconic images of the life and times of the sixties are associated with the United States. But France nonetheless was subject to some of the same cultural changes as the rest of the world. In certain ways, France paralleled what was happening in the rest of the world; in other ways the changes were different, or slower or occasionally even took place faster.

La Rivalité Et La Collectivité Féminine Dans Le Misanthrope De Molière Et Dans La Déclaration Des Droits De La Femme Et De La Citoyenne D’Olympe De Gouges, Gabriela Paris

Syracuse University French Colloquium

La période avant la révolution française s'appelle l’Ancien Régime, système politique en France qui prend fin en 1789, l’année de la révolution. En plus, la monarchie absolue contrôlait le pays de manière despotique. C’est dans cet environnement de tension que Molière, dramaturge français du 17e siècle, écrit Le Misanthrope en 1666. Dans son oeuvre théâtrale Le Misanthrope, il critique les moeurs sociales qui caractérisaient la France de l’époque. Molière évoque un questionnement social qui se voit de manière préliminaire dans son oeuvre. En revanche, De Gouges, qui écrit en 1791, expose des questionnements plus élaborés que ceux de Molière.

An Innocent Victim?: The Portrayal Of Anne Boleyn In French Drama, Art, And Literature Of The 1830s, Molly Driscoll

Honors Theses and Capstones

The 1830s in France saw a revival of artistic interest in and representations of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of King Henry VIII of England. This thesis traces Anne's influence on artistic, dramatic, and literary works of the 1830s and focuses on how these portrayals differed from one another as well as contemporary and modern opinions of Anne.

The »Other« Medieval French Alexander: Arthurian Orientalism, Cross-Cultural Contact, And Transcultural Assimilation In Chrétien De Troyes’S Cligés, Levilson C. Reis

Modern Languages & Cultures Faculty Scholarship

En tenant compte du climat xénophobe des croisades cet article recense la réception de Cligés, roman de Chrétien de Troyes dont la plus grande partie de l’action se passe en Grèce, et explore les stratégies dont l’auteur se serait servi pour en déjouer un mauvais accueil. On examine d’abord les idées que les Francs se faisaient des Grecs par le biais de la réception contemporaine de l’Énéide et du Roman d’Alexandre. On examine par la suite comment Cligés cadre avec ces perspectives. Cet article pose en principe que, par le truchement du père de Cligés, prince grec …