French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons^™

Derrida In Mesopotamia: On The Import Of The Cuneiform Inscriptions In Of Grammatology, Will Greenshields

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cuneiform writing has a small but privileged position in Derrida’s Of Grammatology – providing the text with its first two epigraphs. By elucidating the source and import of these inscriptions and evaluating Derrida’s understanding of the cuneiform writing system in reference to more recent grammatological studies, this paper explains the significance of these references to the ancient Near East for Derrida’s arguments regarding the origins of Western metaphysics and logocentrism. In the first part, I analyze Derrida’s brief paragraph on cuneiform writing in Of Grammatology as evincing a “fundamental synaesthesia” of phonetic and non-phonetic elements that problematizes the phonocentric definition …

Toujours Beaucoup: Representations Of Childhood And Education In 20th Century French Literature And Cinema, Delaney Drury

Poster Presentations

This project explores French literature and cinema with significant representations of education for the purpose of examining to what extent educational ideals are upheld or undermined.

Le Kabary Et Le Fokonolona Au Grand Écran, Josh E. Coster

French Honors Papers

The cultural elements of kabary and fokonolona have played varying roles in Malagasy society and history. Once appropriated by the forces of colonization, these elements today occupy a liminal space in Malagasy culture but undoubtedly represent parts of the island’s heritage. In this project I argue that film can be seen as a new kind of kabary wherein Malagasy films become the cultural expressions themselves not only through their representations of the essential elements of the kabary, but by their inherent tendencies towards social, political, and environmental activism. The community that these filmmakers create represents a modernization of the traditional …

Representations Of France's Nuclear Testing Legacy In Tahitian Cinema, Jacob Rodgers

Student Research Symposium

It was rare in Tahiti for conversations about France and French policies to not include the topic of past nuclear testing, when I lived there in 2021-2023. Film and media also portray distrust.

La Malaise De La Jeunesse Tunisienne: Uncertainty And Social Change For Tunisian Youth Showcased By Tunisian Cinema, Jacob Sagers

Student Research Symposium

Following the Arab Spring in 2011, Tunisia – the heart of the uprisings – underwent swift and broad social change during its democratic transition. Most notably, a new generation of Tunisian youth's formative years simultaneously occurred during a decade of challenges.

La Parole Comme Outil De Résistance Contre Les Tabous Oppressifs Des Femmes Marocaines : Une Étude Comparative De Paroles D’Honneur Et Hshouma, Roseline Adeleke

Students' Supported Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Rescue Of Wahutedew’Á And The Epistemological Reforestation: An Analysis Of Time In A Terra Dos Mil Povos, By Kaká Werá Jecupé, Ivo Cruz

The Coastal Review

It is estimated that in 1500, the year the Portuguese arrived in America, there was a population of 2,431,000 inhabitants, according to historian John Hemming (1978), who occupied the lands that we now know as Brazil. These peoples had their own culture whose cosmology was destroyed and erased over time by a violent process of colonization. Even though entire groups were decimated, much of their influence is still alive in Brazilian culture. This influence can be found in vocabulary, cuisine, and even religious practices. With the aim of rescuing ancestral narratives and knowledge of various native peoples, Kaká Werá Jecupé …

Light And Darkness For Aesthetic Pleasure: An Exploration Of J.M.G. Le Clézio’S Early Writings And Jun’Ichiro Tanizaki’S In Praise Of Shadows, Kenichiro Otani

The Coastal Review

Building upon comparative principles, this semantic reading of Jun’ichirō Tanizaki’s essay In Praise of Shadows and J.M.G. Le Clézio’s early writings illustrates how both the Franco-Mauritian author and the Japanese writer problematize modern Western perception laden with concepts stifling flexible imagination through the mysterious worldview of light/darkness. They also simultaneously express the hope that another way of life leading to liberation is possible. Delving into the spiritual confinement of the subject, they demonstrate how keeping rich creativity within one’s heart can be an escape from a stagnant society. Albeit in very different mediums, Tanizaki and Le Clézio assert that the …

Desire As A Framework For Adaptation: Examining Aku No Hana As An Unconventional Adaptation Of Les Fleurs Du Mal, Zoe Dalley

All Graduate Reports and Creative Projects, Fall 2023 to Present

In this project, I began by arguing that the 2009 to 2014 manga series Aku No Hana by author and artist Shūzō Oshimi should be considered an unconventional adaptation of the 19th century collection of poems Les Fleurs Du Mal by French poet Charles Baudelaire. I then turned my analysis to the practice of adaptation more broadly, using desire, a central theme to both of my chosen primary texts, as my lens through which I examined some of the central complexities and paradoxes inherent to adaptation, such as the simultaneous expectation of textual faith and a new authorial vision. I …

Sans Hommes, On N’Est Pas Rien”: Defying Patriarchy And Reclaiming Voices In Les Rivières, Warisara E. Sawin

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

This article explores Jennifer Solheim’s conceptualization of “the call to listen” in postcolonial Francophone cultural production, as she argues for the importance of engaging with and responding to immigrant and minority narratives within this cultural milieu. This article further explores the dynamic relationship between media consumption and artistic creation, specifically the innovative realms of “accented” and “intercultural” cinema that have emerged from the conditions of globalization and migration. The unique cinematic languages of these forms convey the intricate experiences of those living in exile or as part of post-migratory populations.

An in-depth analysis is presented on Mai Hua’s documentary Les …

When Critics Are Artists: Ekphrasis In Erotic Art Criticism, Joanna A. Ligon

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In “Against Interpretation,” Susan Sontag argues for an erotics of art in art criticism in place of hermeneutics. In this thesis, I examine erotics of art, a focus on form and experiencing art instead of exclusively on content, in practice. Drawing on other essays by Sontag, specifically the essay “Godard” in comparison with the filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard’s own filmic criticism in Breathless, criticism according to an erotics of art becomes a new artwork itself. Subsequently, I present a definition of erotic through Anne Carson and Roland Barthes and juxtapose the term with Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. The comparison ultimately undoes …

Ground-Breaking Stories In Contemporary Cinema: In A Market Full Of Remakes, What Form Does Cinematic Originality Take Today?, Elisa Fong-Hirschfelder

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This work aims to analyze the evolution of both international and American cinema as an art form, specifically in relation to the abstract concept of originality, to determine what possible future trends in cinema may look like and the potential for the manifestation of “new waves” in cinema. Emerging during the Industrial Revolution, cinema has evolved as an entertainment medium from brief moving pictures presented as novelties to lengthy feature films. With its evolution arose trends in visual storytelling, including experimental, narrative, and remakes, whose own categories comprise the retelling of old stories, remakes of films in other languages, and …

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations Of “Peau D’Âne” In Contemporary French And English Texts, Amy M. Martin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Unnatural Issue: Gendered Adaptations of “Peau d’Âne” in Contemporary French and English Texts explores trans-genre and transmedia adaptations of Charles Perrault’s seventeenth-century fairy tale using feminist and narratological theories to examine gendered aspects of storytelling and the treatment of father-daughter incest and blame in the work of selected French, British, and American creators. Texts are read comparatively, with analyses of the adaptations’ plots, motifs, characterizations, and modifications, both in relation to Perrault and to the other adaptations. This dissertation features prose and poetry texts by female authors—including Christine Angot, Catherine Cusset, and Emma Donoghue—in the first two chapters. Reading these …

Autoportrait D’Un Auteur En Exil : Une Magie Ordinaire De Kossi Efoui, Morgan Faulkner

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Kossi Efoui’s sixth novel, Une magie ordinaire, constitutes his intellectual autobiography in that it follows the reconstruction of an “intellectual development” (Paul Ricoeur, 1995) by retracing his own trajectory as a writer in exile, born and raised in a dictatorship, forced to live the last days of his mother’s life away from her. This study explores the role played by private life, history, and literature in the reconstruction of the writer’s trajectory that unfolds in this novel. How do these three themes, and the discourses that accompany them, interact with each other to build the self portrait of an …

Présence Francophone, Numéro 101

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Le Goût Du Transfert. Dany Laferrière Depuis Sa Vieille Ford Des Années 80, Bernadette Desorbay

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Dany Laferrière’s chronicles which make up Les années 80 dans ma vieille Ford (2005), are presented in the form of snapshots around situations and personalities that marked him in Haiti, and in North America where he took refuge in June 1976 (Montreal followed by stays in New York and Miami). He talks about colleagues from Le Petit Samedi Soir or intellectuals he portrayed in New York for Haïti-Observateur, with whom he crossed swords on more than one occasion. Throughout his work and up to the Petit traité du racisme en Amérique (2023), he participates in the genre of intellectual autobiography …

Parties Annexes (N° 101)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Front Matter And Table Of Contents (N° 101)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

L’Autobiographie Intellectuelle De V. Y. Mudimbe Et Les Enjeux De La Différence, Justin Bisanswa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Based on Les corps glorieux des mots et des êtres. Esquisse d’un jardin africain à la bénédictine, this text would like to analyze, at the confluence of sociology and rhetoric, the modalities (with their variations and their extensions) by which V. Y. Mudimbe broadens intellectual autobiography to other modes of writing and functions as a dialogic space between poetry and prose, experience and fantasy, reality and imagination. Retracing his pathway, Mudimbe makes his text a journey within oneself, a quest for the “absolute elsewhere” or a quest for the total Self. A feeling of lack emerges which explains this …

Une Autobiographie Intellectuelle De Maryse Condé : Vivre Et Écrire, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this study of autobiography by French-speaking writers, we propose to construct a syntax for the genre, after recalling the great difficulty of tackling such a vast subject for so long. From then on, any study of autobiography implies confronting it with other related forms, such as essays, memoirs, autofiction, testimonies or diaries, all characterised by the assumed subjectivity of the “I” narrator, who recounts a life journey as well as a personal reflection on world events. The general idea defended here is that the grammar of intellectual autobiography presents itself as a narrative posture that needs to be thought …

V.Y. Mudimbe Et La Recherche D’Une Parole Pour-Soi : L’Essai Philosophique Aux Prises Avec L’Autobiographie : Vivre Et Écrire, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article aims at two closely linked objectives : on the one hand, to show how the philosophical essays of V. Y. Mudimbe carry autobiographical sequences which complete or explain certain passages of his intellectual autobiography (The glorious bodies of words and beings) and, on the other hand, to question the stakes of such a rather singular practice in African philosophy. The basic hypothesis is that this practice is to be understood from an important moment in his intellectual development, namely May 68 and what has been called “La pensée 68” within which two antagonistic tendencies oppose each …

Présentation, Olga Hel-Bongo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Discours Des Autres Et Récit De Soi : L’Autofiction Intellectuelle Chez Ananda Devi, Nina Bouraoui Et Shumona Sinha, Florian Alix

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Some autofictional texts tend to refer to a socio-historical context through the exploration of a specific subjectivity. On the first hand, telling the self enables to show a singularity which puts in perspective a collective situation by revealing its intersectional complexity. On the other hand, appears the burden of collective normative discourses, which literary writing try to interrogate and distance through valorization of body and affects.

Gisèle Pineau, Pour Une Auto-Gyno-Biographie Littéraire Et Intellectuelle Guadeloupéenne, Françoise Simasotchi-Bronès

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Unlike other authors in her literary field (P. Chamoiseau, R. Confiant, M. Condé, D. Maximin, etc.), Gisèle Pineau did not write an “intellectual or literary” autobiography strictly speaking ; we can nevertheless reconstruct it from the various interviews she has given or other writings in which she reflects on creative practice. The author draws her scriptural inspiration from empirical models, listening to the life stories (often involving violence) that West Indian women whisper to each other in the privacy of the kitchen. Discreetly disqualifying the scholarly literate library, it favors the female oral library, an illiterate memorial motherhood heritage which …