French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons^™

Perception As Creation In Swann's Way, Ethan D. Snowball

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Marcel Proust’s Swann’s Way is written with such detail that it overwhelms both the reader’s and the character’s sensory experience. Despite all the details, each character takes their senses of the world and strings them together as coherent images and stories. Proust shows that perceptions and memories are malleable, as individuals perceive objects in a way that brings entire stories or images to their conscious experience. The way that Proust’s characters take sensory objects and create images shows that each character can consciously interpret the world around them. Social images find themselves competing with the personally constructed images of an …

Narratives Of Exile: Themes Of Displacement In Seghers, Duras, And Elio, Erin Consla

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis examines identity, memory, and displacement in the exile narratives of Anna Seghers, Marguerite Duras, and María Luisa Elío. I argue that identity post-exile can be conceptualized as a continuous process of becoming, marked by a kaleidoscope of past, present, and future. Several aesthetic maneuvers such as the use of elements of form, memories of childhood, and palimpsest are shared by the chosen narratives, resulting in similar negotiations with identity. Through analysis of the authors' aesthetic focalizations, it becomes clear that their binary subject positions are modulated by the liminality and contradictions inherent in identity creation after exile. The …

Memory, Violence, And Detours: Strategies Of Resistance To Epidermal Invisibility Within The French Republic, Claudine E. David

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The subjection of black citizens in France and their invisibility in the (post)colonial space has been marked by segregation in peripheral urban zones, with a hardening of policing methods and controls based on racial appearanc. I argue that monumental representation in public space is not neutral but participates in the promotion of a specific ideology. I show thé ellipses in French patrimonial monumental glorification, including the appropriation of the memory of revolutionary heroes such as Louis Delgrès and Toussaint Louverture, concomitant with the occultation of many other black figures. I argue that representation matters, that France must repair this asymmetrical …

Beirut On The Seine: Rebuilding Lebanese Identity After The Scourge Of War, Soumaya Al Jarrah

BAU Journal - Society, Culture and Human Behavior

The current situation of Lebanon is difficult. The country is sinking into a deep economic, financial, political, and social crisis, which has become worse since 2019 and especially after the explosion of the Beirut port in August 2020. As a result, several Lebanese decided to leave the country. This situation is partly a result of the civil war that took place between 1975 and 1990.

Indeed, the Lebanese war leaves an important mark on the literary works that have Lebanon as a setting. Authors express their desire to explore in their works the traumas, consequences and effect of these conflicts …

Violencia, Memoria Y Empatía Reflexiva En El Ruido De Las Cosas Al Caer De Juan Gabriel Vásquez, Carlos Gardeazábal Bravo

Global Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this article, I show how Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s novel El ruido de las cosas al caer (The Sound of Things Falling, 2011) proposes an articulation of the works of memory and affects that can be ethically relevant within the context of the war on drugs in Colombia. I link this analysis with an interpretation of the novel that discusses the role of literature in debates about systemic violence in the global war on drugs. I propose that The noise of things falling, thanks to its affirmation of what I call reflexive empathy, questions the geopolitical designs that articulate that …

Heritage Repair: Revisiting Familial And Collective Histories In Filiation Narratives By Dalila Kerchouche, Colombe Schneck And Martine Storti, Rebecca R. Raitses

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis offers a critical reading of three French narratives: Dalila Kerchouche’s Mon père, ce harki (2003), Colombe Schneck’s Les guerres de mon père (2018), and Martine Storti’s L’arrivée de mon père en France (2008). These works combine representations of familial history with the explorations of personal and collective traumas or repression. The study addresses the following dimensions of the texts: 1) The catalyst of intergenerational silence behind these and many other similar works; 2) The textual interplay between storytelling and material evidence; 3) The ways in which the authors combine narratives of familial hardships on one hand, and of …

In “Memory” Of Marcel Proust (1871-1922), Eamon Maher

Articles

Eamon Maher on the memory-rich private universes of Proust and McGahern.

Combat Esthétique Et Mémoire Militante: Le Double Engagement De Boubacar Boris Diop, Serigne Seye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this article, I argue that in Boubacar Boris Diop’s work, the articulation between aesthetic experimence and writing from memory confers on his character-narrators the functions of “écrivain-écrivain” and “écrivain porte-parole”. This sheds light on both aspects of the Senegalese’s author commitment through his main characters, as most of them are writers who themselves show the mechanism of creation of the novel. This text is resulting from a writing resolutely writing focused turned towards its own materiality. This article aims to demonstrate that the representation of the memory in Diop’s fiction is doubly militant. It testifies …

Écriture De L'Enfance Et Projection Fictionnelle De Soi Dans Impossible De Grandir De Fatou Diome, Damo Junior Vianney Koffi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines the retelling of childhood in Impossible de grandir. Not only does the study focus on the recalling of childhood memories taken as locus of survival of the "je", as expression of the novelist's personality disguised as Salie, her fictional double, but it also examines the processes and implications of such a mode of literary creation set up as an internal and post traumatic dialogue between present and past, a present and past self. Such conversation, I argue, makes apparent the fragmentations of the "je" and the hybrid identity construction of Fatou Diome. As well, provided this process …

Memory And The Realization Of The Nothingness. On A Letter Of Vittorio Sereni To Giuseppe Ungaretti, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

The problematic relationship of Giuseppe Ungaretti (1888-1970) with Alexandria of Egypt – his city of birth – sheds light on the interplay between memory and oblivion in his poetry and prose. The shuttling back and forth between these poles marks the nature of his unfulfilled desire to recreate a lost Alexandrian atmosphere. In Ungaretti’s works, language opacity is coupled with his attempts to represent a city—as he writes—that is suffocated by the sun and whose hidden ancient port is submerged in the depth of the sea. Blinding light and the darkness of the deep waters make the understanding of Ungaretti’s …

Those That Trespass Against Us: Childhood, Violence, And Memory In The White Ribbon, Joseph Kuster

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis examines aesthetic representations of childhood and violence in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, I argue that Haneke’s film interrogates notions of the idealized child in the context of German history/the history of the Tätergeneration in order to question the possibility of affixing particular objective truth to historical or cultural narrative. First, I examine and deconstruct culturally accepted representations of the child as a symbol of innocence and purity, and explore how Haneke’s film manipulates and subverts these tropes. I then approach the film using three different theoretical structures: the gaze of the monstrous child in the horror …

Fabulations Ou Imaginaires Vacillants : L’Écriture De Rakotoson Et Raharimanana Entre Histoire, Mémoire Et Urgence Du Social, Ute Fendler

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The two writers from Madagascar, Michèle Rakotoson and Jean-Luc Raharimanana, fill empty memorial spaces by writing texts that vary from autobiographical mode, via the historical one, up to some elements of oral tradition with the objective to create anticipatory texts. The article analyzes the entanglement of references to reality and to fiction drawing on the notion of “fabulation” by Deleuze and of “half-knowledge” by Flahaut.

Staging Famine Irish Memories Of Migration And National Performance In Ireland And Québec, Jason King

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In "Staging Famine Irish Memories of Migration and National Performance in Ireland and Québec" Jason King examines recent community theater productions about the Irish Famine migration to Québec in 1847. King explores community-based and national ideas of performance and the role of remembrance in shaping and transmitting the diasporic identities of Québec's Irish cultural minority. While most of the plays re-enact French-Canadian adoptions of Famine orphans as spectacles of Irish integration in Québec, David Fennario's Joe Beef: (A History of Pointe Saint Charles) (1984, published 1991) rehearses the history of the Canadian/Québec nation in terms of recurrent labor exploitation epitomized …

Introduction To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided for the introduction.

Thematic Bibliography To New Work On Immigration And Identity In Contemporary France, Québec, And Ireland, Dervila Cooke

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

Cooking, Language, And Memory In Farhoud's Le Bonheur À La Queue Glissante And Thúy's Mãn, Simona Emilia Pruteanu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Cooking, Language, and Memory in Farhoud's Le Bonheur à la queue glissante and Thúy's Mãn" Simona Emilia Pruteanu discusses two moments in the evolution of (im)migrant writing in Québec. Abla Farhoud's 1998 novel shows the struggle of Dounia, a Lebanese immigrant living in Montréal, who in her seventies finds a voice with the help of her daughter's writing and starts to reflect on her identity. Themes of language and cooking overlap and reinforce one another and offer a new perspective on memory and the act of remembering. Language, cooking, and memory also intertwine in Thúy's 2013 …

Mémoire Et Identité Dans Les Réécritures Caribéennes : Wide Sargasso Sea Et La Migration Des Coeurs, Camille Charlery

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis will study creole identity in Jean Rhys Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), prequel of Jane Eyre, as well as in Maryse Condé's La Migration des Coeurs (1995), a rewriting of Wuthering Heights. I argue that both novels create a new creole identity by conversing with their original texts as well as by going beyond the official definition of creoleness. Using the concepts of obsessive memory and forced forgetfulness, I explore the tension betwee innate and constructed identity. First, I focus on the meaning of creoleness, then, I examine how memory plays a crucial role in the novels through topics …

Le Cinéma Face À L’Oblitération Génocidaire. Silences Éloquents Et Hors-Champ Intérieur Chez Philippe Van Leeuw Et Kivu Ruhorahoza, Alexandre Dauge-Roth, Ayse Irem Ikizler

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Philippe Van Leeuw and Kivu Ruhorahoza’s cinema proposes an esthetic and ethical gaze that distances itself from the historic realism that defines the majority of the films on the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. By conferring an unprecedented eloquence to different types of silence and by maintaining viewers in a concerted state of ignorance, both filmmakers question societies’ will to know within the legacy of genocide and their willingness to culturally acknowledge the traumatic resonance of its aftermath.

La Première Couche D’Encre, Abdourahman Waberi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The author reexamines his engagement with the Rwandan genocide.

Une Poétique De La Mémoire : Lire Matière Grise, Le Film Du Réalisateur Rwandais Kivu Ruhorahoza (2011), Frieda Ekotto

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The film Grey Matter [Matière grise] (2011) directed by a Rwandan filmmaker Kivu Ruhorahoza, is an attempt to offer psychoanalytic approaches to understanding a 1994 Rwandan genocide within the psychic and the social. This director is interested in representing the impossible, instead, he offers a poetic representation of trauma. It may be just like a dream in his psychic, wondering whether this event really happened and how to make sense of as time settles ? This noiseless film is the first feature length narrative film directed by a Rwandan who gives the world the visual interpretation of the impact of …

Sites Of Memory: The Destruction Of Public Buildings During The Paris Commune Of 1871, Julie C. Nay, Dr. Daryle Lee

Journal of Undergraduate Research

In March 1871, in response to the brutal Prussian siege of the city, a humiliating peace treaty with the Germans, and an attempt by the national government to deprive Paris of her cannons, the Central Committee of the National Guard declared Paris independent of the national government and installed itself in the Hôtel de Ville. The Commune de Paris was born. For seventy-two days the Commune held sway over Paris, occupying important public buildings. During the final week of the Commune, called the “Bloody Week” of 21-28 May, many of these buildings were destroyed in the struggle between the Communards …

The Paradox Of Amnesia: Tondelli's Un Weekend Postmoderno, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Tondelli opens his Un weekend postmoderno. Cronache dagli anni Ottanta declaring an intention opposite to the display of amnesia. In the long table of contents of his book, he writes down everything, in an excruciating streaming of details, so that the table of content becomes an exhaustive index of names and ideas. Yet, hidden within the hundreds of analytical snapshots, one of its many characters mentions the importance of dissimulation. Dissimulation, according to Tondelli, hides what is known, to protect the dissimulator and to mask the truth. Also, amnesia is a voluntary practice that can be enacted in order to …

Les Enfants De L’Ombre: Dalila Kerchouche. Leila: Avoir Dix-Ans Dans Un Camp De Harkis, Jimia Boutouba

Modern Languages & Literature

Dans son roman, Leila : Avoir 17 ans dans un camp de harkis, Dalila Kerchouche retrace le parcours de ceux dont la jeunesse fut passée/gâchée dans les camps de la relégation. À travers le regard blessé d’une adolescente de 17 ans, on découvre ce que l’histoire officielle a voulu couvrir du manteau de l’oubli : l’arrivée précipitée des harkis et leurs familles en France, leur dur quotidien dans les camps en marge de la communauté nationale, leur dépouillement, les humiliations, les souffrances, les folies et une gestion étatique aussi choquante qu’incohérente. Le présent article examine la portée individuelle et collective …

Entre France Et Vietnam : Linda Lê Et La Problématique Mémorielle, Hervé Tchumkam

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Building on Paul Ricoeur’s work on memory and forgetting, this article analyzes exile and identity in Linda Lê’s Calomnies, a novel that narrates the peregrinations of a young girl exiled from her native Vietnam because of French war but nevertheless living in France. Building on the contention that identity is somewhat problematic in exile, I argue that while the narrator’s resort to her relatives in order to remember her past, her struggle to battle oblivion often takes shape against the backdrop of collective memory. More specifically, I investigate Calomnies to show that the narrative of exile and the subsequent quest …

Langue Et Identité Chez Leïla Sebbar. Vers Une Filiation Renégociée, Cécilia W. Francis

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Je ne parle pas la langue de mon père (2003), L’arabe comme un chant secret (2010a), as well as in other components of her intimate prose, Leïla Sebbar reflects on her sense of dispossessed identity due to linguistic exile and an unknown heritage, resulting from ruptures in her paternal filiation. Drawing from the works of Jacques Derrida, Régine Robin and Simon Harel, which form the basis of our argumentation, we examine various dimensions of the severed parental bond. The article proposes to examine how Sebbar’s autobiographical writings, which incorporate scenarios dealing with legacy transmission expressed in terms of auditory …

Tiempo Y Memoria Proustianos En Doña Inés De "Azorín", Herbert Craig

The Coastal Review

The discovery of three articles by “Azorín” about Proust demonstrates that the Spanish author knew the Recherche before he wrote Doña Inés (1925). However Azorín follows Proust not only in the treatment of involuntary memory, as some scholars have suspected, but also in the treatment of time. These aspects include the changes in the physical appearance of Doña Inés and in the changes of light at the beginning or ending of the day.

Le Témoignage Dans L’Oeuvre De Yolande Mukagasana, Théopiste Kabanda

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

this article analyzes the status of testimony in Mukagasana’s La mort ne veut pas de moi and N’aie pas peur de savoir, by bringing out the main narrative strategies allowing to get round the unspeakable. It demonstrates the connection of the testimony, the memory and the history of the genocide in Rwanda as event which marked the humanity in 20th century. This link is studied through the conditions and the postures of testimony, the textual marks of dentification of the addressees and the roles of the testimony.

De L’Écriture Romanesque Comme Traversée Et La Maghrébinité, Kasereka Kavwahirehi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This essay explores how some “Maghrebian” novelists represent and problematize their relation to “Maghrebness” or “maghrebinité”. Using postcolonial theory and Réda Bensmaia's Alger ou La maladie de la mémoire, the author shows how problematic the concept of “Maghrebian literature” can be when one considers its transnational and transcultural poetics and its de-territorialization.

Piero Chiara E La Tradizione, Stefano Giannini

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Piero Chiara (Luino 1913- Varese 1986) wrote many novels and short stories that immediately met great public success. Critics devoted mixed attention to him but his works deserve a new critical assessment to analyze the rich and sophisticated web of cultural and literary references that permeate them. Through readings of Il piatto piange, “L’uovo al cianuro” and other novels and short stories, this paper analyses the complex textual relations Chiara entertains with Pirandello’s Il fu Mattia Pascal. Chiara investigates the themes of identity and the double. His narrative depicts an apparently lighthearted reality that in fact reveals despair. …

État De Recherches Et Orientations Nouvelles Du Cinéma Francophone Ouest-Africain: 1980-2000, Suzanne Crosta

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Now is an opportune time to look at the expanse of research that has emerged since 1980 in the field of African film criticism, to trace its parameters, highlight its strengths and identify its current shifts. In examining its present trends, we shall underscore themes and promising features in current African films. Our focus ·will be on French West African films and filmmakers; we will emphasize theoretical and esthetic writings in the field rather than popular media resources. It is a modest contribution to the field of African film studies, one we hope will foster further research into the full …