French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons^™

An Absolute Manner Of Seeing: Flaubert, 1848, And The Development Of Modernist Style, Nicholas Olson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines Gustave Flaubert’s Sentimental Education as a key work in the emergence of literary Modernism from the tradition of Realism. I begin by exploring the intellectual background of Realism in the works of Honoré de Balzac and the ties between this aesthetic theory and the theory of representative government: here I discuss the work of François Guizot, Friedrich Schiller, Friedrich Schlegel, J.W. Goethe, and Walter Scott as well as later thinkers like György Lukács, Pierre Bourdieu, Jürgen Habermas, and Jacques Rancière. From this, I demonstrate a commonly held theory of the social as a discreet totality, which makes …

The Wailing Of The Streets: Novelistic Form And The Everyday In Voyage In The Dark And Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit, Tutkunur Vatansever

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

In 1911, before the increased attention to everyday life in critical theory, György Lukács contemplated the concept of trivial life and its relation to literary form. The recent theories of everyday life like that of Blanchot – emphasizing its formlessness and defiance of subjectivity – invite us to address the variance in the modernist novelistic form in the framework that Lukács outlined. In Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys and Voyage au bout de la nuit by Louis-Ferdinand Céline, both published in the 1930s, the pain and suffering of everyday life on the streets diffuse into the form of …

Elgin's "Native Tongue": A "Me Too" Universe?, Amir Barati

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Suzette Haden Elgin’s novel Native Tongue (1984) provides a fascinating critique of the ideologies inscribed into patriarchal language and evokes an extremely valuable linguistic and political awareness. This article will examine the liability of the ways the novel revolts against the patriarchal society via the introduction of a gynocentric linguistic intervention. I claim, Elgin’s novel showcases an invaluable instance of how it is possible for women to revolt against the pillars of patriarchy through manipulations at the gestalt and schematic level of language and most specifically, the bodily metaphoric quality of the English. This proposed transformation of the schematic and …

Puzzling Failure In Life: A User's Manual/La Vie Mode D'Emploi, William Lambert

Fall Student Research Symposium 2021

From its founding by the poet Raymond Queneau and writer François Le Lionnais in 1960, the French OuLiPo sought to create new literary structures through the introduction of mathematics into the writing process. Among the works generated through the OuLiPian process is La vie mode d’emploi by Georges Perec, a novel of considerable depth describing the lives of residents in an apartment in Paris and weaving throughout numerous themes and leitmotifs. In his preface to the novel, Perec implicitly invites the reader to approach its elements just as they would a puzzle, fitting them together in a ludic search for …

Écritures Génésiaques : Violences, Ruptures Et Recommencement Dans Le Roman Africain Francophone, Isaac Bazié

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This study analyzes the writing of crises in African novels and makes following observation: the novels listed do not represent crises and ruptures to obey a need for mimicry and authenticity in the representation through the art of real violence. The main objective of these novels by staging African crises and violence is rather to reflect a tension: that of a charged present situation, a real historical or imaginary crisis, and the equally important situation of a genesis, a new beginning, the terms of which sometimes remain to be defined.

L’Humour Didactique Dans Guelwaar D’Ousmane Sembène, Anthère Nzabatsinda

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Guelwaar, film and novel by Ousmane Sembène (1923- 2007), humor often makes you smile; and when it is comical, it is ironic and parodic. These aspects highlight unusual or contradictory aspects, even serious situations. The aim of this caustic humor is to correct negative situations, especially to denounce the defects of hypocrisy and intolerance. The humorous strategy in Guelwaar is part of the Senegalese filmmaker-novelist’s perspective of a didactic project aimed at the whole of Africa.

Comment Lire Un Texte Francophone? La Traversée De La Mangrove De Maryse Condé, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This study is structed around three components. It begins with a brief reflection on the paradox of the existence in university education of two literary institutions – French literature and Francophone literatures – whose works are nevertheless written in the same language (French). Then the article proposes a transcultural and transnational approach to overcome such dichotomy – France and French-speaking peripheries – by a methodology based on the principle of unity in the diversity of the elements of the texts from three aspects: literary genre, language/speech, and intertextuality. Finally, this reflection is based on the study of the novel Traversée …

Failures Of Grace: Limits Of Tragedy In The Late Nineteenth-Century Novel, Anick S. Rolland

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Failures of Grace argues that nineteenth-century novelists challenge the hegemonies of literary form and the value of personal suffering through what I call the trans-genre tragic novel. This new form is emblematic of a period in which values hang in the balance and places traditional values at odds with themselves by combining the low form of the novel with the highest mimetic mode in the Western tradition: tragedy. It simultaneously proposes the most vulnerable members of society as tragic heroes in contrast to the noble figures who previously were presumed to define the genre.

Through close readings of works by …

Fatou Diome: Une Création Entre Les Arts, Sada Niang

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

As she began her career in the 1980s, Fatou Diome inherited a rich tradition of literary texts and media productions, African cinema among them. Since she also hailed from a country known as "francophone", it is hardly surprising that her novels resonate with the style and narratives of African, French and other European writers. In this article, we propose to unveil a few of these artistic threads which may have informed and inspired Fatou Diome.

Niodior Ou L'Économie Du Texte Diomien, Mbaye Diouf

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

To a large extent, Niodior may be considered the main biographical and discursive referent of Fatou Diome's entire literary output, to date. In addition to being the birth place of the novelist, Niodior stands as the workshop of the Diomian novel. It is at once the wrestling arena of discourses of the self vs. others, the breeding ground of other "selves" and other possible others. As a consequence, Niodior, in Diome's novels, becomes a textual place which informs the self, the community, immigration and globalization through a semiotic of place. In this article, I argue that an application of geocriticism …

Espaces Topologique Et Phénoménologique Dans Le Mal De Peau Et Le Retour Au Village, Mahamadou Lamine Ouédraogo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Le mal de peau by Monique Ilboudo and Le retour au village by Kollin Noaga are two Burkinabè novels featuring Sibila and Catherine (for the first) and Tinga (for the second). The study questions the part of spatiality in the semantics of indexed texts: how does space mean in these novels? This problem is attacked from two angles. First, it is a matter of identifying the modes of meaning of the topos. Secondly, it is about seeing how the body, as a phenomenological space, can articulate meaning.

Agency And Political Engagement In Gide And Barrault's Post-War Theatrical Adaptation Of Kafka's The Trial, Yevgenya Strakovsky

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article, "Agency and Political Engagement in Gide and Barrault's Post-war Theatrical Adaptation of Kafka's The Trial" Yevgenya Strakovsky considers the political themes of André Gide and Jean-Louis Barrault's Le Procès (The Trial, 1947), the first theatrical adaptation of Franz Kafka's Der Prozess (The Trial, 1914). Strakovsky demonstrates that Le Procès, written and staged in the immediate aftermath of World War II, levels a critique against the passive complicity of citizens in unjust persecution in both its script and its staging. The paper also considers the elements of Kafka's prose that lend themselves to …

The Green And The Red: A Novel By Armand Chauvel, Jenna Gersie

The Goose

Review of Armand Chauvel's The Green and the Red: A Novel.

Melancholic Mirages: Jules Verne's Vision Of A Saharan Sea, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

L’invasion de la mer (The Invasion of the Sea), Verne’s last novel to be published during his lifetime, would appear to be a paradoxical vision of French colonial involvement as it chronicles the attempts of the French army occupying Tunisia and Algeria to capture Tuareg leaders bent on pushing the French out of the Maghreb on the one hand, and thwarting an environmentally disastrous French project on the other. L’Invasion de la mer (The Invasion of the Sea) is a complex, if not melancholic vision of the limits of French expansionism, however. The real-life French army geographer François-Elie Roudaire and …

Les Lézardes Du Sens Dans Les Romans D’Ahmadou Kourouma, Justin K. Bisanswa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The text illustrates that Kourouma’s novels act as an exemplary exteriorisation of a singular point of view on the world, while also acting as a space of transformation, touching both the anecdotes told and the process of narration. Through the general nature of their titles, the novels do not so much designate a décor, but rather an image of the human condition in which life governed by destiny fi nds, in the heart of social decay, a metaphor – both sombre and precise – for postcolonial Africa. Thus, the novels do not entirely absorb this philosophy of existence upheld by …

L’Irruption De La Violence Dans Saint-Germain Ou La Négociation: L’Esthétique Néoclassique Belge En Question, David Vrydaghs

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper analyses the novel Saint-Germain ou la négociation, which appears to hide a controversial discourse under a classic form. a special attention is given to the last chapter to show how this end modifies the novel’s reception. Finally, it is the whole neoclassic aesthetics that seems to be violate.

Mémoire Du Duel Dans À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, Yan Hamel

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper analyses the duel as a central motive in Marcel Proust’s novel À la recherche du temps perdu. In the novels cycle, it appears that the occasions the men have to fight or to watch a duel help to understand why that violent practice increased during the last decade before the second World War. The practice seems to be monstrous morally and socially.

Représentations De La Mort Dans La Chine De Claudel Et De Verne, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

« La Femme Qui Pleure » : La Nouvelle D’Assia Djebar Et Le Tableau De Picasso, Farah Aïcha Gharbi

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article is a study of the dialogue that is maintained between the novel « La femme qui pleure » by Assia Djebar and the Picasso painting that bears the same title. This article also aims to show author’s achievement of the liberation of the feminine subject through an aesthetic means, in other words, through an angle that allows for an encounter between that which has been written and the painting, which combined give the women the right to the word and the image portrayed. The form and the structure that are shared between the novel and the painting appear …

Agustín Gómez-Arcos, Eyes Open, Sharon G. Feldman

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

The last time I saw Agustin Gómez-Arcos was July of 1997. He was in the midst of an extended summer sojourn at the home of his friends Miguel and Pilar in Tarragona. I remember wandering with him through the streets of this Catalan coastal city, accompanied by Miguel and Pilar's young sons. With Agustín as our guide we toured the city's Roman ruins, and he showed us his favorite mosaics at the local archeological museum. Agustín, as I remember him, was filled with vitality, delighting in the everyday activities of summer, buying fresh strawberries and tomatoes at an outdoor market …

La Traversée Des Savoirs Dans Le Roman Africain, Justin K. Bisanswa

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The African novel refers to a socio-political as well as a literary History, but does so with guile, expressing this History from an angle. Referring constantly to the social and human sciences, to the point of competing with them, the novel vacillates between dependency and autonomy. It thus proposes a specific knowledge of society, its functioning, and the individuals who constitute it. However, its true intention is not to copy the world, nor even to imitate its life, but to provide a miniaturized replica of both, and set itself up as a vast metonymic duplicate of a certain universe.

Jules Verne's Very Far West: America As Testing Ground In Les 500 Millions De La Bégum, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

[First Paragraph] In his famous interview with the American journalist Robert H. Sherard in 1894, Jules Verne, nearing the end of his life, regretted not being able to see America one last time. "I should have liked to have gone to Chicago this year," he lamented, "but in the state of my health [...] it was quite impossible. I do so love America and the American," he continued, "As you are writing for America, be sure to tell them that if they love me- as I know they do, for I receive thousands of letters every year from the States- …

Entre Intertextualité Et Réécriture, Alexie Tcheuyap

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Aesthetic practices have become more and more diversified in contemporary cultures. Although rewritings and adaptations are most common from literature to film, from myth/epic to novels, African filmmakers have recently been inaugurating novelization, that is the literary rewriting of a film. This essay examines the case of the Algerian filmmaker Merzac Allouache, who has written Bab el-Oued City, based on his film Bab el-Oued, in order to escape the technical and practical limitations of cinema. In doing so, he best expresses the challenges of contemporary Algeria, which is permanently threatened by violence and Islamic fundamentalism.

Le Célibataire Invisible: Solitude Et Fantastique Dans Le Secret De Wilhelm Storitz, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

[First paragraph]

Anne Macvicar Grant, poétesse écossaise vivant à New York à la fin du dix-huitième siècle, concevait les célibataires en termes d’êtres « qui passaient à travers la société comme des fantômes silencieux, et qui, de toute évidence, se considéraient assez supérieurs aux autres » (“passing in and out [of society] like silent ghosts and seeming to feel themselves superior to the world.”¹ De même, Jean Borie identifie le célibataire par rapport à son invisibilité aux yeux d’un monde qui ne cesse de le rejeter : « Le célibataire, » conclut Borie, «quoique gris muraille et presque invisible …

L'Espace Du Célibataire Fantastique: Le Secret De Wilhelm Storitz, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

L'Espace Scriptural Chez Kourouma Ou La Tragicomédie Du Roman, Jean Ouédraogo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Ahmadou Koruouma's fiction transcends the traditional limits of the novelistic genre. This explains, in part, the irritation of both the French and the African establishments following the appearance of his first novel, Les soleils des independances, in which both writing and language enhance the subversive effect. The banning and subsequent disappearance of Kourouma's play, Tougnatigui ou le Diseur de verite and the dramatic adaptations of his first two novels call for an appreciation of his entire work from a dramaturgical perspective. In this study, we shall analyse the constitutive elements of the intergeneric qualities underlying Kourouma's writing. To this end, …

He Said, She Said: A Feminist Approach To Teaching The Twentieth-Century Novel In The Twenty-First Century, Elizabeth Richardson Viti

French Faculty Publications

The question of women's relationship to the literary canon is still pertinent today and is particularly significant for those of us who are both guided by feminist pedagogy and constrained by departmental limitations. How do we give an overview of the novel without either diminishing the importance of certain male novelists or eliminating female writers altogether? The author suggest that a thematic approach in which pairs of texts make explicit two different gender perspectives is useful. This approach underscores the notion that gender informs writing as well as reading and, equally significant, introduces feminist theory as a tool for literary …

Autor De L'Excentricité De Phileas Fogg Et Du Captaine Nemo, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

[Premier paragraphe] Pour l'excentrique "décadent" du XIX siècle, le mariage de la modernité avec la technique aboutissait à une crise de névrose et de caprice emblématique de la retraite (Des Esseintes à Fontenay-les-Roses dans Á rebours de Huysmans) ou, comme c'était le cas d'Anatole Baju, le fondateur de la revue Le Décadent, à l'avant-garde de son temps, Phileas Fogg et le capitaine Nemo sont plutôt représantatifs d'une synergie des notions d'innocence et de fantaisie de l'excentricité anglaise avec les inventions et les appropriations de territoire de la France au XIXe siècle.