French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Bleu Pour Toujours (Blue Forever), Macha Petre

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Since this short story is written in French, the abstract below is available in both English and French.

Bleu pour toujours (« Blue Forever ») is a short story blending poetry and science fiction. In the near future, war, pollution, and human activity have devastated our world. The blue sky exists only in history books or old photographs. Amid this gray, monotonous despair, an unnamed, ageless, and genderless character escapes one evening and makes unsettling discoveries. Something is stirring. Upon waking, they find everyone has vanished, and the laws of the universe have been upended. In place of the sky …

Le Chemin Détourné, Ailie Coffey

University Honors Theses

Le Chemin détourné is an original fairy tale in French about Melisende and Olivier Fournier. One day, Melisende disappears on her way home. Although her disappearance is a mystery, she was taken prisoner by the fairies as revenge against her mother. Her father Jehan and brother Olivier are very distressed, Jehan goes out after her immediately but, worried about Olivier’s safety, asks him not to go out after his sister. On the third night that she is gone, Olivier decides to go out to look for her anyways, and even though he is terrified to leave home, he sets out …

Snapshots Of A Fictional Past: Photographic Nostalgia In The Early 20th Century Art Novel., Harry A. Jones Iv

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation I argue that the proliferation of a mass codependent relationship with nostalgia in the twentieth century shares a parallel history with the widespread adoption of the reproducible image being used by collective audiences as a supplement for natural memory, or what Proust names “voluntary memory.” This conflict between nostalgia-hungry consumers and artists inspired groups such as Alfred Stieglitz’s Photo-Secessionists and artistically minded authors like Henry James, who employed increasingly complex photographic and literary practices to resist the images’ tendency to debase the aesthetic quality of their own work. Authors such as Marcel Proust and William Faulkner used …

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 …

Amazones Et Guerrieres Dans L'Reuvre Romanesque De Fatou Diome, Lydia Bauer

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

One enters Fatou Diome's creative work as in a wrestling arena. She features strong female narrators and characters. These, just like amazons, battle against the patriarchal system, unfair treatments and prejudices of all kinds, in order to regain their dignity and freedom. Their weapons are of the intellectual kind such as language and writing. In this article, we examine different kinds of battles featured in Diome's novels by focusing on both plot and narration.

Sillage, Trace, Empreinte: La Migrance Ambulatoire De Fatou Diome, Catherine Mazauric

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

From Le ventre de l'Atlantique and Impossible de grandir to Marianne porte plainte!, going as far back as her early poems and short stories published in journals, Fatou Diome uses recurring patterns of wake, trace and footprints as different forms of physical and ethical engagements in the world. In the process of literary creation, such engagement generates a mobile third location, "a space of migrance" where various sets of cultural heritages and ethical values undergo reformulation. This paper argues that it is in such a space that Diome locates the emergence of a powerful feminine subjectivity which gained its autonomy …

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.

« Une Maison Abandonné, C'Est Comme Une Histoire Inachevée ». Espace, Corps Et Recit Dans La Nuit Sacrée De Tahar Ben Jelloun, Clarisse Barbier

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

We will analyze the relationship between body, space, and narration, three major concepts of La nuit sacrée that are intertwined in their value of potential means of alienation but also of liberation and of power. We will first examine the main closed spaces and their influence on Zahra's body and narration. Then we will analyze the occurrences of bodies to determine to which extent they inform of Zahra's progression - or regression - in her quest. Finally, Zahra's psychological evolution will be studied: Zahra finally finds her liberation through the somatization of her past, not its rejection, and through speech.

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 …

Qui Est Done « L'Homme De Barbès » ? Le Probleme Du « Nègre » De L'Écriture Migrante Dans Le Ventre De L'Atlantique De Fatou Diome, El Hadji Moustapha Diop

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper attempts to revisit the figure of "l'homme de Barbes" as a new form of invisible subalternity deeply inscribed within the texture of Fatou Diome's Le ventre de l'At/lntique, this landmark novel said to usher in a new era in migrant literature, at the intersection between the postcolonial and the transnational. In this respect, Diome's novel is indeed seminal, but from a geocritical perspective. Thus, I argue that the man of/from Barbès must be read as a figure greater than the sum of his narrative and discursive parts. Unlike the Parisian "black bazaar" tagged onto his persona, the "multiplicity …

Looking At Shadows: Four French Texts In English Translation, Kalena M. Hermes

World Languages and Cultures

This project present four French texts in English translation that share the theme of loss. This theme is perhaps one of the most poignant and relevant; loss is an experience that every human will encounter, and as people we continue across time to grapple with what it means for us and how to deal with it. These four texts will bring the perspectives of four authors to light in English. When we study how other countries and cultures deal with common human issues, we are able to gain new views on these issues. This project will make these texts accessible …

Voix Narratives Et Transfigurations De L'Écrivain Dans Le Roman Francophone, Cheikh M. Diop

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In biblical language, transfiguration refers to the "change in bodily appearance" of the crucified Christ revealing his "divine nature". In the same way, it can be said that the writer is metamorphosed through the process of writing by the creation either of an alter ego or of an imaginary double, be it, animal or inanimate. The first case proposes original figures of the "social status" of the writer. In the second, the latter borrows the voice of a cat or makes a piece of furniture or an intimate object to speak. Therefore, we wonder if the transfiguration of the narrative …

La Figuration De L'Art Dans Les Romans De V.Y. Mudimbe, Olga Hel-Bongo

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In Mudimbe's novels, art depicts the author and his writings, through a play of substitution and decentering. The author uses the artistic medium to escape constraints of discursive, religious, political or sexual order and as a place of transfiguration of the characters' desires. The aim of this article is to show that references to painting, literature, cinema and music reflect the refusal of the I to speak about oneself, except indirectly. The author chooses a strategy of decentering by combining the language of words and of images, and suggests, behind the mask of narrative representation, a taste for provocation, social …

La Figuration De L'Écriture Dans Quelques Romans Africains Contemporains, Adama Togola

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The contemporary African novel offers an acute staging of writing, the image of the writer and a reflection on the issues of literature. Its metafictional and metatextual dimensions give rise to a poetics in which writing appears both as a practice and as a theory of fiction. This study, which focuses on novels of Sembène Ousmane, Alain Mabanckou, and Blaise N'Djehoya, addresses the issue of double fiction. It aims to show that the figure of the fictitious writer sometimes appears as a textual substitute, a form of possible objectification of the real novelist, whose novels tend to turn into a …

La Leçon De Ouologuem Ou Le Portrait De L'Artiste En « Pisse-Copie, Nègre D'Écrivains Célèbres », Désiré Nyela

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The transformation of the African griot/storyteller into a writer was built on the sacredness of his mission, animated by the flame of engagement, inspired by blackness. However, the irruption of Ouologuem into the literary scene brought about a Copernican revolution of sorts by paving the way for a parodic reversal in the conception of the writer. Indeed, Ouologuem's knowledge of the asperities of the literary system surrounding the African novelist leads him to deconstruct the sacred character of the writer's figure; a desecration that places the figure of the writer and the fictional characters of his novel on the same …

Conte Romanesque, Chant-Roman: Postures De La Figure Auctoriale Chez Maurice Bandaman Et Werewere Liking, Adama Coulibaly

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

What is the connection between the author figure and the genre? Contrary to a widespread idea, the generic mention is not a petrified venue. Indeed, from the mention of "song-novel" in Elle sera de jaspe et de corail and La mémoire amputée by Werewere Liking to that of "novelistic tale" in Le fi/s de-la-femme-male or that of the "novel" in L'État Z'héros by Maurice Bandaman, this study shows that, by a play of permanent negotiation of the limits of their fictional status, the writer and the storyteller, figures of the author, produce hybrid genres. The practice summons a kind …

Figure De L'Écrivain Chez Sami Tchak. Déterminisrne, Fantasme Et Mythe, Vincent Simédoh

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines how the figure of the writer manifests himself in the postcolonial novel and the issues associated with all determinisms. Does a representation of oneself in a fictional space give one the possibility of being other than that which one is or is destined to be? Clearly a literary question, in the sense that it makes possibilities exist that are yet unavailable, it comes with few answers. It calls for further investigation to highlight the novelist's consciousness of the present, the writer's image that manifests itself in the novel in various forms by means of fantasies, the creation …

L'Objet Littéraire: Le Livre Et Le Personnage Lecteur Dans L'Œuvre De Sami Tchak, Kodjo Attikpoé

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This study aims to examine the literary representations of the book and the reader in the novels of Sami Tchak. The fact that the Togolese author's novels are deeply rooted literary recollection reveals a direct link between writing and social issues. Literary references become the structuring principle of his works, which often depict readers "erudite readers". "Ordinary people" as well as a large number of highly-educated persons often read only books from the canon, those by well-known authors. The representation of "Great" literature shows some ranking within the world of books. However, it especially shows the ways of these erudite …

La Métaphore De L'Œuvre Impossible Dans Le Roman Africain Contemporain, Josias Semujanga

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Many and varied, the figures of the book or the art are omnipresent in many literary works, and in various forms. They, sometimes, evoke the metaphor of the impossible work or the ambivalent status of the character writer in fiction. What are the functions of these figures in the narrative, and more particularly in the novel, and in the social discourse? In order to answer these questions, our study will focus on Henry Lopes' Le lys et le flamboyant, Alain Mabanckou's Verre Gasse, and Gilbert Gatore's Le passe devant soi, with occasional references to other novels to …

Formes Et Fonctions Du Métatexte Dans Le Cavalier Et Son Ombre De Boubacar Boris Diop, Morgan Faulkner

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines the metatextual discourse elaborated in the novel Le cavalier et son ombre by Senegalese author Boubacar Boris Diop, a work in which reality and the imaginary are constantly confused and intertwined. This research looks at the forms and functions of metatextuality, which develop a reflection on the relationship between these two spheres (reality and fiction). Drawing notably from Gerard Genette's theories on the metatext and the metalepsis, this article examines how the novel highlights and critiques its own function as a literary text. What narrative practices does Diop use to reflect on the author, writing, words and …

Translation Of View From The Ossuary By Antoine Volodine, John Thomas Mahany

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This is a literary translation from the French of Antoine Volodine’s Vue sur l’ossuaire. Additional creative embellishments have been included in the form of translator’s notes and epigraphs in order to enhance the fictive reality of the work.

La Star De Football, Nicholas Khoury

Honors Program Contracts

A short fable in French that incorporates vocabulary and lessons learned throughout the semester.

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

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.

The Literature Of Verbal Nonsense In Lewis Carroll, Samuel Beckett And Eugène Ionesco, Madeleine R. Scalliet

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

Nonsense literature and nonsense poetry have provided release from the shackles of logic for centuries. But the greatest masters of English nonsense are Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear. Carroll gives, in Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass, the principles underlying a carefully-built structure. In Lewis Carroll's nonsense world, the creatures break the determinism of meaning and significance.

Nonsense can be defined by the following characteristics: a strong adherence to the concrete in every way possible in order to allow the intellect to be in complete control of its material and thus prevent reference; the elaboration of a pseudo-logic based …

The Skepticism Of Anatole France, Margaret E. Camp

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

When Anatole France died 1n 1924, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had lived long enough to enjoy the honors which are not usually bestowed upon men until their death. His long life filled with years of labor and earnest endeavor to improve the lives of his fellow-men, through a better adjustment to society, culminated in his election to the French Academy.

By some critics he has been called the greatest writer of today. It is difficult to tell exactly upon what merits this distinction is based. Anatole France was not content to simply call himself a skeptic. …