French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Avant Et Après : Examen Du Proto-Féminisme À Travers La Résistance Littéraire En France Au Xve Siècle Et Au Mexique Au Xviie Siècle, Madison Coleman

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This essay seeks to understand the implications of a “before” distinction in the feminist canon— i.e., why is there “proto-feminism”, and not just “feminism”? This essay will explore the works of “proto-feminist” writers, Christine de Pizan and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and examine how the feminist themes and issues prevalent throughout their respective works are in response to the respective and collective inequities and injustices they experienced. Their oeuvres provide insight into what advocacy for women and other marginalized peoples looked like outside of the modern understanding of the historical “waves” of feminism. This essay seeks to examine …

Indiana Par George Sand : Une Perspective Écoféministe, Lily Gauntt

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

George Sand’s 1832 novel Indiana explores themes of love, individuality and social class as the titular character, Indiana, battles with the temptations and consequences of an affair with the handsome and elusive Raymon de Ramière. Sand’s novel centrally explores place as it jumps back and forth from high society France and Paris to the Ile Bourbon where Indiana is from. Sand’s depiction of the Ile Bourbon presents the agency of the more-than-human world as Indiana struggles against the society that she has been forced into and the male characters that control her life. The novel’s interplay between the more-than-human world …

De La Saleté A La Poésie : Portrait De La France Périphérique Dans L’Été Des Charognes De Simon Johannin, Julie Catel

Tête à Tête: Journal of Francophone Studies

Simon Johannin's debut novel, "L'Été des charognes," published in 2017, offers a vivid portrayal of life in La Fourrière, an isolated village located in the Vosges. This area falls within what the French sociologist Christophe Guilluy terms 'France périphérique,' which refers to rural regions plagued by poverty and a sense of neglect. Through the perspective of an adolescent narrator, Johannin depicts the village's harsh daily reality, emphasizing its pervasive violence and the filth that characterizes its landscape. The narrative is saturated with descriptions of unpleasant odors, particularly from the decomposing carcasses of farm animals awaiting disposal, which permeate the village …

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 …

Le Proto-Féminisme De George Sand, Jasmine Harrison

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

George Sand, the pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, was a radical and revolutionary writer. Through her writing, she challenged social norms and incorporated gender equality into her novels. This presentation examines Sand's four works: Indiana, Valentine, Lélia, and La Mare au diable. The question of Sand's status as a feminist writer, or even as an early feminist writer, is explored through women's roles in society through the analysis of nineteenth-century literature.

Le Dix-Neuvième Siècle : Les Mouvements Littéraires Français Et La Classe Ouvrière, Grace Horton

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This presentation is an analysis of the connections between the different literary movements of 19th century France, such as romanticism, realism, and modernism, and how they were initiated by the French revolutions of 1830 and 1848. It covers the impacts of these revolutions on different prolific 19th century French writers such as Alphonse de Lamartine, Victor Hugo, Honoré de Balzac, and Charles Baudelaire, and how each writer prompted their respective movements.

L’Évolution Du Libéralisme Dans La Littérature Au Xixe Siècle, Sophie Hardy

World Languages and Cultures Senior Capstones

This presentation is a dissection of a quote made by Victor Hugo during the preface of his work Hernani (1830), where he wrote that, “romanticism is just liberalism in literature". This presentation strives to contradict this statement by analyzing Hugo’s early works before the revolution of 1830 to prove that not all of his works discussed liberalism. This presentation will also analyze the works of Alphonse de Lamartine and Alfred de Musset during this romantic era and compares Hugo’s earlier statement to their works.

Tuning Out: Intersections Of Music And Literature In The Contemporary French-Language Novel, Alexander James Claussen

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The past thirty years have seen a shift in French-language novels as authors move from the self-reflexive formal experimentation of the nouveau roman and its successors toward a literature that is again concerned with plot, character, and above all, the problems of the contemporary world. This “retour au récit” is accompanied by a resurgence of interest in writing the self (through experiments in autofiction), the past (through explorations of collective memory and collective guilt), and the present (through novels that challenge existing social structures and seek to define and develop new collective or national identities).

This dissertation examines the (re)turn …

Maurice Scève Avant La Délie (1535–1544). Une Étude Des Genres Mineurs À L’Origine D’Une Nouvelle Esthétique Poétique, Elizaveta Lyulekina

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cette thèse propose d’étudier l’influence du poète lyonnais Maurice Scève, actif entre 1535 et 1562, sur la formation de genres littéraires et le développement de la poésie française de la Renaissance. Elle explore également la contribution considérable du poète à la création de l’identité linguistique et culturelle française.

This dissertation studies the influence of the Lyonnais poet Maurice Scève, active between 1535 and 1562, on the formation of literary genres and the development of French Renaissance poetry. It also explores the poet’s considerable contribution to the creation of French linguistic and cultural identity.

The Translator-Function: Translating Bande-Dessinée For The Anglophone Reader, Ryan C. Gomez

Foreign Languages & Literatures ETDs

This thesis focuses on the question of translator roles in literary theory. I characterize these roles between positions that have traditionally been described by literary and philosophical theorists such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. By examining the products of translation (French-language bandes-dessinées and their English translations), and considering critical literary and translation theories, I demonstrate the unique position held by translators and their work through the proposal of what I call the translator-function (modeled after Foucault’s author-function). The principal aim of this thesis is to problematize preconceived ideas about translators and to examine the unique position of the …

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 …

History, Humanity, And The Literary Construction Of Haiti In ÉVelyne Trouillot’S Works, Jason Herbeck

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

Évelyne Trouillot’s novels, short stories, poetry, children’s stories, and play—not to mention her interviews, op. ed. pieces, and academic articles—introduce us to chapters of Haiti’s history spanning roughly two hundred and fifty years. From a plantation in the former French colony of Saint-Domingue during the 1750s to present-day, postearthquake Haiti, the experiences, trials, and tragically haunting memories of her characters serve to bring into focus countless rifts in the country’s complex and often conflicted past. Despite the turbulent time periods in which we discover these protagonists, and the resulting adversity to which they are prone, their struggles are not waged …

Savagery In Père Goriot, Marin J. Hoffman

Conspectus Borealis

No abstract provided.

(Re)Casting The Concierge In Muriel Barbery's L' Élégance Du Hérisson, Mariah Devereux Herbeck

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

«Être maire de Paris, c'est aimer les concierges et les stars, parce que les concierges sont les stars de notre quotidien!" (Greco). Before Anne Hidalgo aligned the commonplace French apartment caretaker with celebrated icons of the stage and screen during her 2014 Paris mayoral campaign, the Parisian concierge had never stood so high upon a pedestal. The closest the French concierge had come to such limelight was perhaps the fictionalized representation of the working-class figure in Muriel Barbery's 2006 novel, L' élégance du hérisson. The newspaper Libération described Barbery' s novel as France's "surprise bestseller of the year" (Lançon) …

El Cuento Como Recurso Didáctico En La Enseñanza Del Francés Lengua Extranjera, Sonia R. Badenas

Faculty Publications

Este artículo ofrece una reflexión pragmática sobre el uso del cuento como material didáctico en el aula de francés

lengua como extranjera (FLE). Tras revisar brevemente las diferentes ventajas de trabajar con cuentos y géneros afines en la enseñanza de lenguas, se analiza la utilidad de este género como material pedagógico para la práctica de la expresión escrita. Sobre esta base proponemos un acercamiento práctico a la integración del cuento en la enseñanza del francés en niveles universitarios dentro de un contexto comunicativo y a la luz del Marco Común Europeo de Referencia para las Lenguas (MCERL).

Intertexts Of The Ecological: Literary Space Revisited In Yanick Lahens's Bain De Lune, Jason Herbeck

World Languages Faculty Publications and Presentations

The opening lines of Yanick Lahens’s Bain de lune (2014) find an unidentified narrator lying on a beach not far from the coastal community of Anse Bleue, staring at the worn, muddy boots of the man who has just discovered her lifeless body. As her narrative reveals, a hurricane has devastated the region over the past three days, and, in the wake of the storm, the deceased protagonist tries to piece together the fragmented memories of her life as a means of determining how she has ended up dead on the sand. From the very beginning of Lahens’s novel, however, …

The Disperata, From Medieval Italy To Renaissance France, Gabriella Scarlatta

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Rich with morose invectives, the Italian lyric genre of the disperata builds toward a crescendo of despair, with the speakers damning and condemning their beloved, their enemy, their destiny, Fortune, Love, and often themselves. Although Petrarch and Petrarchism have been amply analyzed as fertile sources for late Renaissance poets in France, the influence of the Italian disperata in this context has yet to receive proper scholarly attention. This study explores how the language and themes of the disperata - including hopelessness, death, suicide, doomed love, collective trauma, and damnations - are creatively adopted by several generations of poets from its …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …

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 …

L’Argent N’Apporte Pas Le Bonheur Mais Il Achète La Liberté : Carrière Et Refus Du Bonheur Conjugal Chez Les Personnages Femmes De Malika Mokeddem, Simona Pruteanu

Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications

Malika Mokeddem s’inscrit dans la lignée d’écrivaines francophones qui traitent dans leurs textes de la situation socio-politique et culturelle de la femme en Algérie, mais aussi de l’entre-deux dans lequel se situent les femmes migrantes. On ne peut s’empêcher de noter que, sur les dix romans publiés jusqu'à date, aucune de ses héroïnes ne connait la sérénité dans le couple et elles rejettent toutes la maternité. Nous nous interrogerons donc, dans cet article sur les raisons de ces manques, afin de voir si on peut y lire plutôt une affirmation absolue de la liberté de la femme que des échecs. …

Le Mouvement Des Harraga — Un Traumatisme Historique Et Politique Qui Dévoile La Face Cachée De L’Europe, Simona Pruteanu

Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications

Cet article traite le dépassement des frontières des harraga (des sans-papiers) du Maghreb vers l’Europe (à travers l’Espagne) tout en analysant ce que cela implique du point de vue des lois d’immigration, de l’idée de la clandestinité ainsi que des créations d’une identité musulmane qui s’oppose à l’identité européenne. L’article s’attarde aussi sur l’historique des relations compliquées entre le Maghreb et l’Espagne en termes de relations (post)coloniales. En vue de cette contextualisation, les deux romans du corpus, Partir de Tahar Ben Jelloun et Harraga de Sansal Boualem, sont analysés du point de vue de l’histoire du pays en rapport …

First Mill (Excerpts) By René Char, Nancy Naomi N. Carlson

Transference

Translated from the French with commentary by Nancy Naomi Carlson.

Voyager En France, Valerie J. Spaeth

French Model Lesson Plans

In this lesson, students view a video that describes the most often used modes of transportation in France. Students then discuss the similarities and differences between travel in the US and travel in France.

The Cliché, The Discourse, And Desire Of The Other In Madame Bovary, Levilson C. Reis

Modern Languages & Cultures Faculty Scholarship

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.

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 …

L’Écriture Migrante Comme Pratique Signifiante: L’Exemple De L’Hétérolinguisme Et De L’Écriture Fragmentaire Chez Abla Farhoud Et Ying Chen, Simona Pruteanu

Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications

Cet article récupère le concept d’écriture en tant que pratique signifi ante (Kristeva) en parlant de deux romans migrants québécois, L’Ingratitude de Ying Chen et Le Bonheur a la queue glissante d’Abla Farhoud, afi n de montrer comment les indices d’hétérolinguisme dans ces deux textes, en conjonction avec une poétique du fragment, créent une esthétique propre à l’expression de l’identité migrante, ou ce que nous appelons une signifi ance migrante. Nous espérons confi rmer que refuser l’ancrage dans une appartenance culturelle ou langagière unique joue un rôle capital dans l’esthétique de l’écriture migrante, car la fragilité identitaire créée par la …

The Paratext To Chrétien De Troyes's Cligés: A Reappraisal Of The Question Of Authorship And Readership In The Prologue, Levilson C. Reis

Modern Languages & Cultures Faculty Scholarship

Starting with the premise that medieval manuscripts exhibit paratextual vestiges of their auctores, redactors, copyists, and readers, this article re-examines the question of authorship and readership in Chrétien de Troyes's prologue to Cligés (c. 1176-80) through the lens of paratextual references to the implied author's signature, allusions to possible titles of his previous works, marginal annotations of interpretative readings, and cases of significant manuscript variance. Firmly grounded in the manuscript, editorial, and critical tradition of Cligés, this reading re-evaluates the tripartite thematic structure of the prologue, hypothesizing the paratextual effect that the opening list of literary tides, …

Clergie , Clerkly Studium , And The Medieval Literary History Of Chréétien De Troyes's Romances, Levilson C. Reis

Modern Languages & Cultures Faculty Scholarship

This article traces the development of medieval literary history across the thirteenth century through manuscript readings of Chréétien de Troyes's romances. Redefining clergie as the clerkly pursuit of learning, the author argues that scribes played an important role in shaping Chréétien's romances and establishing their place in medieval literary history. Examining manuscript collections centred on Cligéés, the author delineates synchronic and diachronic shifts in the organization and presentation of Chréétien's manuscripts, evaluating the roles that different scribes and compilers played in the formation of a Chréétien corpus and the development of a romance genre.

The Verne School In France: Paul D'Ivoi's Voyages Excentriques, Arthur B. Evans

Global Language Studies Faculty publications

No abstract provided.