French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Reviving The Surrealist Revolt: A Retracing Of Surrealism’S History And A Reimagining Of Its Future In Translation, Kyle Young

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Although Surrealist writing has literary merit, Surrealist texts were written as revolutionary tracts meant to undermine the social order. Yet the politically radical aspects of the movement are no longer taken very seriously. At least one contributing factor to the current impotence of Surrealism is the approach taken in the translation of Surrealist texts. Many translators have presented Surrealist texts as they would traditionally present any literary document. However, Walter Benjamin’s writings on translation, in particular his essay “The Task of the Translator,” provide a novel conception of translation, one which can produce linguistically radical texts. I will argue that …

Simone De Beauvoir: Cuisine, Nourriture, Existentialisme, Véronique Olivier

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

"En 1949, quand Simone de Beauvoir publie Le Deuxieme Sexe, elle y raconte l'histoire des femmes - son histoire des femmes. Avec regret, la jeune intellectuelle observe a quel point le monde appartient aux hommes, combien la societe a lentement contribue a modeler la femme comme un objet, comme 'l'inessentiel', 'l'autre' (DS 1: 17). Contre une societe dominee par les hommes, Beauvoir croit pourtant que les choses peuvent evoluer, puisque, loin d'etre naturels, notre identite, notre moi, resultent davantage du temps, de l'histoire, et de conditions variables. II n'est done pas surprenant que l'un des espaces explores et condamnes …

The Perpetual Creation And Provocation Of The Self, Krista Damico

Senior Honors Projects

The Perpetual Creation and Provocation of the Self

Krista D’Amico

Faculty Sponsor: Stephen Barber, English

This project consists of four related parts. The first part is a critical and creative work of prose in which I converse with the thought of two philosophers, namely Spinoza and Gilles Deleuze. This conversation enables me to present my own thought and subjectivity in relationship to a very important aspect of my life: music-making. The second part of my project is a critical essay in which I contemplate the work of another artist, Virginia Woolf, and the way that her credo Three Guineas (1938) …

Thought And Verse: French Poetry In Conversation With French Existentialist Philosophy, Maxwell E. Edmonds

Senior Honors Projects

Thought and Verse: French Poetry in Conversation with French Existentialist Philosophy

Maxwell Edmonds

Faculty Sponsor: Karen de Bruin, French Language & Literature

What is the meaning of life?  Does God exist?  How can we live authentically and with purpose?  How can we conduct our day to day lives, while faced with our own mortality?  These are several of the principle themes focused upon within existentialist philosophy, the philosophy of existing as a mortal human being.

I chose to study existentialist philosophy through the lens of one of my other interests: French poetry.  This combination has allowed me to approach both …

Foucault, Secularization Theory, And The Theological Origins Of Totalitarianism, Michael Lackey

English Publications

No abstract provided.

After Utopia: Three Post-Personal Subjects Consider The Possibilities, Jeffrey P. Cain

English Faculty Publications

Review essay.

The task for those exploring the relationship of Deleuze to cultural issues is not to extend his thought in a straight line, but to swerve or veer into thinking a productive approach to the cultural events that actualise themselves in our time. Cain states that the virtue of these three books is that they do not simply go back to the same old questions; all of them represent departures in thinking in the best sense of the word.

William E. Connolly (2008). Capitalism and Christianity, American Style. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Alexander García Düttmann (2007). …

Rousseau, The Anticosmopolitan?, Helena Rosenblatt

Publications and Research

Rousseau's repeated criticisms of the Enlightenment's ideal of cosmopolitanism has led to his thought being characterized as 'anticosmopolitan'. His work abounds in denunciations of the ideals of equality of treatment and universal rights supported by his contemporaries. Moreover, his liking of solitude, introspection and socialization in small circles and his preference for patriotism over equity among all men seem to set him up as the counterpoint of the universalism his contemporaries defended. However, a deeper insight into the work of the author of The Reveries of the Solitary Walker shows that, far from being incompatible with true cosmopolitanism, the moral …

Burn The Panopticon: Irigaray's Ethics, Difference, Poetics, Simone Roberts

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph of Prologue]

The following essay has a purpose more than a thesis. This essay explains the central tenets of Irigaray's ethics of sexual difference through an understanding her work as that of a symbolist philosopher. Symbolist poetry and French Feminist philosophy like Irigaray's have several qualities in common. One is that the literal level of language is not where the action is. A reader must think associatively on many levels at once in order to gather and interpret the several indirect messages sent by a particular image or metaphor. Another is an acquired comfort with paradox. Paradoxes lie …

Spivak After Marx After Derrida, Philip Leonard

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Spivak is often viewed as an unequivocally deconstructive theorist, and she frequently reinforces this impression by proclaiming her allegiance to Derrida's ideas. Recent comments by her suggest, however, that there are limits to her deconstructive convictions. This essay considers some of Spivak's debts to Derrida's work, though it is primarily concerned with those occasions when she states her misgivings about his ability to understand postcoloniality, global power, and resistance movements. Reading Marx more accurately would, she insists, have allowed Derrida both to grasp capitalism's complex logic and to consider the effects of subaltern interventions upon capitalism's global authority. Such an …

Voltaire’S Concept Of Enlightened Eloquence, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

Near the beginning and end of his Lettres philosophiques (1734), his first major text promoting the principles of enlightenment, Voltaire gave examples of two very different kinds of eloquence. In the third letter on the Quakers, he pictured George Fox converting his jailers with his inspired preaching. In the last letter, he praised the eloquence of Pascal before he attempted a refutation of the Pensées, calling Pascal’s projected apology for Christianity “un livre plein de paralogismes éloquents et de faussetés admirablement déduites.” Each is representative of a brand of eloquence Voltaire found objectionable. The first kind, appealing chiefly to …

Eloquence In The Defense Of Deism: Voltaire’S Histoire De Jenni, Thomas M. Carr

French Language and Literature Papers

In the Histoire de Jenni (1775), his last major conte, Voltaire returns to a pattern similar in many ways to the one he had used in his first important tale, Micromégas. In both, as Vivienne Mylne has pointed out, two discussion scenes—the first near the beginning of the tale and a second more substantial one—are set in a narrative frame involving a voyage. Critics have generally attributed this return to a structure relying heavily on debate to convey his message to Voltaire’s increasing use of the philosophical dialogue in his later years. Perhaps a more fruitful approach, however, …

Jean-Paul Sartre’S Theory Of Literature, Timothy Jobe

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The thesis of this paper is twofold. First, there is the general concern to investigate and demonstrate clearly that there are relationships between certain superficially unrelated disciplines, namely philosophy, aesthetics and literary criticism. Second, by way of accomplishing the first aim, there is an attempt made to synthesize and explicate the contributions of a significant twentieth century intellectual. The particular procedure employed to attain these ends is the consideration of an academic field which is continually being reshaped by other separate but related disciplines. For my purposes the figure of Jean Paul Sartre and the field of literary criticism are …

An Experimental Comparison Of Grammar-Translation Method And Direct Method In The Teaching Of French, Mary Olga Peters

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

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. …