French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Mille-Feuille Magazine Littéraire, Printemps 2025

Mille-Feuille Magazine Littéraire

No abstract provided.

The Sounds Of Madame Geoffrin’S Salon, Melanie Conroy

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Salons were core institutions of the eighteenth-century European social calendar, especially in Paris. Literary performances and philosophical conversation were the core activities of many of these gatherings. What did conversation and literary readings actually sound like at these events? To what extent were voices audible to everyone in the room, or too muffled or far away to be heard? What was the impact of the ambiance or of ephemeral sound on the reading or reception of the hearing? Using textual descriptions, paintings, and architectural information, I reconstruct two legendary readings of eighteenth-century texts, Voltaire’s L’Orphélin de la Chine and Marmontel's …

Mille-Feuille Magazine Littéraire, Printemps 2024, Pascale-Anne Brault

Mille-Feuille Magazine Littéraire

No abstract provided.

Marriage Stories: Legal Reform And The Novel In France And Britain, 1780–1860, Tatiana Nunez-Bright

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“Marriage Stories” analyzes connections between novelistic form, marriage law reform, and portrayals of virtue in texts by, among others, Stéphanie de Genlis, Mary Wollstonecraft, Sophie Cottin, Claire de Duras, Jane Austen, Honoré de Balzac, Sophie Doin, George Sand, Anne Brontë, and Gustave Flaubert. I argue that the novel was less concerned with abolishing or even critiquing marriage than it was with delineating “good” from “bad” unions, which in turn reflects contemporary discussions about marriage’s role in response to burgeoning social movements. My first chapter considers the epistolary novel in relation to the idea of spouses existing as “one body” culturally …

"Oiez Mon Aventure": Cuer D'Acier's Nonbinary Gender In Perceforest, Brooke Heidenreich Findley

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

The character of Cuer d’Acier, or Heart of Steel, in the 15^th century French romance Perceforest, has a complex gender identity that does not fit easily into a gender binary. First appearing as the courtly maiden Neronés, the character later lives and is read as a man. The romance uses both “he” and “she” pronouns to refer to Heart of Steel, often using both in the space of a single paragraph or even a single sentence. While Heart of Steel is again dressed as a woman at the end of the romance, the character’s own actions and statements …

True Love Waits: A Barthesian Reading Of Desire And Delay In Flaubert And James, Yasmin Patel

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explores the theme of amorous waiting in the literature of Gustave Flaubert and Henry James. Roland Barthes' definition of waiting, as articulated in A Lover's Discourse, is used as a tool to examine the waiting conditions of characters in Madame Bovary, The Beast in the Jungle, and The Ambassadors. By using the Barthesian framework, this thesis identifies and analyzes different forms of gender-based waiting and their distinctive consequences. However, it also notes that the primary texts further complicate the relationship between romantic waiting, gender, and autonomy. Ultimately, this analysis shows us that amorous waiting goes beyond a simple …

Reading Contemporary French Literature, Warren Motte

Zea E-Books Collection

This book focuses upon a dozen French writers who have helped to set the terms for contemporary French literature and its horizon of possibility. Though they have pursued significantly different paths, each one of them is committed to the principle of literary innovation, to making French literature new. They work in full cognizance of literary history and of the tradition that they inherit, even as they reshape that tradition in each of their books. They invite their readers to take a critical stance with regard to those books, and to participate actively in the construction of literary meaning. Both bold …

Mille-Feuille Magazine Littéraire, Printemps 2022, Pascale-Anne Brault

Mille-Feuille Magazine Littéraire

Nous sommes heureux de pouvoir vous présenter le vingt-septième numéro de Mille-Feuille et remercions tous les participants ainsi que le Doyen de Liberal Arts & Social Sciences, le Département de Langues Modernes et ses professeurs, le Study Abroad Office de DePaul University, ainsi que Collegiate School de NY, Curie High School, Ecole franco-américaine de Chicago, Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Princeton Charter School et Saint Ignatius College Prep, qui nous ont permis, grâce à leurs subventions généreuses et leurs nombreuses contributions, de donner suite à nos premiers numéros. Bonne lecture!

Rewriting The Oeuvre: Raymond Queneau And The Art Of Translation, Christopher Clarke

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

While the literary oeuvre of French author Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) has been extensively studied, his work as a literary translator has been largely overlooked. Queneau was a prominent member of the French literary avant-garde, but also a literary translator for two decades (1934-1953), and his writing was greatly influenced and impacted by his readings and translations of Anglophone writers. This dissertation provides insight into the role of translation in his conception of writing and language, and the inseparability of the different facets of his career as a writer, literary translator, and publisher. I examine his personal linguistic and literary history …

Bending Gender In French Literature, Jacey Flatte

LSU Master's Theses

This paper looks at French literature that defies binary and heteronormative gender roles and identities. The literature spans from the seventeenth- to the nineteenth-century. My goal is not only to bring these pieces of literature to light, proving that non-binary genders have existed long before the recent liberal LGBTQIA+ movement, but also to help modernize these identities from the past. In doing this, I aim to explain that contemporary gender identities are not new, but timeless. The experiences seen in this literature are strikingly similar to how people experience gender today. As a result, I hope that readers will be …

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.

Confronting Evil: The Psychology Of Secularization In Modern French Literature, Scott M. Powers

Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures

Confronting Evil: The Psychology of Secularization in Modern French Literature holds that the concept of evil is central to the psychology of secularism. Drawing on notions of secularization as a phenomenon of ambivalence or dualism in which religion continues to exist alongside secularity in exerting influence on modern French thought, author Scott M. Powers enlists psychoanalytic theory on mourning and sublimation, the philosophical concept of the sublime, Charles Taylor's theory of religious and secular "cross-pressures," and William James's psychology of conversion to account for the survival of religious themes in Baudelaire, Zola, Huysmans, and Céline. For Powers, Baudelaire's prose poems, …

Dance As Sport: Living Art And Commentary On The Lives Of Dancers In French Literature, Catherine Ellis

Lewis Honors College Capstone Collection

In defining what qualifies a sport, dance historically seems to lie closer to the description of art instead of sport. However, dance is better defined as a living and athletic art—combining art and sport in an unmatchable hybrid of the two. In French youth literature, Catherine Certitude (written by Patrick Modiano, published in 1988) recalls a childhood flashback of the protagonist, Catherine, and her life in Paris with her father, Georges. This paper argues that family dynamics and gender roles, a battle between two cities for the story’s location, and a clear presence of mystery throughout the story show distinct …

Le Flâneur Contemporain: The Wanderer In The 21st Century, Zachary Kocanda

Honors Projects

This creative project is a love letter to walking, poetry, and the French language. The flâneur is a French literary type, the most famous example being Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire epitomizes la modernité, writing poetry about urban Paris in the nineteenth century. The flâneur's importance as a literary type continues in contemporary poetry. Through fifteen prose poems, the project examines what it means to wander in the twenty-first century.

Gaps And Barriers: Division And Revelation In Michel Butor’S La Modification, Mary L. Bauer

Languages Faculty Publications

Gaps divide things that can’t quite come together, while cracks warn that something that was a coherent whole is coming apart. Michel Butor implants images of these two powerful symbols within his narrative of Léon Delmont’s troubled relationships with his wife, Henriette, and his lover, Cécile Darcella in his novel, La modification (1957). Some are obvious physical manifestations, while others are figurative, yet no less real. Butor then turns the concept of gap literally on its head by using its inverse, the barrier, to emphasize the self-imposed obstacles to a healthy relationship on both sides of Léon’s not so-secret double …

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 …

Une Gourmandise: Mots, Mets, Et Ecriture Féminine, Véronique Olivier

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Articles and Research

I propose to look at the short gastronomic novel by Muriel Barbery, published in 2000, and the art of speech. Under his apparent logocentric language, male or misogynist, Une Gourmandise unveiled a feminine handwriting that can be understood in the light of the work of Helene Cixous. This article explores the subject of food and its relationship to the writing, following the trail of one of the most eminent Parisian food critics, on the eve of his death.

Je propose de regarder le court roman gastronomique de Muriel Barbery, paru en 2000, et l'art du discours. Sous son apparent langage …

À La Recherche Du «Bourgeois»: Drame Sérieux Et Tentations Narratives Chez Diderot, Olivier M. Delers

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

Dans le drame bourgeois de Diderot, il n'y a pas de « bourgeois». Pas de personnages bourgeois (par exemple, pas de M. Jourdain ou de Turcaret dans le rôle du bourgeois à ridiculiser), pas de valeurs bourgeoises (qui sont après tout une invention du XIX^e siècle), pas d'esprit de groupe bourgeois - de conscience de classe - qui unirait et distinguerait les protagonistes du Fils naturel (1757) et du Pere de famille (1758). Béatrice Didier, dans son Diderot dramaturge du vivant, remarque ce flottement conceptuel sans pour autant s'en distancer : « il s'agit de représenter la vie …

Don, Obligation Et Reconnaissance Dans Les Lettres D’Une Péruvienne De Graffigny, Olivier M. Delers

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

La critique, des deux cotés de l’Atlantique, est restée étrangement silencieuse sur le rôle central que joue le don – ainsi que la dette de gratitude qu’il instaure – dans la progression narrative du roman et le développement émotionnel de l’héroïne. Le thème du don, quand il est mentionné, reste souvent cantonné à un rôle mineur, sans qu’on ne tienne compte de son importance systémique. Anne Dugan, par exemple, remarque que Zilia décrit une société où le lien qui régit les relations interpersonnelles n’est plus lié à des principes éthiques, ce qui encourage des formes d’échange basées, plus ou moins …

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

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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- …

Reconnaissance De Dette : Don Et Centre-Don Dans Histoire D'Ernestine De Marie Riccoboni, Olivier M. Delers

Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications

Qu’est-ce qu'un roman comme Histoire d' Ernestine, mineur même dans l'œuvre de Marie Riccoboni, peut-il bien nous apprendre sur l'anagnorisis aristotélicienne? Après tout, une histoire d 'amour qui se conclut par un mariage entre un riche aristocrate et une jeune orpheline au revenus modestes et d'une honnêteté indiscutable ne défraye pas la chroniq ue de l'univers romanesque du dix-huitième siècle. Deux mots pour apporter un début de réponse: ignorance et noblesse, deux mots étymologiquement liés au morphème grec 'gno' qui signifie savoir, connaissance, morphème que nous retrouvons bien sur dans anagnorisis. Histoire d' Ernestine est le récit …

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.

Salvator Rosa In French Literature: From The Bizarre To The Sublime, James S. Patty

Studies in Romance Languages Series

"Salvator Rosa (1615–1673) was a colorful and controversial Italian painter, talented musician, a notable comic actor, a prolific correspondent, and a successful satirist and poet. His paintings, especially his rugged landscapes and their evocation of the sublime, appealed to Romantic writers, and his work was highly influential on several generations of European writers. James S. Patty analyzes Rosa’s tremendous influence on French writers, chiefly those of the nineteenth century, such as Stendhal, Honoré de Balzac, Victor Hugo, George Sand, and Théophile Gautier. Arranged in chronological order, with numerous quotations from French fiction, poetry, drama, art criticism, art history, literary history, …

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.

The Jean Cocteau Collection: How 'Astonishing'?, Paul J. Archambault

The Courier

Between 1963 and 1971, the Syracuse University Library acquired more than two hundred fifty holograph manuscripts by Jean Cocteau. These are now to be found in the George Arents Research Library for Special Collections, where they enhance an already rich assortment of French manuscripts that have been thoroughly listed in a previous article in the Courier. An abridged history of their acquisition might be told here. The story is interesting, for it includes several of those ironical twists that made so much of Cocteau's life seem like a chassé-croisé with Death, choreographed by the artist himself.

French Literary Manuscripts At Syracuse University, Edward Lyon

The Courier

An unexpected and largely unrecognized strength of the George Arents Research Library at Syracuse University lies in French literary manuscripts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Authors' letters, autograph manuscripts and typescripts, and revisions in proof, as well as publishers' records, offer essential biographical, textual, and bibliographic documentation. Even though French literature has not been a primary collecting area, Syracuse University has had the good fortune to acquire individual items and collections of variety and depth. The summary that follows is offered as both an introduction to these collections and an invitation to scholarship.

Includes an annotated bibliography of Syracuse …

A Gift From Marguerite Yourcenar, Member Of The Academie Francaise, Syracuse University

The Courier

Mme. Marguerite Yourcenar, distinguished French writer and the first woman to be elected to the Academie Francaise in its 346-year history, has generously presented seventeen of her books to the Syracuse University Libraries. Some are early editions of special value, and one, Nouvelles orientales (Gallimard, 1938), is extensively corrected in her own hand. All the books contain a presentation inscription.

Includes a comprehensive list of the books that were donated.