French and Francophone Literature Commons^™

Abstracts (N° 96/97)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Lieux Fictifs, Réelles Critiques : Kaveena De Boubacar Boris Diop, Morgan Faulkner

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This article examines the relationship between invention and reality in Boubacar Boris Diop’s novel, Kaveena (2006). The author intertwines the postcolonial story of a fictional African country with that of the real history of the continent. The fictional city of Maren and the region of Nimba are described in relation to Cameroun, Rwanda and Sierra Leone, among other concrete locations. Invented characters and those known by the reader (Patrice Lumumba, Idi Amin, etc.) both occupy space in the text. What narrative practices allow this association of the fictional story and historic details? What are the effects? How does this mix …

Parcours De Lectures D’Hier À Aujourd’Hui : Trois Siècles De Littératures Francophones, Christiane Ndiaye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Forty years ago, the francophone literatures of Africa and the Caribbean were still taught as “emerging” literatures having allegedly entered the international literary scene with the Negritude movement. Since then, critical perspectives have evolved, considerably modifying this way of presenting the history of francophone literatures of the South. Today it is rather the history of a constant questioning of the various pernicious boundaries drawn since colonial times, a history of constantly renewed inventiveness. I retrace some facts of interest retained from my own continuous discovery of this multifaced territory, starting with the still little-known history of Haitian literature of the …

Qu’Est-Ce Qu’Un Texte Francophone? Reconstruire Une Histoire Oubliée: Bakary Et Lucie... Qui Est Le « Nègre » ?, Eloise A. Brière

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

After World War I, writing by France’s colonial subjects began disrupting the French literary field. Among the first in this early literary series, Force-Bonté (1926) by Bakary Diallo was tainted from the start because it was associated with Lucie Cousturier. It was speculated/surmised she was Diallo’s “godmother” or ghost-writer, since she was known for having taught French to the Senegalese soldiers billeted near her home during the war. Changes within the contexts available to critics since Lebel’s L’Afrique Occidentale dans la littérature française, the first work devoted to African literature, as well as new information studied here, enable a clearer …

La Critique Des Littératures Francophones Et Quelques-Unes De Ses Fictions « Modernes » Et Culturalistes : L’Exemplarité De La Fiction Haïtienne Contemporaine, Yolaine Parisot

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Critics of Francophone literature from the south have long Critics of Francophone literature from the South have long attracted several clichés or fictions around notions of nation, oral tradition, modernity, and culture. For a long time, they reproduced the hierarchies of Western literary genres and the exclusion of pop culture. However, contemporary critical discourses on literary fiction and fictionality in the Caribbean, Africa and the Indian Ocean literatures tend to renew this culturalist perspective. Heir to both the critical discourse of the 19th century and the local genre of Lodyans, ultra-contemporary Haitian fiction offers an epistemic exemplarity that undermines …

Présence Francophone, Numéro 96/97

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

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.

Désexualiser Le Texte Féminin Francophone?, Mbaye Diouf

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This study shows that a recurring criticism of Francophone literatures often borrows from the essentialist theses of colonial anthropology, and that tendency is even stronger when it comes to the novels by Francophone women writers. The overwhelming majority of critical studies devoted to the subject continue to consider their works as the simple feminist discourses or even the naive testimonies. However, this criticism forgets that since the 1990s, Francophone women’s writing has been part of a world literature that articulates deep postcolonial mutations, both generic and discursive, and reassesses the sexual etiology of fictional societies. This is the subject of …

Combat Esthétique Et Mémoire Militante: Le Double Engagement De Boubacar Boris Diop, Serigne Seye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

In this article, I argue that in Boubacar Boris Diop’s work, the articulation between aesthetic experimence and writing from memory confers on his character-narrators the functions of “écrivain-écrivain” and “écrivain porte-parole”. This sheds light on both aspects of the Senegalese’s author commitment through his main characters, as most of them are writers who themselves show the mechanism of creation of the novel. This text is resulting from a writing resolutely writing focused turned towards its own materiality. This article aims to demonstrate that the representation of the memory in Diop’s fiction is doubly militant. It testifies …

Rosélie Thibaudin Et L’Expérience Picturale Dans Histoire De La Femme Cannibale De Maryse Condé, Kanaté Dahouda

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Maryse Condé is a renowned French Caribbean writer from Guadeloupe. She is the author of numerous novels, including The Story of the Cannibal Woman. This novel follows the life of Rosélie Thibaudin and portrays her obsession with being part of the gallery of famous artists like Modigliani, Wifredo Lam and Roberto Matta. As she strives to fulfill her quest for artistic recognition and freedom, Roselie faces social constraints that shape the nature of her relationships with her family and Stephen, as well as with her colleagues and students at the academy of the arts called La América. Through …

Parties Annexes (N° 96/97)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Front Matter And Table Of Contents (N° 96/97)

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

No abstract provided.

Présence Ou Absence Africaine, Françoise Naudillon

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Among the institutions created in the post-war years, Présence Africaine (1947) and Le Monde diplomatique (1954) share in many ways the same vision of the contours of the world to come, between decolonization and Christianity. At the heart of debates from the 1950s to the 1980s, the two publications animate at the same time as they organize the intellectual life of four decades in France and in the former colonies. Between ideological fraternities, Third World or Pan-Africanism, anti-imperialism or anti-colonialism, the journalists of Le Monde and the editors of Présence Africaine have pursued a dialogue made up of collaborations, connivance …

Penser La Perte Radicale Dans L’Atlantique Sud, Christian Uwe

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The metaphor of the mangrove captures an aesthetic issue common to works of Glissant and Condé: how to write the geography of a radical loss and an unexpected digenesis. As Drabinski (2019) remarks, the Glissantian mangrove is the paradoxical place of an aesthetic of the abyss, which tries to capture the fragile birth instead of a loss without traces. Condé, for her part, makes the mangrove the symbol of a silent writing (Lachman, 2014) as well as of a land trapped in its own alienated history. As a recurring image in Caribbean literature – to the point of problematizing, most …

Le Mal Politique Dans La Nuit De L’Imoko De Boubacar Boris Diop, Kodjo Attikpoé

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

According to his credo that African literature remains fundamentally inseparable from its initial political goals, Boubacar Boris Diop constantly denounces and criticizes ceaselessly African political issues in his works. His collection of short stories, La nuit de l’Imoko (2013), deals primarily with the question of political evil and thus bears witness to the author’s literary project. This article examines some aspects of this question in La nuit de l’Imoko, in particular the representation of the President and the intervention of political power in the cultural world. Boubacar Boris Diop’s short stories are certainly devoted to tackle so-called African evil, …

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.

Comme Un Goût De Néo-Polar : Crimes Et État Criminel Dans La Fiction De Théo Ananissoh, Sélom Komlan Gbanou

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The work of Théo Ananissoh is a quest for meaning: the meaning of life, the meaning of political embezzlement and, above all, the meaning of these deep motives which affect social and ontological consciousness. His aesthetic choice orients him towards detective novels with characters explicitly involved in machinery and political machinations, through which he aims to show, with the help of insightful but detached observation and an investigation aimed only at providing information, exactly how the state poaches/interferes in the lives of its citizens. This article deals with detective novels as depictions of criminal intrigue in the postcolonial state in …

Discours Critique Du Polar D’Afrique Francophone : Formes Et Enjeux, Adama Togola

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Since the emergence of detective fiction in African francophone novel in the 1990s, many critical studies have been devoted to it. However, there are a few stereotypes and themes that a certain critique of generic obedience brings to light when it comes to analyzing the aesthetic and epistemological value of the African thriller. Some of these studies are in fact limited to the ways in which many writers adapt general aesthetic conventions of this genre, without looking at the ways these authors innovate in their works. This study questions the foundations of critical discourse on African detective fiction and shows …

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 …

The Stylistic Development Of Jean Despujols (1886-1965), Kelly M. Ward

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis is the first comprehensive scholarly analysis of the life and most extant works by Jean Despujols. The French and later naturalized American painter, writer, poet, philosopher, deep-thinker, and mystic was best known for his Neoclassical and academic style. This thesis briefly discusses the artist’s beginnings as a young painter at the School of Fine Arts in Bordeaux and in Paris, his sketches in the trenches of the First World War, his time at the Villa Medicis after winning the distinguished Rome Prize, and his paintings and thoughts as a philosopher and political writer throughout his life. An outstanding …

Translating Nonsense: An Analysis Of The Poem “Jabberwocky” And Two French Translations, Kylie R. Deer

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Is it possible to translate nonsense? If yes, then how?

Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” is a nonsense poem in which many of the words are invented out of the author’s imagination. As a result, readers depend on Carroll to explain the meanings of such words. The first stanza of “Jabberwocky,” chosen since it contains the largest number of nonsense words in the poem, was analyzed and compared to the first stanza of two French translations (“Le Jaseroque” by Frank L. Warrin and “Bredoulocheux” by Henri Parisot). A word-by-word, and to an extent, syllable-by-syllable close reading of the three texts was performed …

Lydie Salvayre, Maintenant Même, Warren Motte, Lydie Salvayre, Bernard Wallet, David Lopez, Marie Cosnay, Mahir Guven, Stéphane Bikialo

Zea E-Books Collection

Warren Motte, «Dans le vif du vivant»

Lydie Salvayre et Warren Motte, «Une conversation avec Lydie Salvayre»

Lydie Salvayre, «Deux artistes»

Lydie Salvayre, «Projet en cours»

Lydie Salvayre, «Quatre photos»

Bernard Wallet, «Lydie Salvayre, écrivain baroque’n’roll»

David Lopez, «Almuerz»

Marie Cosnay, «Diamant brut»

Mahir Guven, «À propos de Lydie Salvayre»

Stéphane Bikialo, «Éloge de la fuite»

«Ouvrages de Lydie Salvayre»

Une Exploration Du Style Et Du Message Dans Une Sélection D’Œuvres D’Annie Ernaux : L’Écriture « Qui Ne Ment Pas », Maya Benson

Honors Scholar Theses

Author Annie Ernaux comes from a humble background, but throughout her career she has proven to be on par with any member of the French literary elite. She has dominated the literary field in France for decades, publishing more than twenty books with Gallimard since 1974.

Annie Ernaux centers her writing around her own experiences. Some of her works are presented in the form of personal diaries. Journal du dehors(1993), for example, serves as a private diary bringing together moments from Ernaux’s life in the urban city of Cergy-Pontoise between 1985 and 1992, and Regarde les lumières mon amour …

Setting The Stage: The Phantom Of The Opera And Gothic Space, Zitaanne Reno

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

First published from 1909 to 1910, Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera tells the story of Erik, the titular deformed composer, and his dark love for a beautiful soprano. Similar to Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, another French story involving a deformed man in love with a beautiful woman, the setting is a crucial aspect of the novel. Examining the Palais Garnier, a labyrinthine building composed of staircases, passageways, trapdoors, and a subterranean lake, in conjunction with Notre Dame, a cathedral utilizing traditionally gothic architecture, reveals how the opera house functions as a gothic space. Rather …

Mille-Feuille Magazine Littéraire, Spring/Printemps 2021, Pascale-Anne Brault

Mille-Feuille Magazine Littéraire

Nous sommes heureux de pouvoir vous présenter le vingt-sixième numéro de Mille-Feuille et remercions tous les participants ainsi que le Doyen de Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, le Département de Langues Modernes et ses professeurs, le Study Abroad Office de DePaul University, ainsi que Curie High School qui nous ont permis, grâce à leurs subventions généreuses et leurs nombreuses contributions, de donner suite à nos premiers numéros. Bonne lecture !

The Surreal Voice In Milan's Itinerant Poetics: Delio Tessa To Franco Loi, Jason Collins

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Over the course of Italy’s linguistic history, dialect literature has evolved a s a genre unto itself. The scope of research presented in this study examines the question of dialect literature as a valid genre which bears lines of demarcation that would assign it the distinction of genre. Research reveals that in fact the simple election of a language, or dialect, does not itself constitute a genre; moreover, most dialect literature bears characteristics that would neatly place it in another genre.

To examine this verity, this research compares two dialect poets who employ Milanese as a means of transmission …

Rues Étrangères (À Nous-Mêmes): 'Les Enchantements Ordinaires' De Sarah Marylou Brideau, Peter Schulman, Benoit Doyon-Gosselin (Ed.), Julien Desrochers (Ed.), Nicolas Nicaise (Ed.)

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

[Premier paragraphe] Comme les titres de ses trois recueils de poésie l’annoncent (Romanichelle, Rues étrangères et Coeurs nomades1), les poèmes de Sarah Marylou Brideau ont tous comme moteur un esprit bohémien qui la pousse à rechercher de nouveaux mondes hors de son domicile et à se demander : « Ça sert à quoi d’avoir une maison / sans avoir de chez soi ? » (RE, 55). Or, les espaces qu’elle creuse ne sont ni lointains ni exotiques, mais plutôt tout simplement quotidiens. En effet, par le biais des cafés, des clubs de jazz, des rues qu’elle fréquente, elle découvre un …

Community Unclaimed: Plurality And The Problem Of Sovereignty In Bataille, Nancy, And Blanchot, Gregory J. Grobmeier

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation takes up the exchange between three prominent French thinkers on the question of “community”: Georges Bataille, Jean-Luc Nancy, and Maurice Blanchot. Taken together, and starting with Bataille’s prewar writings and communitarian activism in the 1930s, the exchange between them now spans nearly a century. Georges Bataille’s importance as a political thinker and writer was brought out of relative obscurity with the publication of Jean-Luc Nancy’s “La Communauté désoeuvrée” in 1983. Less than a year after the appearance of Nancy’s inaugural essay, Maurice Blanchot, a close friend of the late Bataille, published La Communauté inavouable. Blanchot’s text was …

The Provocative Strangeness Of Camus's L'Etranger And Coetzee's Disgrace, Phyllis E. Vanslyck

Publications and Research

Albert Camus’s L’Etranger (1942) and J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), are two of the most controversial novels of the twentieth century. Their contested and exhaustive critical reception suggests that readers continue to be hailed by these texts in complex ethical ways. In each text, a white male protagonist engages in a violent encounter with an individual identified as Other. If they initially arouse discomfort by appearing to divest others of their alterity, these characters ultimately recognize and preserve that otherness, inviting readers to consider the requirement that we privilege others over ourselves in order to become subjects.

La Voix Humaniste Dans La Grève Des Bàttu, Lauren Redding

Theses and Dissertations--Modern and Classical Languages, Literature and Cultures

This research explores how West African postcolonial literature offers a social critique of society, trapped between past and future, and how such a critique treats the ideas of feminism, westernization, and humanism. I then relate this analysis to the current theories of négritude and afropolitanism, as discussed in Sortir de la Grande Nuit by author Achille Mbembe, which creates a meaningful context and future implications for the ideas already examined. The primary text I am working with, because it covers a wide range of topics through social critique, and because the author is one of the first of her kind, …