French Studies - current issue

Performing Desire: Stendhal's Theatrical Heroines

Scott, M. — 2008-06-27

Stendhal's independent heroines, often associated with a taste for the theatrical, do not tend to win the preference of his male heroes. As a result, they are often considered by critics to be less successful than their more traditionally ‘feminine’ counterparts in achieving their goals. However, this paper argues that characters such as Mathilde de La Mole, la Sanseverina, Lamiel, Mina Wanghen and Mina de Vanghel achieve a level of control over their own destinies unknown to Stendhal's more retiring heroines, such Mme de Rênal, Clélia Conti, Mme de Chasteller and Armance. Consequently, the author's less ‘natural’ female characters turn out in fact to be more authentic, in existential terms at least, than their more traditional sisters. The authenticity of these heroines, interpreted here as their success in defining themselves as subjects rather than objects of desire, is shown by this article to be related, somewhat paradoxically, to their interest in theatrical fakery. In making this argument, the paper engages with the ideas of, among others, Simone de Beauvoir and Jacques Lacan.

Mimesis and Alterity: Michel Leiris's Ethnography and Poetics of Spirit Possession

Albers, I. — 2008-06-27

The title of Leiris's diary L'Afrique fantôme has mostly been understood as a critique of European Africanist discourse. However, Leiris does a lot more than just denounce (his own) exoticism. This article argues that the title of his diary has to be read with reference to the French Surrealist and ethnographer's experience during his stay in Gondar while studying the zar, a popular cult of spirit possession. These ecstatic cults have been described as performing a mimetic relation to alterity (Taussig) or as an ‘interpretation of the Other by mimesis’ (Kramer). Re-enacting the Other leads to a liberation from its power by means of imitation. It is shown that this corresponds to Leiris's own retrospective studies of the zar cult as a cathartic externalization of alterity and as a theatre of alterity. In his failed search for a truly sacral, authentically primitive or salutary ritual, Leiris above all discovered one particular ritual: writing, ‘poésie’. This refers to what now appears as a European form of spirit possession developing its own rituals — rituals of conjuring ‘phantoms’ as well as ones of defence and exorcism. In Leiris, the conjuring (as well as the therapy) becomes a literary domain, whereas the banishment of the phantom is the domain of theory or research. Talking as one who is possessed and talking about possession, inseparably linked in the diary, are associated with discourses of autobiographical self-description and ethnographic description of otherness, of ‘expérience poétique’ and ‘étude ethnologique’.

Timely Resistance in the Documentary Work of Dominique Cabrera

Dobson, J. — 2008-06-27

Dominique Cabrera's œuvre attests to a consistent preoccupation with the representation and construction of a bonheur collectif. Through a detailed analysis of two documentary films, Chronique d'une banlieue ordinaire (1992) and Demain et encore demain (journal 1995) (1997), this article will reveal her adoption of the documentary as a therapeutic form in opposition to dominant Griersonian modes of documentary that counter the potential empowerment of representation with the conferral of victimhood on its subjects. Cabrera's films avoid such heritages through their insistence on a formal mise en abyme of documentary processes to perform a réinsertion sociale of the stigmatized communities of Val Fourré and a moving réinsertion temporelle of the filmmaker herself in the first-person confessional Demain et encore demain. This mise en abyme includes a meditation on the ontology of the photographic image and its pervasive relationship with mortality; both films sensitize their audience to the relationship between image, time and narrative. Such arguments are presented within the context of the dramatic increase in production of (first-person) documentary in contemporary France and the current crisis of legitimization in the conventional documentary form.

Towards an Ethics of Witness, or the Story and History of 'une minuscule detresse' in Annie Ernaux's L'Evenement and Nancy Huston's Instruments des tenebres

Sardin, P. — 2008-06-27

This paper investigates what is at stake, ethically and aesthetically, in writing about the disturbing issues of abortion and neonaticide. It focuses on L'Événement by Annie Ernaux and on Nancy Huston's Instruments des ténèbres. Though very different in form and content, these two novels, written from a distinctively female viewpoint, are metatextual works which reflect on the act of writing such taboos, and of representing irrational, defective mothers in the context of poststructuralism and postmodernism. In her exploration of the genre of the memoir and that of historiography as defined by Paul Ricoeur, Ernaux seeks a form of writing which discards pathos and the moral involvement of the reader, while Huston attempts something similar through humour and the grotesque. Yet at the same time, these novelists renegotiate the notion of retelling experience as defined by Walter Benjamin in ‘The storyteller’ — the rewriting of the chronology of excruciating events, drawing a parallel between private and public history. In this perspective, their depiction of dark mothers, which goes against the comforting myth of the good mother, reads as a political and humanistic project. Ernaux's and Huston's respective aesthetics define a new kind of ethics involving the reader and centring on the notion of witness, exhorting their readers to undertake a performative reading.

Promenades de lecteurs dans Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur d'Eric Chevillard

Tobiassen, E. B. — 2008-06-27

Le roman Le Vaillant Petit Tailleur d'Éric Chevillard (2003), écrivain dont la production figure peut-être parmi les œuvres en prose les plus notoires de la littérature française actuelle, a été perçu par la critique comme une attaque sévère contre la forme traditionnelle du conte de fées. Explorant une nouvelle piste, cet article aborde le roman sous l'angle de la réception littéraire, argumentant que la préoccupation cruciale de son narrateur-auteur est au contraire celle qui consiste à inventer un lecteur de son propre texte. Qui est ce lecteur en jeu dans l'œuvre? Quel(s) lecteur(s) ce texte se présume-t-il? Quelles figures de lecteurs imagine-t-il au fil des pages? Et quelle place cette œuvre métatextuelle, intelligemment agencée, demandant recul, ruse, et perspicacité de la part de son lecteur, laisse-t-elle à la jouissance, à l'envoûtement? L'analyse du Vaillant Petit Tailleur sous cette lumière inédite permet de reconsidérer l'attitude distanciée souvent attribuée au lecteur de la métafiction moderne. S'il est un écrivain tenant d'une conception ‘intellectuelle’ du roman, refusant l'immersion mimétique à l'égard du personnage au profit d'un développement excessif du potentiel réflexif du texte, Chevillard est pourtant fort loin de vouer son lecteur à l'abstinence du plaisir.

Approaches to Teaching the 'Song of Roland'

Busby, K. — 2008-06-27

Postcolonial Fictions in the 'Roman de Perceforest': Cultural Identities and Hybridities

Swift, H. J. — 2008-06-27

Rossignos by John of Howden

Le Saux, F. — 2008-06-27

Othon de Grandson, chevalier et poete

Kelly, D. — 2008-06-27

The Arthur of the French: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval French and Occitan Literature

Noble, P. — 2008-06-27

Remembrances et resveries. Melanges Jean Batany

Burrows, D. — 2008-06-27

Culinary Comedy in Medieval French Literature

Burrows, D. — 2008-06-27

Le Parnasse et le Palais: L'OEuvre de Furetiere et la genese du premier dictionnaire encyclopedique en langue francaise (1649-1690)

Ayres-Bennett, W. — 2008-06-27

L'Optique du discours au XVIIe siecle: De la rhetorique des jesuites au style de la raison moderne (Descartes, Pascal)

Phillips, H. — 2008-06-27

Theatre under Louis XIV: Cross-Casting and the Performance of Gender in Drama, Ballet and Opera

Greenberg, M. — 2008-06-27

Etudes sur le XVIIe siecle

Parish, R. — 2008-06-27

OEuvres completes de Voltaire, 32B. OEuvres de 1750-1752 (II)

James, E. — 2008-06-27

Considerations sur les m{oelig}urs de ce siecle

Phillips, J. — 2008-06-27

Diderot, lecteur et interprete de Leibniz

Tunstall, K. E. — 2008-06-27

Diderot and European Culture

Phillips, J. — 2008-06-27

Sade moraliste: Le Devoilement de la pensee sadienne a la lumiere de la reforme penale au XVIIIe siecle

Phillips, J. — 2008-06-27

Blackmail, Scandal, and Revolution: London's French Libellistes, 1758-92

Hanrahan, J. — 2008-06-27

Daily Life during the French Revolution

Doyle, W. — 2008-06-27

Memoires et Journal, 1777-1867

Gerson, S. — 2008-06-27

Ecrire son temps: Les Memoires en France de 1815 a 1848

Manzini, F. — 2008-06-27

Balzac avant Balzac

Watts, A. — 2008-06-27

Character and Meaning in the Novels of Victor Hugo

Stephens, B. — 2008-06-27

Victor Hugo 6 -- L'Ecriture poetique

Stephens, B. — 2008-06-27

Jules Verne: The Definitive Biography

Unwin, T. — 2008-06-27

De Corbiere a Tristan. 'Les Amours jaunes': une quete de l'identite

Lunn-Rockliffe, K. — 2008-06-27

Nouvelles francaises du dix-neuvieme siecle: Anthologie

Cogman, P. — 2008-06-27

Optiques: The Science of the Eye and the Birth of Modern French Fiction

Tilby, M. — 2008-06-27

Paris-Edinburgh: Cultural Connections in the Belle Epoque

Anderson, R. D. — 2008-06-27

French Symbolist Poetry and the Idea of Music

Dayan, P. — 2008-06-27

An Empire Divided: Religion, Republicanism, and the Making of French Colonialism, 1880-1914

Crowley, P. — 2008-06-27

Andre Gide and the Second World War: A Novelist's Occupation

Mercier, P. — 2008-06-27

Andre Breton: Une histoire d'eau

Adamowicz, E. — 2008-06-27

Lettres atlantiques

Marx, W. — 2008-06-27

A Time of Transition in the French Novel: 'Les Annees tournantes' 1928-1934

Redfern, W. — 2008-06-27

Diary of a Philosophy Student, Volume I, 1926-7

Tidd, U. — 2008-06-27

Artists, Intellectuals and World War II: The Pontigny Encounters at Mount Holyoke College, 1942-1944

Walker, D. H. — 2008-06-27

Philippe Jaccottet: L'Evidence du simple et l'eclat de l'obscur

O'Connor, C. — 2008-06-27

Parcours critique II (1959-1991)

Jones, E. H. — 2008-06-27

Mimer, Miner, Rimer: Le Cycle romanesque de Jacques Roubaud

Sweeney, N. — 2008-06-27

The Games of Fiction: Georges Perec and Modern French Ludic Narrative

Bellos, D. — 2008-06-27

Denis Roche: l'un ecrit, l'autre photographie

Welch, E. — 2008-06-27

Sylvie Germain: OEuvre romanesque. Un monde de cryptes et de fantomes

Cooke, P. — 2008-06-27

The French New Wave: A New Look

Reader, K. — 2008-06-27

Semiologies of Travel: From Gautier to Baudrillard

Jones, K. N. — 2008-06-27

France/China. Intercultural Imaginings

Yee, J. — 2008-06-27

Violence et creativite de l'ecriture algerienne au feminin

Crowley, P. — 2008-06-27

Focalizing the Body in Contemporary Women's Writing and Filmmaking in France

Fayard, N. — 2008-06-27

Biography and the Question of Literature in France

Bellos, D. — 2008-06-27

Genese et autofiction

Jones, E. H. — 2008-06-27

Le Recueil litteraire: Pratiques et theorie d'une forme

Crowley, P. — 2008-06-27

The Extreme Right in France: From Petain to Le Pen

Griffin, R. — 2008-06-27

Translating Voices/Translating Regions

Ballard, M. — 2008-06-27

Crime and Media in Contemporary France

Hardwick, L. — 2008-06-27

Discours rapporte(s): Approche(s) linguistique(s) et/ou traductologique(s)

Armstrong, N. — 2008-06-27

Speaking Better French: Faux Amis. Why saying 'Sensible' isn't Sensible, and why you should never say there are 'Preservatifs' in your Food

Hawkins, R. — 2008-06-27

Books Received

2008-06-27

Forthcoming articles

2008-06-27