French Literature and Asia in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

The investigation of relations between the occident and the orient has been a growing avenue of concentration in France during the last few decades, in large measure because of the efforts of Etiemble, to whom the present volume is dedicated, and to the more recent activities of Muriel Détrie, its editor. The twenty-seven articles of the collection represent a significant attempt to discover what has been published concerning literary contacts between France and Asia in translation and other genres, the public for whom these works have been intended, the reception they have encountered, the impact they have had upon literary creation as such, and the role of kindred forms of mediation. In collections of this nature in which encyclopedic range is combined with individual authorship, uniformity and completeness are impossible to obtain. A major difficulty apart from language differences is the circumstance that Asia possesses even less of a united political and cultural homogeneity or history than Europe. Consequently each linguistic, political and geographical segment must be treated separately. Although suffering from these handicaps, the present volume on the whole provides both a panoramic view and close analysis of the presence of French culture in the various literatures of Asia as well as the reverse process of the reception of Asian works in France.