Francophone Texts Research Articles

Archipelagic Stories, Anguilliform Resistances

This article addresses the persistent anthropocentric bias of archipelagic studies. It asks: What would it mean to invite more-than-human and transspecies perspectives into our theorizations of archipelagoes? This interrogation is addressed by following the meanderings of the eel—famously recognized as “the most mysterious creature in the natural world”—through two Francophone texts arising from the Indian Ocean: the first is Mauritian author Ananda Devi's novella La vie de Joséphin le fou (2003), and the second is Comoran author Ali Zamir's novel Anguille sous roche (2016). Through detailed literary analysis, this article demonstrates that in both prose narratives, the perspectives of marine creatures are crucial to the complete telling of intergenerational violence: in particular, the seemingly “infinite” memory and determination of eels becomes an antidote to the fragmentation caused by human trauma. Additionally, this article argues that in both texts, the anguilliform is not simply a theme but also a method, which allows for novel archipelagic forms of storytelling and memory that are as slippery and sinuous as the animals who inspire it. The eel's anguilliform movement thus becomes a source of stylistic and narrative renewal, which allows both texts to embody commentary on the ethical slipperiness of their narratives, as well as on readers’ positionality and complicity.

“Measuring Silences” in the Translation of Awa Thiam's La Parole aux Négresses

An overlooked, yet significant text in the genealogy of intersectionality and Black feminist theory is Awa Thiam’s 1978 text La Parole aux Négresses. This paper examines the ways that the English translation, Speak Out, Black Sisters: Feminism and Oppression in Black Africa,though widening the audience for Thiam’s work, engages in various practices of erasure that undermine Thiam’s academic authority, theoretical contributions, activist insights, and ultimately, her own voice. Namely, I contend that these practices, which scholars have linked to receptions and English translations of Black Francophone texts in particular, include de-formalization, domestication, de-philosophizing, untracing, and invisibilisation. I seek not just to focus on the “negative” aspect of these silences, but also to enact a partial restitution of Thiam’s insights from the original French text. Further, re-engaging with her text, contributions, and insights calls for more reflexivity around the politics of translation, English language hegemony, and recognition of African feminist scholarship.

Lecture empathique et trauma de la guerre d’Algérie chez Assia Djebar, Boualem Sansal et Leila Sebbar

This article analyses the narrative processes and literary strategies that seek to engender the reader’s empathy for the main characters in three Francophone texts that depict the trauma of the Algerian War of independence. Each text starts from a real event by intertwining historical facts and the present with fiction, allowing for a better understanding of the postcolonial situation. These expectations are reinforced by Djebar’s and Sansal’s paratexts. Drawing on the theories of Suzanne Keen and Fritz Breithaupt empathy can especially be favoured by internal focalization, the characters’ empathic interpersonal relationships as well as polyphony. The imaginative construction of the other is emphasized as necessary, while the detailed description of historical facts may rather provoke feelings of pity. A fortiori, empathy can decline or be blocked in the passages, which go against the moral convictions of the reader. This imaginative resistance is due to the fact that these passages concern reality and not fiction

Unity or Contiguity: Towards a New Theory of Romani Literature

Romani literature has an important role in challenging the predominant negative views about Roma, but its influence is lessened by the minimization of Romani cultural expressions, literature being one of them. In this paper, after a theoretical positioning of Romani literature, I show how contemporary Romani literature could expand its position of influence through a re-evaluation of what constitutes the literary canon, and by the promotion, by scholars and specialists, of a “Romani literary complex.” As a case study, I discuss here two Francophone texts, by a Roma (Anina Ciuciu) and by a non-Roma (Valérie Rodrigue), positing that, although not “literary” in the traditional sense, both of them could be considered part of an emerging Romani literarycomplex that , in turn, might accelerate the institutionalization of this literature.

Dire l’indicible: Children, trauma and silences in Kim Thúy’s Ru and Grace Ly’s Jeune fille modèle

This article articulates the notion of silences that endure in the aftermath of the Indochina war and the traumatic impact on children. Through an analysis of two Francophone texts, Grace Ly’s Jeune fille modèle and Kim Thúy’s Ru, this study demonstrates that it is silence which evokes and solidifies the trauma experienced by victims of war; this is transmitted to their children despite attempts at secrecy and endeavours to protect children from such trauma. It examines the ways in which narrating trauma and breaking silences play a role in recuperating both history and personal history. In foregrounding the voices of those who have died and haunt subsequent generations, the article discusses the silences that pervade Ru and Jeune fille modèle in order to gauge the extent to which narrating stories, finding one’s voice and breaking silences become a means of obtaining freedom and alleviating some of the dolour of war and losses. In so doing, it analyses the ways in which children enable these healing processes to take place and eventually permit multiple voices to break through the narrative fibre in order to create redemption stories.

Rewriting Antiquity: Saint Augustine as Mnemonic Figure in Francophone Texts of the Maghreb

In line with current debates on African cultural heritage, this article considers the historical dislocation and a recent revival of Augustine of Hippo as a long-time hidden figure of North African memory. It focuses on the evolution of transcultural meaning in the process of memorization from colonial to postcolonial times. The main emphasis will be on the Algerian context, where Augustine was incorporated into colonial myth (Bertrand’s Afrique latine), what provoked a rejection until his figure was re-appropriated and shaped into a site of Maghrebian memory.

Scoring Race: Jazz, Fiction, and Francophone Africa by Pim Higginson

Reviewed by: Scoring Race: Jazz, Fiction, and Francophone Africa by Pim Higginson Eloïse Brezault Scoring Race: Jazz, Fiction, and Francophone Africa BY PIM HIGGINSON James Currey, 2017. ix + 237 pp. ISBN 9781847011558 cloth. In his latest book, Scoring Race: Jazz, Fiction, and Francophone Africa, Pim Higginson examines brilliantly the role jazz has played in major French and African Francophone texts since the colonial era. The book starts off with the vivid image of African American Louis Armstrong touring in Africa, under the auspice of the US State Department, to counter communist rhetoric "portraying the United States as culturally barbaric" (9). Indeed, pushed by the CIA, Armstrong played several times in Leopoldville (Oct 29, 1960) and Elizabethville (December 4, 1960), following the arrest of Patrice Lumumba. During his stay in newly independent Democratic Republic of Congo, Armstrong is carried on a "throne" by African porters through the streets of Kinshasa on his way to the stadium, which, as Higginson recalls, "juxtaposed evocations of Congolese royalty … and the famously racist Belgian comic strip hero, Tintin" (9). Not only did Armstrong encapsulate at the time the stereotypical racialized image of a jazz musician with a big smile, but he also performed according to the script, never questioning publicly the arrest of Lumumba. One can thus question his agency, in a newly independent nation on the verge of collapsing into Mobutu's dictatorship. This image illustrates perfectly the racial score music can represent: "the most recognizable figure in jazz had a unique and vexed role and illustrates why jazz, particularly in a French and Francophone context, is never simply music as well as why African authors … have also remained wary of it" (12). Drawing from this idea, Higginson then explores the philosophical representations of jazz in European and African colonial and postcolonial settings, examining why music has been, since the slave trade, the characteristics of African people, at least in the eyes of Europeans, but also in the claim of African's Negritude. Going back to Plato's disdain for music when compared to philosophy, Higginson carefully demonstrates how philosophers have internalized Plato's vision; music, unlike philosophy, is associated with leisure, it "speaks by means of mere sensations without concepts" (20) and it moves us bodily, remaining in the domain of the vulgar, the emotional. Philosophers after Plato such as Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, or Hegel have thus contributed to hierarchizing the arts, putting music at the bottom—music "is a debased form fit to accompany what is important: poetry or thought" (21). Fostering this idea, they have constructed a racialized epistemology in which the musical is first associated with the physical and then blackness, becoming "the most basic—pre-linguistic—emotional phenomena" (22); "musical performance is relegated to the thoughtless bodily activity of 'playing.' The seriousness of thought demands the 'work' of philosophy" (19). "Thus, the connection of music to Africa, the continent without a history, makes sense" (21). With music becoming a proto-language, the essentialization of black musicality is made possible and allows explorers and philosophers to justify [End Page 262] the existence of the "primitive racialized man" (27), which will permeate and exemplify the 19th-century racist theories connecting music with blackness and making music the biological category of the black man. In that context, Higginson examines chronologically how jazz can "locate and consolidate a range of French values" (42) within French and Francophone African writers from the colonial era to today. Chapter 1 explores the representation of jazz in emblematic French novels such as Sartre's La Nausée, Soupault's Le Nègre, or Vian's L'Écume des jours to show how the depiction of jazz is overtly racialized and works within a typical colonial framework in which the African can only excel at music. Chapter 2 questions the representations of jazz in African writers from the colonial era to independence, such as Socé's Mirages de Paris, Dongala's Jazz et Vin de palme, or Mongo Beti's Trop de soleil tue l'amour to see if there is an evolution in the representation of music from Negritude to independence. "Indeed, in the process of linking past and future, jazz metamorphoses from an idealized or...

What Books Do You Read? Toru Dutt, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876) or Imagining Francophone Intertextual Maps

ABSTRACTReaders map the circulation of Francophone texts and transform the intellectual Francophone landscape. Toru Dutt (1856–1877) is a Francophone Bengali reader and translator; her translations of French poems into English, A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876), constitute a new reservoir of contacts between texts. The unpredictability of the act of reading as a multilingual reader allows for the emergence of new cultural contact zones. Toru Dutt reads French poetry that she will translate into English. Her personal anthology is composed of writers as diverse as J. du Bellay, Du Bartas, F. R. de Chateaubriand, A. de Lamartine, A. de Vigny, V. Hugo, G. de Nerval, A. de Musset, T. Gautier, Leconte de Lisle, C. Baudelaire, and S. Prudhomme. The work also includes lesser-known poets by today's standards. Among those names there is the French poetess Madame Desbordes-Valmore (1830–1871). Analyzing this intimate cartography of reading is a way of following the traces of readings, their travel and contact with other literary cultures. As a reader, traveler, and translator, Toru Dutt constructs imagined encounters between Victor Hugo and Kâlidâsa.

Poétiques de la violence et récits francophones contemporains par Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François

Reviewed by: Poétiques de la violence et récits francophones contemporains par Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François Nanar Khamo Jean-François, Emmanuel Bruno. Poétiques de la violence et récits francophones contemporains. Brill, 2017. ISBN 978-90-04-33673-5. Pp. 300. The author's first monograph focuses on the representation of violence and the violence of representation through his analysis of eleven contemporary Francophone texts. Jean-François proposes a model to study a new generation's poetics of violence, one in which he operates through a transnational, multidisciplinary, and comparative lens to interrogate and identify the underlying links among his selected texts. In a move that differentiates his work from those of other scholars working on la francophonie, Jean-François does not work exclusively from a postcolonial approach, even as he weaves it throughout his analysis. He incorporates theories from a variety of other disciplines, such as philosophy and psychoanalysis. In addition, he divides his chapters thematically, rather than geographically, resulting in his decentering of the texts to create an analytical network of encounters, ruptures, and continuities. Generally, he structures each chapter with a substantial theoretical grounding before delving into his literary analysis. The lens he uses to analyze the texts shifts with each new section, as he forges different links according to the overarching topic. For instance, he expounds [End Page 231] upon certain "variables de la violence" (15), such as identity and space, as well as sociopolitical and cultural contexts. He points out that authors from"la francophonie du Sud" (55), such as Alfred Alexandre, Ananda Devi, and Jean-Luc Raharimanana, are more apt to describe scenes of poverty as related to violence than authors such as Amélie Nothomb or Lise Blouin. This type of commentary exemplifies how the author incorporates postcolonial perspectives with his focus on a new generation of Francophone writers to consider how authors often formulate writing on violence in terms of alterity, regardless of different national histories. The question of the other or of being other-ed is at the root of literature on violence. Another analytical lens is "irreprésentables violences" (68), in which he considers cases of genocide, terrorism, and sexual deviations. This inquiry into the limits of representing different forms of trauma leads one to wonder: how do representations of state-sponsored violence differ from representations of personal violation? Jean-François formulates his argument in terms of power structures where literature functions as a forum in which the oppressed resist against dominant forces. The power dynamics, often between former colonizer and colonized, furthermore manifest in the violence of representation, where he focuses on the French language and on the violence of the act of writing, through means of transgression and subversion. Given the focus on the repercussions of colonial rule, one question that lingers after reading the book relates to depictions of violence in the French-speaking world in comparison to other spaces. In other words, are there certain qualities that distinguish representations of violence in the Francophone context, questions that could relate to differences of empire and imperial practice? Ultimately, Jean-François's monograph is a useful resource for scholars meditating on literary and historical violence, particularly given its exhaustive line of inquiry. Scholars interested in broader questions of poetics and the contemporary will also benefit from the insights offered by this study. Nanar Khamo University of California, Los Angeles Copyright © 2018 American Association of Teachers of French

Does Love Know No Borders? Culture-Crossed Lovers in Les amants désunis and Les nuits de Strasbourg

Cross-cultural love has been a contested site of encounter in literature since the colonial period and has met with prejudice and contestation of various forms, both in colonial and postcolonial societies. Despite an uneasy acceptance of love, or even its categorical rejection, the couple is a recurring archetype in the literature produced by writers of both European nations and of those places colonised by Europeans. The stakes involved cut across questions of race, purity and hybridity, as well as nationhood, and bear the historical imprint of the pseudo-scientific understandings of racial hierarchies and miscegenation, especially in the latter's meaning of the mixing of different races through procreation. Even though uncomfortable precursors such as Pierre Loti's Le Mariage de Loti or Andre Gide's L'Immoraliste have staged colonialist figurings of mixed-race couples, a good number of contemporary Francophone writers have penned novels centring on love in both their autobiographies and novels. Through a reading of two novels by Algerians writing in French, this article will trace some of the reasons why love is such an obsessive, recurring archetype and why it should appear in contemporary francophone texts as a site of cultural and political tensions. Both novels present couples struggling to love each other against the backdrop or in the wake of war: the lovers of Assia Djebar's Les nuits de Strasbourg live with the consequences of World War 2 and the Algerian War of Independence, and Anouar Benmalek's Les amants desunis are separated first during the War of Independence and then during the Algerian civil conflict of the 1990s.Cross-cultural love in the colonial imaginaryI use the term cross-cultural in this article so as to account for the many factors that may complicate a loving relationship across cultures, including ethnic differences as well as differences in political and social power, language, religion, family organisation and the status of women. This should not be understood, however, as a desire to downplay the significance of the concept of or colour in social reactions to relationships, since the notion of different human races was vital to justifying and maintaining power over colonised peoples during the period of the second French Colonial Empire (1830-1962). Jocelyne Streiff-Fenart, in her essay on metissage in Franco-Algerian relations, highlights precisely this point when she states that colonial societies used skin colour as an organising principle: souvent bien sur, le propre de la societe coloniale etant de s'organiser en fonction de la couleur, c'est la categorie de race qui sert a organiser, a legiferer, a phantasmer les unions mixtes.1The prejudice and condemnation that bi-racial relationships have engendered are most evident in cases where legal jurisdictions outlaw such mixing. Thirty-eight states in the United States, for example, had introduced laws against interracial marriages by the 1930s, and such unions continued to be outlawed by thirteen states until 1967.2 In the French encounter with its colonial peoples, despite an historical colour-blindness - in other words, the political effort to disqualify race as a category on which to claim rights or to interact with the state3 - miscegenation and the children that issued from such unions were sources of moral outrage and attempts to control sexual behaviour through judicial processes. Under Louis XV, for example, an edict of 1731 forbade interracial marriage in order to avoid staining the white race.4 This rejection of racial mixing, which was based on a political and pseudo-scientific - as well as an emotional - fear of the degeneration of the white through the existence of mixed-race children, was strongly voiced in France in the writings of Georges Vacher de Lapouge, who claimed in 1887 that miscegenation within France was resulting in degeneration and depopulation. …

La littérature dans l’enseignement du FLE éd. par Anne Godard

Reviews 209 Godard,Anne, éd. La littérature dans l’enseignement du FLE. Paris: Didier, 2015. ISBN 978-2-278-07613-0. Pp. 338. 14 a. What role does literature play in the effective teaching of French as a foreign language? La littérature dans l’enseignement du FLE attempts to address this question, as well as others pertaining to the use of literature—“La littérature est-elle reservée à certains publics? À certains niveaux?”—and, most interesting from a cultural point of view: “Comment permet-elle un enrichissement linguistique et culturel et conduitelle à une modification du regard sur la langue et la culture?” (6). In seven chapters, this insightful collection of essays traces the development of literature in the FLE curriculum and explains how its importance came into question. Finally, the authors present strong arguments for the focused, deliberate inclusion of literature as an effective means of facilitating successful language acquisition. The first chapter, “La littérature dans la didactique du français et des langues: histoire et théories,” traces various stages in the evolution of French language teaching from the second half of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. Godard explains how historical periods and developments, such as French colonial expansion, the First World War and the Cold War, either privileged or set aside the use of literature in teaching French. Chapter Five, entitled “Le rôle de la littérature dans les apprentissages langagiers: de l’écriture creative à la conscience de la langue,”addresses the challenge of using literary texts in a language course, which often presents texts too challenging for students still developing their language skills. This chapter explains how the use of literature, along with creative writing exercises led by professional writers, have assisted students at all levels to develop a more subjective, personal use of French as they negotiate levels of interlanguage.“L’alterité dans la langue: ouverture au plurilinguisme par la littérature,” addresses the use of French literature in teaching the diversity of French culture. This seventh chapter explores how the careful study of Francophone texts both enriches the vocabulary of the language learner and provides opportunities to explore how various Francophone writers used the versatility of the French language to demonstrate cultural differences in the Francophone world. La littérature dans l’enseignement du FLE is an engaging and informative work that makes a strong argument for the active use of French literature in order to increase linguistic competence. This collection of essays assumes that the reader has a thorough familiarity with various language teaching methodologies; therefore, readers without a background in second-language acquisition may find certain parts of this book challenging.An excellent bibliography of recent scholarship on the teaching of French literature is included.Graduate students in linguistics, coordinators of French language programs, and departments looking for practical guidance on how to incorporate literature into a French program will find this book a valuable source of information. Jackson State University (MS) Tomaz Cunningham ...

Franco poly phonies in translation

Taking as its starting point Amin Maalouf’s conception of identity in Les Identites meurtrieres (1998), this article will study francophonie from a translational perspective. Translation will be analysed as a linguistic transfer but also as a contact zone that brings out the alterity present in francophone texts and reveals their intrinsic plurality. Thus, translation will also be envisaged as a constitutive part of francophonie, whereby a monolingual understanding of French will give way to ‘francopolyphonies’, that is an intricate, relational space in which translation not only helps to voice polyphony, but also functions as a ‘metier a metisser’, as Rene Depestre puts it. While some texts will be studied as acts of self-translation, questioning the potential pitfalls of (self-)exoticism and assimilation for the francophone writer/translator, others will be analysed through a process of ‘unhoming’ French language and culture. Thus situated at the crossroads of cultural and linguistic encounters, transla...

Introduction

“The Hemispheric French Atlantic” begins to suture a transatlantic to a hemispheric spatiality by tracing out the movement of texts, figures, and traditions within a complex and kinetic circulatory system that moves beyond the geometric model imagined by studies of the French Atlantic triangle. In tracking the discourses of politics, literature, and anthropology through a hemispheric French Atlantic space complicated by race and slavery, these five literary critical essays focus on the legacies of violence and promise that radiate through time and space from the Haitian revolutionary moment, spiraling across and beyond the long nineteenth century while circling across and around the wider Atlantic world. The forum insists on the inclusion of an extensive and under-studied archive of Francophone texts in our literary histories of the period and field, while also suggesting the need for greater flexibility in constructing the narratives through which we study literature, culture, and politics. They call especially for greater study and interrogation of the role of translation—not just between languages but between geographical locations and political orientations—in the post-revolutionary nineteenth century.

Literary Attention: The Hairy Politics of Details

What can literary studies bring to our experience? The fact that many scholars, on both sides of the Atlantic, have recently felt the need to address this question is usually interpreted as a symptom of a crisis in the literary profession. Fewer students, fewer jobs, less attractiveness, less impact, less prestige: the study of seems bound to follow the path taken by the study of theology during the nineteenth century. Against this background feeling of gloom and doom, the steady flow of manifestoes in favor of literary studies often sounds overblown by wishful thinking. Literary interpretations, as performed in the classroom, are supposed to ground, shape, and expand our moral consciousness, set the foundations for an alternative to the suicidal logics of global capitalism, and/or provide an affordable gymnastics training us to become successful among the young sharks of the creative class. Such contradictory and overambitious goals have provided an understandable backlash among more realistic, cautious, or cynical colleagues. Phil Watts never indulged in theoretical or programmatic gesturing. As a teacher, as a scholar, as a member of faculty committees, as a departmental chair, he was well aware of the challenges faced by our profession. As a reader and as a thinker, he eagerly followed the debates about the constant reconfiguration of our discipline--and his interest in Jacques Ranciere and Roland Barthes bears witness to his profound engagement with literary theory, especially with respect to its connection with intellectual history and political philosophy. But, to my knowledge, he never attempted directly, openly, and frontally to intervene in the theoretical discussions about the evolution and the future of our profession. This may be due to his profound humility: there is an inherent arrogance in the theoretical mode of discourse, which went against the grain of his self-effacing persona. But I believe it is also due to a deeper form of wisdom and intelligence. Phil understood that the best way to defend the study of was to actually perform it, rather than merely to preach it. As a teacher, as a scholar, as a family man, and as a community member, he taught by example, rather than by admonition or reproach. The best thing we can do to defend, improve, and expand our practice of is to follow his example. We can do so by attempting to imitate him in his kindness, generosity, caution, and courage--and this is by far the best tribute we can bring to his memory: making his example as alive as possible in and through as many of us as possible. We can also try to understand what he did that was so lovable and inspiring--and this is what I will attempt to do here. Analyzing what Phil Watts did to and with may help us assert more powerfully the value of literary studies in our contemporary world. My thesis will be simple and straightforward: what Phil Watts's example teaches us is that today, consists in a certain exercise and practice of attention to details. Enlarging the Scope, Narrowing the Focus The first question raised by my assertion is probably attention to what? Of course, Phil Watts studied and taught literary texts: Celine, Sartre, Eluard, Camus, but also Kateb Yacine and Mohamed Dib. But his dramatically short career displays a constant and irresistible movement of expansion--from canonical metropolitan literary authors to Algerian writers, to philosophers like Ranciere, and, more and more, to cinema. If Phil Watts taught and studied French literature, then we must enlarge the scope of what we call literature in order to include in it not only Francophone texts but also forgotten films, obscure film critiques, and aesthetic and political debates, all of which might seem to have very little to do with what is usually called literature. Hence the first feature in the portrait of literary studies I am proposing under the inspiration of Phil Watts's example: literary studies can no longer be defined by certain classes of objects of inquiry (isolating a predetermined corpus), but by a certain type of attention, which can be devoted to any product of human intelligence and which I will try to define as literary attention. …

Fathers, daughters, and slaves: women writers and French colonial slavery

Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves brings to life the unique contribution by French women during the early nineteenth century, a key period in the history of colonialism and slavery. The book enriches our understanding of French and Atlantic history in the revolutionary and postrevolutionary years when Haiti was menaced with the re-establishment of slavery and when class, race, and gender identities were being renegotiated. It offers in-depth readings of works by Germaine de Stael, Claire de Duras, and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. In addition to these now canonical French authors, it calls attention to the lives and works of two lesser-known but important figures—Charlotte Dard and Sophie Doin. Approaching these five women through the prism of paternal authority, Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves explores the empathy that daughters show toward blacks as well as their resistance against the oppression exercised by male colonists and other authority figures. The works by these French women antislavery writers bear significant similarities, which the book explores, with twentieth and twenty-first century Francophone texts. These women’s contributions allow us to move beyond the traditional boundaries of exclusively male accounts by missionaries, explorers, functionaries, and military or political figures. They remind us of the imperative for ever-renewed gender research in the colonial archive and the need to expand conceptions of French women’s writing in the nineteenth century as being a small minority corpus. Fathers, Daughters, and Slaves contributes to an understanding of colonial fiction, Caribbean writing, romanticism, and feminism. It undercuts neat distinctions between the cultures of France and its colonies and between nineteenth and twentieth-century Francophone writing.

Publish or Paris

This article examines francophone publishing trends in Morocco and France, asking: what roles do the nation and languages play in transnational literary politics, and who reads francophone texts in Morocco and France? These questions are addressed through interviews with Moroccan writers and literary critics, a discussion of modes of literary production in Morocco and France, the role of Moroccan literature in the francophone sphere, the culture of ‘Death and Prizes’ in Morocco, and the politics of labelling Moroccan francophone literature ‘World Literature’. Ultimately, this article promotes close reading and a more literary treatment of Moroccan francophone literatures, rather than reinforcing the trend practised by some academics in the West who treat Moroccan francophone literature as a social lens through which to ‘read’ Morocco.Cet article est une reflexion sur les politiques d'edition entre France et Maroc. Quel est le role de la nation et celui du langage? Qui sont les lecteurs des textes francoph...

Universalisms and francophonies

To reject the term Francophone, that describes so well non-hexagonal literatures and puts them in dialogue with Anglophone, Hispanophone or Sinophone literatures, is tantamount to acquiescing to the metropole's old assimilationist agendas. The manifesto pour une littrature-monde en franais (Le Bris et al. 2007) is a well-meaning but clumsy attempt at renaming other literatures in order to have them fit into the world Republic of Letters as defined and understood by a universalizing French perspective. By ignoring the specificities of bilingualism, the manifesto remains indifferent to the rhetorical practices that are the philological hallmark of many Francophone texts. This essay surveys some of the negative reactions to the manifesto and proposes a definition of francophonies, in the plural, that opens up literature to new and productive understandings of universality in a decentred and multilingual world.

Translating Fatima Gallaire's Les co-épouses as House of wives: Lessons from a francophone text

This retrospective account of the process of translating Algerian playwright Fatima Gallaire’s Les co-épouses (1990) from French into English problematizes the recent assimilation of Francophone literature into the French canon. Pointing to the ways in which translating revealed cultural lacuna in a French reading, I also explain how it challenged many assumptions about traditional approaches to translation. For instance, although we began translating with a predilection for the resistant translation advocated by Lawrence Venuti, we became progressively aware of areas of resistance in Gallaire’s text, that is, in the source text, even prior to translation. This resistance was the result of the Arab cultural fabric woven into the French text, as well as a layer of Arabic that modulated and disrupted the French in which the play is written. Ultimately, the experience of translating a text by a Francophone author led me to review assumptions regarding the accessibility or transparency of Francophone texts as they are increasingly adopted by a French literary canon in search of revitalization.

A CONSOLATORY ALLUSION IN JEAN MOLINET'S LE NAUFRAGE DE LA PUCELLE (1477)

It is widely acknowledged that the literary output of the Burgundian court under Philip the Good is decisively shaped by processes of allusion and adaptation. Historical figures – Charlemagne, Alexander the Great – are cast as honorary Burgundians,1 while prior literary models are pressed into the service of new social and cultural patternings at court. Vital to the construction of a distinctively Burgundian ‘national’ identity and literary heritage was the phenomenon of the mise en prose, the reworking, at the level of language and often plot, of earlier Francophone texts into comprehensible Middle French prose for Philip and his circle.2 This process of cross-cultural transformation and allusion has received a measure of critical coverage;3 less closely studied, however, are intra-cultural allusions, where later Burgundian literature cites the works produced under Philip. The present article examines a hitherto unremarked instance of this process, in Jean Molinet's prosimetrum allegory Le Naufrage de la Pucelle (mid-1477).4

Francophone Post-Colonial Cultures: Critical Essays by Kamal Salhi (review)

MLRy ioo.i, 2005 223 Francophone Post-Colonial Cultures: Critical Essays. Ed. by Kamal Salhi. (After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France) Lanham: Lexington Books. 2003. xiv + 471 pp. $90 (pbk $40). ISBN 0-7391-0567-1 (pbk o-7391-0568-x). Kamal Salhi's timely collection of essays, which is part of an excellent new series, arrives at a moment when debates on the relationship between Francophone Studies and postcolonial theory are increasingly preoccupying scholars in this area. The com? bination of 'Francophone' and 'Post-Colonial' in the title promises a work that will attempt to chart the postcolonial dimensions of Francophone cultural production. Unfortunately, the collection does not deliver on this initial promise, as the disparate nature of the twenty-nine essays included reflects the book's origins as a series of conference papers (accompanied by a few commissioned pieces), which largely deal with individual texts/authors rather than charting the shape of this new field. Disappointingly , Salhi's brief introduction has little space to discuss the themes or concepts linking the essays. Moreover, there is a fundamental ambiguity throughout the intro? duction, which claims that the book 'is intended to combine a variety of approaches to twentieth-century Francophone and post-colonial forms of expression' (p. xi), as though the 'Francophone' and the 'post-colonial' were entirely separate. Indeed, 'Francophone and Post-Colonial Cultures' would have made a more accurate title (al? though virtually all the essays have a literary focus), as the collection is split between those who deploy postcolonial theories in their textual analyses and those who adopt other critical approaches, ranging from complex poststructuralist critiques to more straightforwardj formal, textual commentary. Effectively,the collection is caught be? tween two stools: it seeks to embrace postcolonial theories?although there is some confusion as to whether 'post(-)colonial' is used purely as a chronological rather than a theoretical term?but it continues to adopt the traditional Francophone Studies strategy of defining the 'Francophone' as the literary production of everywhere ex? cept (primarily white) metropolitan France. If the collection is truly 'postcolonial' in approach, how can discussions of Swiss literature or Belgian regionalist novels be included? These essays contain ideas potentially relevant to postcolonial studies but they simply do not utilize postcolonial theories. This pattern is repeated throughout the collection: some essays adopt a resolutely postcolonial stance, while others do not engage with postcolonial theory at all. Essays are grouped by geographical region (North Africa/Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, Caribbean, North America, Europe, Indian Ocean/South-East Asia, Pacific Ocean), which furtherundermines the stated desire to chart common themes/ideas, as differenttraditions are juxtaposed rather than viewed within a comparative framework. Despite misgivings about the overall rationale and structure ofthe collection, there is no doubting the quality of many of the essays (slightly marred by inconsistent edit? ing). Margaret Majumdar provides an intelligent overview of the evolving definitions of la Francophonie. There are also some excellent examples ofpostcolonial approaches to Francophone texts: for example, Rachel Langford on the films of Ousmane Sembene and Souleymane Cisse; Eric Prieto on landscape and identity in contemporary Caribbean literature; Emily Vaughan Roberts on the work of Linda Le. The sections on North America and Europe include some fascinating essays but they contain little in the way of postcolonial approaches. Above all, the collection will be of interest to the reader seeking critical material on the particular authors or texts dealt with in individual essays. However, the reader looking for a coherent introduction to post? colonial approaches to Francophone cultures will be leftdisappointed: better rewards are to be found in the other volumes in this series. University of Stirling David Murphy ...