La Nuit Research Articles

Représentations et pratiques nocturnes dans la société roumaine (XVIIIe – XXe siècles)

Folklorists, ethnographers and anthropologists have dedicated few studies to the night, and they especially emphasized its negative representations: an interval of darkness, of anxiety and fear, a time of intensified activities of evil supernatural forces. By favoring imaginary and mythical components, night was taken into consideration as an exceptional and extraordinary time, as a negative counterpart to the day, and not as a natural reverse of it. For a long time, the night did not draw the attention of historians, being perceived as a time when nothing happens, a time for rest and sleep. Starting with Jean Verdon’s pioneering book (“La Nuit au Moyen Âge”, 1994), historians have become increasingly interested in night habits, and explored the nightlife of people in ancient societies, bedtimes and waking times, sleep duration. The history of sleep has become a new field of research, opened by the American historian Roger Ekirch (2001, 2005), who advanced the theory that people in pre-industrial societies used to sleep differently. During the night, the sleep was biphasic (or segmented), divided into two moments and separated by a period of wakefulness (watch) at around midnight (between the first sleep and the second one). In our study we intend to verify if the results of Ekirch’s research are also applicable to the realities of the Romanian society in the 18th-20th centuries. We must recognize the difficulties of a history of nocturnal time, the fragmentary nature of the sources, the lack of direct and explicit testimonies (few people have been able to subjectivize their experience of sleep and transmit written testimonies). Therefore, we investigated sources such as chronicles, judiciary documents and literary texts, in search of the segmented sleep pattern. We have identified direct or indirect references to the two periods of sleep, and the intervening period of wakefulness. These references allow us to cautiously advance the hypothesis that this sleep pattern also existed in pre-modern Romanian society, in rural and urban environments. The future researches, based on teamwork, will more accurately determine the validity of this hypothesis.

«Путешествие на край советской ночи»: к истории публикации дебютного романа Л.-Ф. Селина в СССР

The article focuses on the translation and publication of L.-F. Céline’s debut novel Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932) as an example from the history of Soviet cultural diplomacy in the 1930s. So far, the specialized literature has not given unambiguous answers to several questions related to the appearance of the incomplete Russian-language version of the text. The analysis of primary sources and book statistics, materials from central periodicals, and archival documents allows us to restore this unclear episode in the history of Stalin’s cultural diplomacy. The present study aims not only to restore the international context of the reception of Journey in the 1930s and to point out the probable motives behind the hastily realized translation but also to clarify the formal aspects of this enterprise — the number of editions, the dates of signing for printing and the actual print runs, their quantitative values, and formal and substantive differences. The article examines all three Russian-language editions (two editions by GIKhL and Goslitizdat and one another by Zhurgaz, which appeared from February 1934 to July 1935) and reveals structural and content differences in the introductory articles to the first two editions. In addition, the article traces the non-linear trajectory of Céline’s literary reputation in the pre-war USSR. It shows what factors influenced the attitude of the Soviet party and literary figures toward the French writer.

Voltaire après la nuit: Paris, Moscou, Genève by François Jacob

Reviewed by: Voltaire après la nuit: Paris, Moscou, Genève by François Jacob Simon Davies Voltaire après la nuit: Paris, Moscou, Genève. By François Jacob. Ferney-Voltaire: Centre International d'Étude du xviiie Siècle. 2021. ii+186 pp. €40. ISBN 978–2–84559–150–9. François Jacob published his biography Voltaire in 2015 (Paris: Gallimard). His new book investigates Voltaire from a different angle, his reputation in post-Second World War countries until a Congress in 1963. The cities in his subtitle represent France, the Soviet Union, and one man, the 'savant anglais' Theodore Besterman. Besterman created the Institut et Musée Voltaire in Geneva, of which, years later, Jacob was to become the Director. The monograph's sources are wide-spread, published and archival. It explores primarily the image of Voltaire rather [End Page 243] than the reception of his works. This image is often situated in a political context. In France he could be portrayed as an anti-Semite during the German occupation to buttress the persecution of Jews. Simultaneously he was depicted as an 'anti-vychiste' and a 'résistant'. The two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of his birth was commemorated in 1944, yet the French Catholic Church continued to worry about his malign influence. French people were also anxious about his potential linkage to communism. The Soviets, while uncomfortable with his life as a landed gentleman, published a catalogue of his library and volumes of his marginalia. Nevertheless, it was the English-speaking world that did most to explore his life and works. Here, arguably unwisely, Jacob cites Kathleen O'Flaherty's Voltaire, Myth and Reality (Cork: Cork University Press, 1945). She views Voltaire as a bogeyman from the perspective of a conservative Irish Catholic. The extraordinary mood changer was Besterman. Winning support across the Atlantic, he championed Voltaire for spreading Enlightenment values, and Voltaire became more an international than a French figure. Besterman's edition of the patriarch's correspondence was ground-breaking in a positive and, for the French, a negative sense. He published the most comprehensive edition of the letters not in France, but in Switzerland (Voltaire's Correspondence, 107 vols (Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1953–65)). If that was one affront to patriotic pride, a second was even more damaging: the missives were annotated in English. Besterman had a troubled relationship with the CNRS, with the result that the 'hexagone' was not involved in celebrating its Voltairean heritage. Moreover, the Englishman began publishing Studies on Voltaire in 1955—France was losing its 'patrimoine'. He organized the first international Congress on the Enlightenment in Switzerland in 1963, with a limited participation from French scholars. Having contacted Besterman, Nancy Mitford produced her account of Voltaire's love life in English (Voltaire in Love (London: Hamilton, 1957)). Voltaire's works could still inspire adaptations, particularly those of Candide. Leonard Bernstein's musical work is well known but the tale also encouraged film versions in France. However, it could be contended that these offspring did little to enhance the understanding of the qualities of Voltaire and his works. Although it is not pertinent to the time-frame of this study, Besterman was also instrumental in launching the edition of Voltaire's Œuvres complètes which was completed at the Voltaire Foundation in Oxford in 2022—an achievement marked at a reception in the British Embassy in Paris in June that year. Overall, Jacob's study underscores the importance of editorial decisions and their context. He highlights the difficulty of embarking on major projects on Voltaire which are free from 'toute empreinte idéologique' (p. 49). Voltaire has become a standard point of reference in the advocacy of tolerance—witness the 'Je suis Charlie' slogan created as the response to the terrorist attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in 2015. This publication succeeds in illustrating the fact that scholarly editing is not a value-free undertaking and that history and chance can play a significant role. [End Page 244] Simon Davies Belfast Copyright © 2023 Modern Humanities Research Association

Gender Dynamics, Space, and Identity Formation in Yasmina Khadra’s What the Day Owes the Night (2008, 2011)

Yasmina Khadra’s’ ‘Ce Que le Jour Doit à la Nuit’ (What the Day Owes the Night) is an Algerian best-selling novel originally written in French. Yasmina Khadra is the non de plume of the Algerian army officer, Mohammed Moulesshoul. Moulesshoul utilised a female pseudonym to avoid the inspections of his manuscripts by the army. The version I use in this article is a translation from French by Frank Wynne (2011). Yasmina Khadra discusses the human existence in a way that seeks to determine the purpose of all life beyond one’s social condition. In other words, Yasmina Khadra perceives life as a continuum of interpersonal and intrapersonal relations that possess a strong effect on the social subjects’ existence in the world. Also, being an Algerian drives Yasmina Khadra to concentrate on issues of identity, colonialism, the production, and circulation of particular social and cultural knowledge, along with the struggle of gender and political identification. Yasmina Khadra’s narrative is a manifestation of the struggle to produce a historic national culture and a narrative discourse free of the shackles of colonialist knowledge and mode of thought. This article uses CDA and thematic analysis to critically outline and investigate the gender dynamics and identity formation that characterise Khadra’s narrative discourse.

Afropean Aporias: Problematic Cultural Hybridity in Léonora Miano’s L’intérieur de la nuit and Fatou Diome’s Le Ventre de l’Atlantique

Though still arguably marginal in the notoriously centralized French language literary landscape, texts produced by Afropean authors, meaning authors of sub-Saharan origin born or currently residing in Europe, now constitute a corpus of their own with well-known authors, including Alain Mabanckou, Léonora Miano, Abdourahman Waberi, and Fatou Diome, gaining in readership and reach. Central to their works is the consideration of culturally hybrid identities whose multi-belongingness across and beyond continental sub-Saharan and European spaces is depicted in an overwhelmingly positive light. This article diverges from past scholarship through its consideration of the difficult identarian compromise for the culturally hybrid protagonists in Miano's L'intérieur de la nuit and Diome's Le Ventre de l'Atlantique. Close reading of these texts, and namely of the experiences of their female Afropean protagonists, suggests a more nuanced, complex, and less positive vision of contemporary Afropeanity than that lauded by theorists concerning a celebrated, emancipatory, and overwhelmingly coveted condition of postmodernity.

La représentation de la femme sénégalaise dans La nuit est tombée sur Dakar d’Aminata Zaaria : une exploration poétique des relations de pouvoir

The writing of Aminata Zaaria emanates from substantial reflection on the inherent questions regarding the female condition in Senegalese society. In her novel, La nuit est tombée sur Dakar, the female characters embark on an initiatory journey in search of their essence and their place in a perpetually changing world. In this context, the narration extends toward a holistic perspective of identity, drawing its richness from deep introspections intertwined with reminiscences of cultural heritage, ancestral history, and buried memories. This quest rises above spatiotemporal constraints, engendering a dialogue that transcends eras, territories, and universal aspirations. Through its uniqueness, this narrative fabric follows a kaleidoscopic dynamic that reflects both the sensitivity of the writer and her emotional state.

Entre la tradition sénégalaise et le néo-colonialisme français : l’oppression systématique des jeunes filles dans La nuit est tombée sur Dakar d’Aminata Zaaria

Between Senegalese tradition and French neo-colonialism: Systematic oppression of young girls in La nuit est tombée sur Dakar by Aminata Zaaria. The purpose of this article is to examine the systematic, intercultural oppression of young girls in La nuit est tombée sur Dakar, a 2004 novel by the Senegalese author Aminata Zaaria. Her female protagonists, two seventeenyear- olds, subject themselves to sexual exploitation by white men in order to escape poverty. In their birthplace, the village of Lëndëm (‘darkness’ in Wolof, the most commonly spoken language in Senegal), the girls are forced into traditional gender roles from a very young age, i.e. their sexuality is strictly controlled by men. This environment is, however, influenced by the Western way of life: on TV and in glossy magazines, Europe is presented as a paradise on earth. Dakar, viewed by the elder inhabitants of Lëndëm as a “cursed city”, is a place where white men have all the power and, just as in colonial times, they use it in order to sexually abuse African women. By analysing traditional society from a sociological perspective (based on the works of Abdoulaye Bara Diop and Rosalie Aduyai Diop), as well as by applying the postcolonial and psychological theoretical framework to the dynamics presented in the text, this paper strives to demonstrate that it is difficult to speak of “freedom of choice” in the case of a vulnerable, traumatised subject. For both protagonists, this “disguised prostitution” is a survival strategy, going beyond a simple materialism: they are led to believe that it is a small price to pay for a better life. The article presents intercultural oppression as a double-edged sword in that in every environment, young girls are treated as mere objects, expected to silently play their roles.

Mandelstam and Aloysius Bertrand: a question of interpretation

O. Mandelstam's poem Like chiaroscuro Martyr Rembrandt combines ekphrasis, testament of the poet, and declaration of social position: this combination has posed difficulties for interpreters. A number of obscure images, such as imprisonment, wealth, or a tribe of associates, are convincingly interpreted as Mandelstams deduction of his own biography from the circumstances of Rembrandts life, but this explain neither the expressive poetics nor the place of the Calvary plot among other life-plots. I suggest that one of the poems by the French Romanticist Aloysius Bertrand, Gaspard de la nuit, which is a synopsis of the images of Gothic novels, should be considered a key to the poem. Bertrands poem in prose contains the main images of Mandelstams poem in a short, and it may well be considered, if not a pretext of Mandelstams text, then one of the keys that clarify its plot. Thus, Bertrand understands the dark light of the crucifixion as an impression of the window frame at night, the searing pain as the onset of midnight, the guards and warriors as the presence of the ancestors and the curse associated with them, and the treasure as a hint of hell and incest. Thus the plot of Mandelstams poem is not to be reduced to a willingness to give up earthly goods and accept martyrdom in imitation of Christ, nor to a willingness to share noble poverty with friends. This plot, from Bertrands key, is reconstructed as follows: midnight threatens with nightmares, and the chief of these nightmares is the sensation of burning pain, the pain of conscience or the pain of the unfulfilled, with the onset of midnight. After this reflection on time passes into a dreamlike experience of what is happening, into a series of fantasies pointing to former treasures of life and to former impressions of art. In this dream experience, human brotherhood can only be experienced as a communion with shadows and therefore an inevitable bodily martyrdom. In the poem, Mandelstam reassembled Gothic Romantic symbols and emotional modes to distinguish between the subjective relationship to martyrdom and the objective martyrdom defined by the autonomies of art, soul, and body.

Philippe Lacôte, director. Night of the Kings. 2020. Original title: La nuit des rois. 93 minutes. French, Dioula, Nouchi (with English subtitles). Ivory Coast/France/Canada/Senegal. Banshee Films. Price not reported.

Philippe Lacôte, director. Night of the Kings. 2020. Original title: La nuit des rois. 93 minutes. French, Dioula, Nouchi (with English subtitles). Ivory Coast/France/Canada/Senegal. Banshee Films. Price not reported. - Volume 65 Issue 2

On the Road from Books to Thomas Lilti's Screen: Where Are the Country Doctors Heading?

On the Road from Books to Thomas Lilti's ScreenWhere Are the Country Doctors Heading? Peter I. Barta (bio) "L'homme est un apprenti, la douleur est son maître" —alfred de musset: "la nuit d'octobre"1 Thomas Lilti (1976–), the French physician and internationally renowned film director, has attained significant recognition for three thematically related films on doctors, offering a kaleidoscopic cinematic representation of the state of medicine in contemporary France and beyond.2 The films are thematically linked and form a trilogy about the training of physicians, life in a large teaching hospital in the metropolis, and general practice in the country. They have elicited an unprecedentedly high level of engagement from the junior physicians in internal medicine on our courses in medical humanities at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center. Lilti's cinema focuses on the physician as a vulnerable human subject. The first in the trilogy, the film Hippocrate (Hippocrates)—released in 2014—traces the fortunes of a junior doctor (Benjamin Barois, played by Vincent Lacoste) doing his residency in a large Parisian teaching hospital where his own father is the statutory professor and medical director. Actors in the main roles carry over to the two subsequent films. Marianne Denicourt (Dr. Denormandy in Hippocrate) plays the female lead—Dr. Nathalie Delezia—in the second film, Médecin de Campagne (Irreplaceable, 2016)3 and Vincent Lacoste is cast as the central character both in Hippocrate and the third film, Première Année (The Freshmen, 2018).4 The educational aspect dominates not only Hippocrate but the other two films as well: the plot of [End Page 54] Médecin de Campagne involves an established male general practitioner and a junior female doctor joining his practice in a rural area, and Première Année relates the friendship of two first-year medical students at a university in Paris. The specific focus of this article will be on Médecin de Campagne, the artistically most successful piece in the trilogy. Thematically it connects the village doctor with both the world of the hospital and the concerns about training junior physicians. Furthermore, the film unpacks problems related to the gradual disappearance of general practice, especially in remote rural areas. The title alludes to earlier literary texts about the physical and emotional life of "country doctors" whose profession obliges them constantly to be at the service of others in order to prolong lives and remove or minimize pain. Lilti updates these concerns with a clear view of today's shifting paradigm in the medical world where new technologies and corporate business interests keep diminishing the role of the physician. With this in mind, my purpose here will be to assess the place of Lilti's film in its literary context. Lilti's excellent knowledge of his subject matter has been discussed in multiple interviews, including my own with Marianne Denicourt in this issue. Lilti did his residency in a large teaching hospital after he had obtained his medical qualifications. Then he spent many years in general practice. His creation of the characters in Médecin de Campagne undoubtedly draws upon close familiarity with the work they do. "I like having direct contact with patients, and the idea of taking care of several generations of one family. That appealed more to me than surgery, for instance," he said in an interview.5 The trilogy's focus on apprenticeship, professional conflicts at work, and problematic family relations has been the subject of televised and published conversations with Lilti. From these it emerges that Lilti's father is a physician specializing in obstetrics and gynecology and that evidently, he was not especially keen for his son to pursue a career in the arts.6 Lilti comments: "I have always felt the lack of paternal recognition. I grew up feeling constantly deprecated by the doctor father of whom I felt unworthy. I had the impression of never being sufficiently handsome, cultured or intelligent."7 Lilti, unlike his two brothers, became a physician to demonstrate that he does not lack his father's abilities to pursue a career in medicine. The father-son [End Page 55] rivalry and the bad relations between the...

Women and Photography in Africa: Creative Practices and Feminist Challenges

Women and Photography in Africa: Creative Practices and Feminist Challenges

Mixed-methods evaluation of a prevention campaign on binge drinking and cannabis use addressed to young people

ABSTRACT Objective To assess whether the French “Amis aussi la nuit” (“Friends also at night”) campaign on peer-support concerning binge drinking and cannabis use in a party setting reached young adults aged 17–25 years, and how it was perceived by them. Methods A posttest evaluation of the campaign using a mixed-methods design was performed. Quantitative data from a large survey (n = 1003) and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews (n = 23) and one focus group (n = 6) were combined to explore strengths and weaknesses of the campaign. We adopted a convergent design where all data were collected simultaneously, reported jointly and, finally, cross-checked for discussion. Results Participants appreciated the campaign, felt involved in its preventive messages and found used communication strategy acceptable and effective. Some negative features were also identified, especially concerning the language and tone of the campaign. Conclusions Recommendations for improving this campaign and informing future ones on similar topics are provided based on the study results. Our findings are important for public health professionals who are interested in the prevention of high-risk behaviors in the young.

L’art du sous-entendu: histoire, théorie, mode d’emploi by Laurent Pernot

Reviewed by: L’art du sous-entendu: histoire, théorie, mode d’emploi by Laurent Pernot Mike Edwards Laurent Pernot, L’art du sous-entendu: histoire, théorie, mode d’emploi. Paris: Fayard, 2018. 334 pp. ISBN: 9782213706054 In July 2008, on behalf of Laurent Pemot, I represented the International Society for the History of Rhetoric at The First Biennial Conference of the Chinese Rhetoric Society of the World. Since this global event was scheduled to take place less than a month before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics, my first idea was to give a paper on ancient Olympic speeches. On second thoughts, I realized that talking about the content of Lysias 33, with its proposed attack on the despotic rulers of Persia and Syracuse, might be taken as a veiled reference to China’s socialist democracy—a sous-entendu. Twelve years later, with the Tokyo Olympics postponed because of a threat allegedly emanating from Japan’s old foe, I find myself reviewing a book written by Pemot that will become a standard work on the art of innuendo. Pemot covers an extensive range of material from Graeco-Roman antiquity to the present, to which this review cannot hope to do justice, with examples drawn from rhetorical works, other genres of literature, and elsewhere. Thus, in chapter 1 Pemot discusses types of sous-entendu (as often, the French word is best) in daily life, with politeness such as “you shouldn’t have” to mean “thank you” for a gift. There is an understandable French bias throughout, but Pemot’s versatility is indicated by analyses of authors such as George Orwell, Boualem Sansal, and Arthur Miller. Other topics include politics (the subtle war of words between Giscard d’Estaing and Mitterrand in 1974); fables and riddles (the Sphinx, naturally, but also Jean Paulhan with his translations of enigmatic Malagasy poetry); and conspiracy theory (such as Kennedy, Coluche, the Da Vinci Code). An excellent opening. Sous-entendu in the ancient world is the subject of chapter 2, where Pemot discusses the unsettled place of figured speech in rhetorical theory, and the frequently difficult relationships in declamation between fathers and sons that led to ambiguous remarks like “I married the woman who [End Page 94] pleased my father” (57). Pernot returns to antiquity in a very strong chapter 5 that examines how Greek authors represented Rome with figured speech. Here, on his specialist research terrain, he offers perceptive discussions of Dio Chrysostom’s On Kingship (cf. the much earlier treatment of the theme in Isocrates) and Aelius Aristides’ To Rome, highlighting the latter’s numerous significant omissions, not least of the word “Rome” itself (similarly, the story of Paul Valéry’s grudging eulogy of his illustrious predecessor in the Académie française, Anatole France, in which he managed to avoid using the name “Francé” in reference to his subject, is a little gem). Among the interesting topics of chapter 3 is connotation, as in publicity slogans like “Tendre est la nuit à bord du France” (69), which for Pernot might recall a line of Keats, a novel of Scott Fitzgerald, a film of Henry King or a song by Jackson Browne (yes: type “tender is the night” into Google). Analysis of literary critics (Barthes, Luc Fraisse, William Empson, Roger Callois) and Gide’s The Counterfeiters, with its expression mise en abyme, contributes to another excellent chapter. In chapter 4 Pernot turns to the risks attached to interpretation, especially when an unintended (often sexual) message is received. In the theatre this may be designed to cause laughter (Much Ado About Nothing), but there is nothing funny about De Clerambault’s Syndrome (erotomania). Pemot’s discussion references Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love, but it made me think of Play Misty for Me. Arbeit macht frei? In chapter 6 Pernot turns to twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, focusing on the intellectual resistance to the Nazis of Louis Aragon in a poetic method he called “contrabande.” How could such works have escaped the censor (not all did)? One way was the use of historical parallels, as with Jules Isaac’s Les Oligarques and its analogy between ancient Athens under the Thirty and the German Occupation...

Louis-Ferdinand Céline et le cinéma: voyage au bout de l’écran by Émile Brami

Reviewed by: Louis-Ferdinand Céline et le cinéma: voyage au bout de l’écran by Émile Brami James P. Gilroy Brami, Émile. Louis-Ferdinand Céline et le cinéma: voyage au bout de l’écran. Écriture, 2020 ISBN 978-2-35905-316-6. Pp. 158. This book will appeal to admirers of Céline and film historians. Brami presents a chronological description of the several attempts over the decades to adapt Voyage au bout de la nuit and other novels by Céline to the screen. All these efforts never led successfully to the making of a film. There were various reasons for this, such as the impossibility of obtaining financial backing or the involvement of the interested cinéastes in other projects. Some directors feared that they could not do justice to Céline’s text, especially the stark and disturbing quality of his style of writing. It was thought that Céline had achieved a deconstruction of the French language comparable to what Joyce had done to English. Somehow changing the author’s way of expressing himself to make it more accessible to movie spectators would constitute a desecration. Interestingly, Céline himself was very eager throughout the years between the publication of his novel in 1932 and his death in 1961 to have a film version made of it—and to reap the financial benefits of the film rights. As early as 1933, he tried to persuade Abel Gance, the renowned creator of the silent film Napoléon, to bring Voyage to the screen. According to Brami, this was both the first and the best opportunity to make a film of the novel. There was a young writer named Francis Norman who heard of the project and submitted a lengthy script to Gance based on the New York segment of the novel. Combining dialogue with extensive description of shots, Norman traced the sordid adventures of the hero Bardamu after he lands in America. The hopeful scénariste met with a polite refusal when the project was abandoned. Céline himself went to Hollywood in 1934 to get one of the big studios to make a movie of Voyage. His failure to arouse interest inspired him to pen an anti-Semitic diatribe against what he considered the domination of the American media by Jewish financial interests. In the year before he died, Céline even wrote a script for opening and closing scenes not found in his novel to be incorporated in a possible film. Although such cinematic giants of the 1960s as Godard, Fellini, and Visconti thought of making a film version of Voyage, as previously, nothing came of it. More recently, there was a proposal to make a television feuilleton of the novel. It was thought that a series with multiple episodes would be better able than a single film to capture the complexities of all the differing parts of the original work, but this project also failed to come to fruition. Brami devotes the last pages of his book to the illustrations made by the graphic artist Jacques Tardi for deluxe editions of Voyage, Mort à crédit, and Casse-pipe published in the late 1980s by Gallimard/Futuropolis. Céline’s widow Lucette and the administrator of his copyright insisted that Tardi’s drawings accompany the original text and not be used for a bande dessinée. [End Page 215] James P. Gilroy University of Denver (CO) Copyright © 2022 American Association of Teachers of French

СТИЛІСТИЧНА БАГАТОВИМІРНІСТЬ АВТОРСЬКОЇ МОВИ Л.-Ф. СЕЛІНА І В. ДОМОНТОВИЧА

The first decades of the 20 th century marked the beginning of fundamental changes in artistic expressions and in the very perception and understanding of Ukrainian and French national arts. Limiting ourselves in this article to the analysis of artistic prose speech, and more specifically, the genre of the novel, we see that not only the method and style of presenting the author’s idea, but also the very concept of literary expressiveness underwent revolutionary changes. Figures of both writers, V. Domontovych and L.-F. Celine, cause different attitudes from their fellow citizens. Their actions and views are not always completely understandable and generally known to us today. At the same time, it is impossible not to note the numerous parallel, although often completely different approaches to artistic and literary expression on the part of both writers. The purpose of the article is to identify such parallels and differences in the creative styles of writers. L.-F. Seline’s roman “Voyage au bout de la nuit” and V. Domontovych’s novel “Soilless” are the subject of analysis. In author’s languages, mainly their rhythmic and melodic features are analyzed. The texts are studied by the method of their comparative analysis in view of the national, historical, cultural and biographical and professional features characteristic of both authors. On the basis of the conducted research, we reach conclusions according to which the creative styles of V. Domontovych and L.-F. Celine is likened by the conciseness of the expression; clearly expressed, often syncopated, rhythmic pattern; elements of sound expressive features of artistic expression; the ability to increase and decrease the tempo and increase or decrease the volume; virtuoso manipulation of lexical means of speech. Morphologically, adjectives play a decisive role in describing characters and situations.

La langue parlée dans les œuvres littéraires restituée au théâtre par l’acteur français Fabrice Luchini : une pratique culturelle qui répond aux origines de l’écriture

With reference to the discussion about language and discourse in literary and cultural practices, the author of this article has decided to focus on the forms of spoken language in art and literature. Following the evolution of these linguistic phenomena over time, Louis-Ferdinand Céline’s novel, Voyage au bout de la nuit [ Journey to the End of the Night ], was studied in the first place. When the novel was published in 1932, it broke writing conventions. Then, there was analysed the way in which the French actor Fabrice Luchini made the stage adaptation of this novel, creating, at the same time, a unique spectacle.

Minimal Departure and Fictional Narrative Situations

Minimal Departure and Fictional Narrative Situations

Sur la mobilité des frontières de soi au profit du passage transfrontalier interlinguistique et sémiotique. Étude de cas : traduction et adaptation filmique du roman Ce que le jour doit à la nuit, de Yasmina Khadra

Abstract In this article, we briefly present the results of a multifaceted investigation of the book Ce que le jour doit à la nuit. We examine the effects produced on the novel by the transgression of multiple frontiers: identity, geographic, interlinguistic, translation, semiotic, etc. These are frontiers that both the writer, Yasmina Khadra, and her novel transgress. A necessary look at the circumstances in which the book was created will allow us to survey the types of frontier transgression: of the self, of the civilian and artistic identity, in order to concentrate on the crossing of interlinguistic frontiers (the translation into Romanian of the novel Ce que le jour doit à la nuit in this case), semiotic (its cinema adaptation and its subtitles).

Vers une modélisation lexicographique des propriétés sémantico-pragmatiques des locutions-phrases génériques et situationnelles La nuit porte conseil et Le chat est sorti du sac

This article focuses on two categories of ready-made phrases, called generic idiomatic phrases and situational idiomatic phrases. In summary, these sentences are characterized as follows: – they are presented, by the speaker/writer, as descriptions of the world; – they refer or purport to refer to states of fact (although they may implicitly perform illocutionary expressive and/or directive acts); – they acquire their legitimacy according to the discursive theme. The aim is to propose a lexicographical modelling for the kinds of sentences studied. The proposals are inspired by the methodology underlying the elaboration of definitions in the Explanatory and Combinatorial Dictionary (Mel'čuk et al., 1984, 1988, 1992, 1999). Briefly, the semantic-pragmatic analysis scheme sketched reflects 1) the conventional meaning (codified in language) associated with the phrases studied, and 2) the meaning possibly communicated through a generalized implicature (Grice, 1979 [1975]). Close attention is paid to the actions performed by language, which is an inescapable matter whenever statements are involved. The study ends with the presentation of dictionary articles prepared for the generic idiomatic phrase La nuit porte conseil and for the situational idiomatic phrase Le chat est sorti du sac.

Don Juan in Search of Identity in the Play "La Nuit de Valognes" by Éric-Emanuel Schmitt

The first play by the contemporary French writer Éric-Emanuel Schmitt, The Night in Valognes (La Nuit de Valognes, 1989), represents a completely new interpretation of the myth originating from the 17th century, and celebrated in the writings of many subsequent authors, from Tirso de Molina, over Molière and Mozart, to Ballester and Handke. The play is situated in a castle in northern France, taking place some thirty years after the well-known adventures of Don Juan, and represents a trial organized by five women, his former lovers. However, the penalty – to marry his last victim, is not executed. The aim of the paper is to argue that in this humorous philosophical play, written by the end of the 20th century, Schmitt is not interested in the problem of seduction, represented in the classical myth, but in the quest of the main character for his identity. His hero does not give the answer to the key question: “Who am I?”, but instead poses the question if our sexual identities are solid and unchangeable. The hero’s search for identity is presented as the quality of contemporary man, re-examining his sexuality through search for love, as well as homosexuality, hinted at in the play as one possible modern identity of Don Juan.