Thomas C. Connolly – författare

An exploration of the many worlds revealed in the poetry, prose, theater, criticism, and correspondence of Charles Baudelaire over the past two centuries  In this issue of Yale French Studies, editor Thomas C. Connolly invites leading experts in francophone and French studies to explore the unsuspected panoramas that continue to be revealed by the incomparable literary oeuvre of Charles Baudelaire (1821–1867). Topics examined include the various worlds traversed by the poet, whether in person (Honfleur, Belgium, the Mascarenes) or in the mind; the figures of exoticism, travel, and racism in his poetic and critical writings; the global repercussions of his reflections on painting and photography; his views on society and politics, including his antisemitic pronouncements; and recent meditations on Baudelaire in the Caribbean, the Maghreb, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and the Americas, whether in French or in other languages. This volume includes three original translations into English: a poem by the Syrian poet Adonis; the opening section of Baudelaire Jazz by the Martinican writer and Prix Goncourt winner Patrick Chamoiseau; and a version of Baudelaire’s great poem “Correspondances” by the Irish poet Paul Muldoon.

Engaging the poetic to expand our imagination of Maghrebi literature in French Poetry, as the Moroccan writer AbdelkÉbir Khatibi describes it, is a form of dissymmetry that exposes readers to the unexpected, and to the possibility of a transformative encounter with the text. Drawing on literary, philosophical, theoretical, and theological texts in multiple languages and scripts, as well as on the visual arts, Thomas C. Connolly delves into the poetic works of Khatibi and six other major Maghrebi authors—Jean Amrouche, Tahar Djaout, Nabile FarÈs, Mohammed KhaÏr-Eddine, Abdelwahab Meddeb, and Jean SÉnac—as well as the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, to think anew about the origins and legacy of Francophone poetry in the Maghreb. Instead of turning away from the poetic when it becomes indecipherable, A Poetic Genealogy of North African Literature engages poetic texts on their own terms, allowing them to dictate the search for meaning, thereby expanding our understanding of what Maghrebi literature in French was, is, and might become.