Francophone Cultures and Literatures – serie

The Francophone World: Cultural Issues and Perspectives introduces readers to French-speaking communities across the globe and offers a perspective on the cultures that have developed in the wake of French exploration and colonization. This book explores the French influence in West Africa, the diversity of cultures within the Caribbean, the Francophone communities of North America, and the plight of North African immigrants living in France. Through these interdisciplinary essays and the discussion questions that follow them, readers can examine such wide-ranging topics as the media in Francophone West Africa, the special status of women writers in Senegal, and the mix of cultures in Martinique and French Guiana. This book also highlights the transition into modernity in Burkina Faso, the theater of Aimé Césaire, literature and culture in Québec, and the French presence in the northeastern United States.

Focusing on the African writer and the language of the former colonial power, The Francophone African Text: Translation and the Postcolonial Experience highlights the writer’s re-appropriation of the foreign language in the creative writing process. It calls attention to the African writer’s use of French, a process of creative translation in which the writer’s words form a hybrid code that compels the original French to refer to the indigenous African language for meaning. Examining a group of works under the theme of translation, this book reveals that a consideration of both ideological and linguistic elements enhances understanding of the subject from the broader perspective of postcolonial discourse.

The early years of Third French Republic (1880-1914) saw multiple political factions vying for the legacy of the French Revolution. This book examines one of those factions, the anarchist movement, and the role played by the French Revolution in its political thought and action. The French Revolution became a vital, if not well recognized, tool of the anarchist movement to popularize and legitimize its revolutionary activity while engaged in a struggle with other political forces of the Republic to claim ownership over the Revolutionary heritage. The anarchists of the Third Republic wrote histories of the Revolution that reflected their own political orientation. They asserted themselves as part of the intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment, which they believed had helped spark the Revolution. The anarchists appropriated the music and popular culture of the French Revolution in their own propaganda. Moreover, they orchestrated revolutionary action and political theatre on the day most associated with the Revolution, July 14. In the Revolution, the anarchists saw glimmers of hope, precursors to their own movement, as well as an effective means to present their message to a wider audience as they also offered models for others to imitate.

Francophone Women: Between Visibility and Invisibility underscores the writing of authors who foreground the female body and who write across geographical borders, as part of a global literary movement that has the French language as its common denominator. This edited collection exposes how female authors portray the tensions that exist between visibility and invisibility, public and private, presence and absence, and excess and restraint when it is linked to femininity and the female body.

During the last fifty years, Mouloud Feraoun, Mohammed Dib, Mouloud Mammeri, and Kateb Yacine achieved significant international recognition yet remain little known in the United States. Filling a pressing need, The Algerian Novel and Colonial Discourse provides a critical introduction and a new approach to the works of these Algerian novelists. Beginning with an overview of their novels, this book goes on to discuss critical approaches to them, challenging the widely held notion that they are merely ethnographic, upholding the status quo. The Algerian Novel and Colonial Discourse provides a new reading, and, most significantly, argues that they are best read as witnesses to the kind of conflict Jean-François Lyotard calls a différend – a conflict in which one suffers an injustice and is at the same time deprived of the means to argue. The Algerian Novel and Colonial Discourse then examines the issue of humanism that the novels allegedly both appeal to and reject and demonstrates that the Algerian authors’ condemnation of colonialism is both a coherent political position and consistent with their critique of liberal humanism. It concludes with a discussion on the ongoing relevance of the Algerian novels.The Algerian Novel and Colonial Discourse includes a glossary and a short history of modern Algeria to provide readers with the political and cultural contexts they need to understand its literature. This combination of innovative theoretical approach and political context makes this book of utmost importance for students of Francophone literature and for literary critics interested in colonialism, postcolonialism, and Lyotard’s philosophy.

Indigenization of Language in the African Francophone Novel: A New Literary Canon discusses the question of indigenization in the African Francophone novel. Analyzing the prose narratives of Nazi Boni, Ahmadou Kourouma, and Patrice Nganang, this book contends that African literature written in European languages is primarily a creative translation process. Recourse to European languages as a medium of expressing African imagination, worldview, and cultures in fictional writing poses problems of intelligibility. Developed to express and reflect Western worldviews and sensibilities, European languages are employed by African writers to convey messages that seem to be at variance with European imagination. These writers find themselves writing in languages they wish to subvert through the technique of literary indigenization. The significance of this study resides in its raising awareness to the hurdles that literary creativity in a polyglossic context may present to readers and translators. This book provides answers to intriguing questions centering on the problematic of translation in contemporary African literature. It is a contribution to current research aimed at unraveling the conundrum surrounding the language question in African Europhone fiction, particularly the cultural functions of translation in literature. Potential translation problems have to be addressed in order to make African literature written in European languages intelligible to global readership. With the advent of globalization, transcultural communication has become an activity of enormous importance to the international community. It is a subject of great interest to translators, linguists, language instructors, and literary theorists.

Il s'agit dans cette reflexion de comprendre et de saisir les enjeux que suscite la pratique de l'humour et de l'ironie dans des situations dramatiques, deplorables voire tragiques qu'est le contexte de l'Afrique: rire pour (se) corriger, contester, sans pour autant etre agressif? Denoncer sans en avoir l'air? Est-ce une nouvelle esthetique? A travers l'analyse des oeuvres qui vont des annees 1958 a nos jours, a savoir celles de Mongo Beti, Ferdinand Oyono, et plus contemporaines comme celles de A. Mabanckou..., ce livre demontre comment le rire, a travers toutes les differentes formes qu'il peut prendre, a savoir la derision, la parodie, le sarcasme, le grotesque par le biais de l'humour et de l'ironie qui sont les manifestations apparentes, est un outil a la fois de la contestation, de dedramatisation des situations tragiques, mais aussi une esthetique d'ecriture en soi dans la representation du reel, du serieux, que ce soit au niveau social, politique ou de l'ecriture elle-meme qui joue a la fois sur la dissimulation, sur le carnavalesque, la polyphonie et le grotesque pour finir a une poetique du rire.

Avec sa place majestueuse dans la nature et avec sa structure racinaire, arborescente et genealogique, l'arbre possede traditionnellement une symbolique importante dans le paysage identitaire. Lorsque la symbolique de l'arbre est depossedee de ses caracteristiques et que sa structure et sa force sont menacees, elle revele une vision tourmentee du paysage identitaire. Au niveau de son systeme racinaire, la symbolique de l'arbre est limitee, destabilisee, voire deracinee de sa force, et la symbolique du rhizome offre une autre facon d'apprehender la structure genealogique. Pour devoiler les aspects de la colonisation, Thierry T. Gustave explore la symbolique de l'arbre et celle du rhizome dans les oeuvres litteraires de la Martinique et de la Guadeloupe. Son ouvrage analyse plus particulierement la flore antillaise comme metaphore et representation du paysage identitaire dans luie et vent sur Telumee Miracle de Simone Schwarz-Bart, Delice et le fromager de Xavier Orville, et Pays mele de Maryse Conde.

The only up-to-date and comprehensive text and reader of Algerian literature available in English, Algerian Literature: A Reader’s Guide and Anthology offers the reader a historical and critical overview of the literature from the early twentieth century to the present, introduces Algerian authors, and provides selections from a wide range of their writings, many translated here for the first time. It begins with an overview chapter that charts the evolution of Algerian literature and puts it in its proper historical context, followed by five thematic chapters: decolonization and cultural affirmation, the War of Independence, modernization and its discontents, emigration, and history. The chapters begin with introductions on the themes under discussion and the selections are preceded by biographies of the authors, as well as detailed summaries of the larger works from which they are extracted. Finally, each chapter concludes with a bibliography and sources for readers seeking additional information and insight. The selections included in Algerian Literature: A Reader’s Guide and Anthology have been carefully chosen to reflect the richness and diversity of Algerian literature. Accordingly, they are extracted from various literary genres: novels, plays, and poems. Furthermore, they are from works that belong to different literary movements: realism, modernism, and postmodernism. The variety and the outstanding quality of the selections, along with the superb introductions, summaries, and biographies make Algerian Literature: A Reader’s Guide and Anthology an ideal text for courses in Algerian, Francophone, and world literature courses. It will also be of interest to general readers outside the classroom who want to broaden their literary horizons.

Le poète Etzer Vilaire (1872–1951) a fait l’objet de nombreuses critiques de la part des intellectuels car son œuvre s’écarte de la conception dominante de la poésie haïtienne adossée à une politique ouverte et une place importante accordée à la “couleur locale” et à la langue créole, en tant qu’incarnation d’une conscience raciale et nationale. Je défends la thèse selon laquelle de tels rejets renforcent une conception idéologique et contraire à l’histoire de la poésie haïtienne. Celle-ci est incompatible avec la vision et le projet esthétiques de Vilaire qui visent à élever le statut d’Haïti comme nation et à démontrer la qualité de sa littérature à l’étranger. Mon étude de Vilaire revêt un certain intérêt, car l’auteur a été en grande partie méprisé et négligé par de nombreux critiques littéraires. Alors qu’il est considéré comme un poète mineur, j’établis que Vilaire a fait preuve d’innovation, au sens où il s’est écarté des canons de la littérature haïtienne traditionnelle. Il a introduit de nouveaux sujets, notamment en poésie, et ravivé le rôle du poète. Étant donné qu’il a bousculé la tradition littéraire haïtienne, certains critiques ont condamné son œuvre à laquelle ils dénient toute place dans la littérature haïtienne. Dans ce travail, j’aborde cette controverse au sujet de son œuvre et démontre, via l’analyse de ses poèmes, qu’il reflète les idées de son temps et la préoccupation de ses prédécesseurs. Mes recherches mettent également l’accent sur le fait que Vilaire n’était pas uniquement un poète, mais également une figure politique. Et c’est en tant que poète et homme politique qu’il a défendu son pays, sa race et a mis au défi ses collègues de s’engager sur cette voie. Je souligne le fait que, contrairement à d’autres auteurs contemporains de son époque, la notion de religion a modelé le contenu de son travail. Enfin, je démontre que Vilaire a été une personnalité influente dans la littérature haïtienne. Au nom de ses conceptions littéraires, de sa perception de la langue française et de sa tentative de défense de sa race, il a été un précurseur du mouvement de la négritude. Ce livre sera utile aux chercheurs et lecteurs qui s’intéressent à la poésie francophone, à la politique, et à la religion.

During the last thirty years, Algerian novelists have shown and continue to show a marked interest in the history of their country; some of them, however, approach the past in a manner that is significantly different from that of traditional historical novelists. The Algerian Historical Novel: Linking the Past to the Present and Future investigates for precisely what purpose, on what philosophical grounds, and using what techniques, novelists Rachid Boudjedra (La Prise de Gibraltar), Tahar Djaout (L’Invention du désert), Assia Djebar (Loin de Médine), Waciny Laredj (La Maison andalouse), Mohamed Sari (Pluies d’or), and Amin Zaoui (Le Dernier juif de Tamentit) engage with the history of Algeria. It also examines what the study of these authors can contribute to the larger debate concerning what this type of historical fiction can do with or reveal about the past that history as a discipline and the traditional historical novel cannot. The author advocates that La Prise de Gibraltar, L’Invention du désert, Loin de Médine, La Maison andalouse, Pluies d’or, and Le Dernier juif de Tamentit are best read as works of historiographic metafiction. He argues that these novels combine poststructuralist ideas and postmodernist narrative techniques to draw attention to previously neglected people and events in history and provide revised perspectives on them and others and, more importantly, to problematize the way Algerian history is thought and is used to address two major social and political concerns confronting Algerians: national identity and religious fundamentalism. The Algerian Historical Novel: Linking the Past to the Present and future is highly recommended to students, scholars, and general readers interested in Algerian literature and in historiographic metafiction.

This study examines the complexity of mourning in the works of two of the most widely read, yet rarely compared, contemporary authors in France, Albert Camus, born and raised in Algeria, and Marguerite Duras, originally from the former French Indochina. The book studies the figurative and thematic representations of mourning in these authors' works to show how their depictions of grieving extend beyond classic psychoanalytic theories of bereavement to portray a mourning that is unmitigated and interminable. The text completes this examination by exploring the distinction between individual and collective mourning attempts and by underscoring the pervasive tone of melancholy in the post-World War II writings of both authors.

One of the most widely acknowledged attributes of Francophone literature in general is that it brings wideranging socio-political issues to bear on literary theory, worldviews, and historical events. This study brings to light the resulting implications of this fact on the universal themes of femininity underlying the originating, unveiling, and demystifying that occur in the works of two of the best-known and most highly accomplished women writers of North African origin - Assia Djébar and Leïla Sebbar. This study also concerns itself with these writers' texts and intertexts in their relationship with cultural manifestations and with language.

Colonial Ambivalence, Cultural Authenticity, and the Limitations of Mimicry in French-Ruled West Africa, 1914-1956 offers an innovative and provocative reassessment of the history and legacies of French colonial rule in West Africa between the First World War and the late 1950s. Making critical use of postcolonial and cultural theory, James E. Genova argues that the colonizers and the colonized were locked in a struggle for authority increasingly structured by competing notions of what it meant to be French or African. This book breaks new ground by demonstrating the centrality of the cultural question in the imperial encounters between France and West Africa. It maps the emergence of the French-educated elite as a social class in French West Africa as a window into the complex relationship between agency and structural context in the making of history. A disjunction developed between decolonization and liberation in the colonial liaison of France and West Africa that left colonizers and colonized trapped in a neocolonial cultural framework actualizing Frantz Fanon’s deepest fears about the postcolony.