This volume collects papers presented at the annual French Literature Conference, sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of the University of South Carolina.
As a meaningful manifestation of how institutionalized the discipline has become, the new Handbook of Translation Studies is most welcome. The HTS aims at disseminating knowledge about translation and interpreting to a relatively broad audience: not only students who often adamantly prefer user-friendliness, researchers and lecturers in Translation Studies, Translation & Interpreting professionals; but also scholars, experts and professionals from other disciplines (among which linguistics, sociology, history, psychology). Moreover, the HTS is the first handbook with this scope in Translation Studies that has both a print edition and an online version. The HTS is variously searchable: by article, by author, by subject. Another benefit is the interconnection with the selection and organization principles of the online Translation Studies Bibliography (TSB). Many items in the reference lists are hyperlinked to the TSB, where the user can find an abstract of a publication. All articles are written by specialists in the different subfields and are peer-reviewed
The 2007 manifesto in favour of a "Litterature-monde en francais" has generated new debates in both "francophone" and "postcolonial" studies. Praised by some for breaking down the hierarchical division between "French" and "Francophone" literatures, the manifesto has been criticized by othersfor recreating that division through an exoticizing vision that continues to privilege the publishing industry of the former colonial metropole. Does the manifesto signal the advent of a new critical paradigm destined to render obsolescent those of "francophone" and/or "postcolonial" studies? Or isit simply a passing fad, a glitzy but ephemeral publicity stunt generated and promoted by writers and publishing executives vis-a-vis whom scholars and critics should maintain a skeptical distance? Does it offer an all-embracing transnational vista leading beyond the confines of postcolonialism orreintroduce an incipient form of neocolonialism even while proclaiming the end of the centre/periphery divide? In addressing these questions, leading scholars of "French", "Francophone" and "postcolonial" studies from around the globe help to assess the wider question of the evolving status ofFrench Studies as a transnational field of study amid the challenges of globalization.
This book focuses on literature and cinema in English or French by authors and directors not working in their native language. Artists with hybrid identities have become a defining phenomenon of contemporary reality following the increased mobility between civilisations during the postcolonial period and the waves of emigration to the West. Cinema and prose fiction remain the most popular sources of cultural consumption, not least owing to the adaptability of both to the new electronic media. This volume considers cultural products in English and French in which the explicitly multi-focal representation of authors' experiences of their native languages/cultures makes itself conspicuous. The essays explore work by the peripheral and those without a country, while problematising what might be meant by the widely used but not always well-defined term ‘bicultural’. The first section looks at films by such well-known filmmakers working in France as Bouchareb, Kechiche, Legzouli and Dridi, as well as the animated feature Persepolis. Here the focus is on the representation of human experience in spatial terms, exploring the appropriation of territory cohabited by ‘local’ people, newcomers and their children, haunted by the cultural memories of distant places. The second part is devoted to multicultural authors whose ‘native’ language was English, Russian, Polish, Hungarian or Spanish (Beckett, Herzen, Voyeikova, Triolet, Conrad, Hoffmann, Kristof, Dorfman), and their creative engagement with difference. A study of the emergence of multilingual writing in Montaigne and an autobiographical essay by Elleke Boehmer on growing up surrounded by English, Dutch, Afrikaans and Zulu frame the volume's chapters. The collection relishes the freedom provided by liberation from the confines of one language and culture and the delight in creative multilingualism. This book will be of significant interest to those studying the subject of biculturalism, as well as the fields of comparative literature and cinema.
Although the past two decades have seen a wide recognition of the notable fiction written in French by African women, little attention has been given to their equally significant poetry. A Rain of Words is the first comprehensive attempt to survey the poetic production of these women, collecting work by forty-seven poets from a dozen francophone African countries. Some are established writers; others are only beginning to publish their work. Almost none of the poems here have been published outside of Africa or Europe or been previously translated into English. The poems are accompanied by brief biographies of the poets. Supplementing these are a critical introductory essay by Irène Assiba d'Almeida that places women's poetry in the context of recent African history, characterizes its thematic and aesthetic features, and traces the process by which the anthology was compiled and edited, an essay by Janis A. Mayes discussing language politics, the cultural contexts within which the poetry emerges, and literary translation strategies, and an extensive bibliography. This landmark bilingual collection--the result of ten years of research, collection, editing, and translation--offers readers of English and French entry into a flourishing and essential genre of contemporary African literature.
In recent years, the material circumstances governing the production of African literature have been analyzed from a variety of angles. This study goes one step further by charting the trajectories of a corpus of francophone African (sub-Saharan) narratives subsequently translated into English. It examines the role of various institutional agents and agencies—publishers, preface writers, critics, translators, and literary award committees—involved in the value-making process that accrues visibility to these texts that eventually reach the Anglo-American book market. The author evinces that over time different types of publishers dominated, both within the original publishing space as in the foreign literary field, contingent on their specific mission—be it commercial, ideological or educational—as well as on socioeconomic and political circumstances. The study addresses the influence of the editorial paratextual framing—pandering to specific Western readerships—the potential interventionist function of the translator, and the consecrating mechanisms of literary and translation awards affecting both gender and minority representation. Drawing on the work by key sociologists and translation theorists, the author uses an innovative interdisciplinary methodology to analyze the corpus narratives.
This book is a much needed contribution to interdisciplinary research on the intersection of French and Francophone Studies and Translation Studies. It highlights the symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines whereby theories and concepts developed in translation studies provide useful models and paradigms for studying francophone literature, while major concepts that hold sway in the francophone world provide a solid basis for elucidating and understanding translation phenomena. The book is at once a contribution to the growing field of postcolonial francophone studies and the sub-area of postcolonial translation theory. Contributors are experts from a variety of disciplines and hail from various regions across the globe. What unites them is their interest in translation and its conceptualization both as an interlinguistic practice and a metaphor for intercultural communication and transcultural relations. The contributions draw on literature, film, historical documents and critical theories by French and francophone thinkers, highlighting the significance of translation for African, Caribbean and migrant francophone discourse.
This magnificent volume provides a complete history of the literature of France from its origins to the present day, taking us beyond traditional definitions of 'literature' into the world of the best-seller and, beyond words, to graphic fiction and.
This History is the first in a century to trace the development and impact of the novel in French from its beginnings to the present. Leading specialists explore how novelists writing in French have responded to the diverse personal, economic, socio-political, cultural-artistic and environmental factors that shaped their worlds. From the novel's medieval precursors to the impact of the internet, the History provides fresh accounts of canonical and lesser-known authors, offering a global perspective beyond the national borders of 'the Hexagon' to explore France's colonial past and its legacies. Accessible chapters range widely, including the French novel in Sub-Saharan Africa, data analysis of the novel system in the seventeenth century, social critique in women's writing, Sade's banned works and more. Highlighting continuities and divergence between and within different periods, this lively volume offers routes through a diverse literary landscape while encouraging comparison and connection-making between writers, works and historical periods.