The publication of Vanessa Springora’s Le Consentement in January 2020, which led to the public shaming of the paedophile writer Gabriel Matzneff, has been seen as a key #MeToo moment in French culture. In her account of her adolescent relationship with Matzneff, Springora stops short of condemning all sex with minors and does not call for any strengthening of French laws around sexual consent. Does this imply a misplaced confidence, arguably shared by some strains of postfeminist thought, in young girls’ sexual agency and resolve? And is this, in turn, complicit with Matzneff’s own romanticized account of adolescent sexuality? I suggest, instead, that Springora frames her account in terms of consent precisely in order to suggest – as a number of feminist critics have recently done – the inadequacy of consent discourse as a means of protecting young women and girls within a patriarchal culture. Rather, Le Consentement stands as a redressing of the discursive balance within a literary and extra-literary system of representation that, for some six decades, worked to legitimize Matzneff’s compulsive desire for young girls and boys while disregarding the damage inflicted by the subjective experience of those young people.
{"title":"Vanessa Springora, Gabriel Matzneff and the Problem of Consent","authors":"Douglas Morrey","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0358","url":null,"abstract":"The publication of Vanessa Springora’s Le Consentement in January 2020, which led to the public shaming of the paedophile writer Gabriel Matzneff, has been seen as a key #MeToo moment in French culture. In her account of her adolescent relationship with Matzneff, Springora stops short of condemning all sex with minors and does not call for any strengthening of French laws around sexual consent. Does this imply a misplaced confidence, arguably shared by some strains of postfeminist thought, in young girls’ sexual agency and resolve? And is this, in turn, complicit with Matzneff’s own romanticized account of adolescent sexuality? I suggest, instead, that Springora frames her account in terms of consent precisely in order to suggest – as a number of feminist critics have recently done – the inadequacy of consent discourse as a means of protecting young women and girls within a patriarchal culture. Rather, Le Consentement stands as a redressing of the discursive balance within a literary and extra-literary system of representation that, for some six decades, worked to legitimize Matzneff’s compulsive desire for young girls and boys while disregarding the damage inflicted by the subjective experience of those young people.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44460608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Ecrire la vie (2011), an anthology of her major works to date, Annie Ernaux published for the first time about eighty images of herself and her family; these pictures are inserted in an opening ‘photojournal’, and combined with extracts from the author’s private diary, thus giving direct access to her past life and to the idiosyncrasies of her self. Readers/viewers are compelled to confront the texts and images and to construct their own reading of the pictures, which can also be matched with the numerous descriptions of photographs in Ernaux’s autobiographical works since La Place (1983). In contrast to Les Années (2008), the writer’s narrative attempt to produce a total and impersonal autobiography, this photo-textual assemblage constitutes an alternative material and archival form of life-writing; it constructs a singular temporality and a list-like, serial aesthetic which directly emanate from specific characteristics of the diary and photography.
{"title":"Annie Ernaux’s ‘Photojournal’ in Écrire la vie: Photo-Diaristic Archives as a Model of Life Writing","authors":"Fabien Arribert-Narce","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0351","url":null,"abstract":"In Ecrire la vie (2011), an anthology of her major works to date, Annie Ernaux published for the first time about eighty images of herself and her family; these pictures are inserted in an opening ‘photojournal’, and combined with extracts from the author’s private diary, thus giving direct access to her past life and to the idiosyncrasies of her self. Readers/viewers are compelled to confront the texts and images and to construct their own reading of the pictures, which can also be matched with the numerous descriptions of photographs in Ernaux’s autobiographical works since La Place (1983). In contrast to Les Années (2008), the writer’s narrative attempt to produce a total and impersonal autobiography, this photo-textual assemblage constitutes an alternative material and archival form of life-writing; it constructs a singular temporality and a list-like, serial aesthetic which directly emanate from specific characteristics of the diary and photography.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43320029","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A slow but steady stream of critical studies on the diary form have emerged throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although a remarkable number of notebooks ( carnets, in French) have been published by poets in the same period, they have not attracted the same critical attention. Taking some steps to redress this imbalance, this article questions whether the lack of critical work on the poetic notebook is due to the pronounced interest that many of these works show in the nonhuman world. Drawing on contemporary models of nonhuman or ecological thought, this article explores how the poet Lorand Gaspar conceives of the notebook as a woven or entangled form of writing. It investigates how his notebook interlaces different knowledge systems, perspectives and styles in order to explore the entangled nature of worldly forces and humanity’s immersion in this immense weave.
{"title":"‘Dans le tissage de la vie’: The Poetic Notebook as an Ecological Form of Exploration","authors":"Emily McLaughlin","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0350","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0350","url":null,"abstract":"A slow but steady stream of critical studies on the diary form have emerged throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Although a remarkable number of notebooks ( carnets, in French) have been published by poets in the same period, they have not attracted the same critical attention. Taking some steps to redress this imbalance, this article questions whether the lack of critical work on the poetic notebook is due to the pronounced interest that many of these works show in the nonhuman world. Drawing on contemporary models of nonhuman or ecological thought, this article explores how the poet Lorand Gaspar conceives of the notebook as a woven or entangled form of writing. It investigates how his notebook interlaces different knowledge systems, perspectives and styles in order to explore the entangled nature of worldly forces and humanity’s immersion in this immense weave.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49308138","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Introduction: Diaries and the Question of Literature","authors":"Sam Ferguson","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0345","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42402519","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Maurice Blanchot’s writing on the diary has been presented as ignorant and contemptuous of its object, and as misrepresenting the diary by focusing on its literary qualities. This article rehabilitates Blanchot as a critic and theorist of the diary, and moreover, as a pivotal figure in realising the diary’s literary potential. Blanchot’s discussion of particular diarists (including Benjamin Constant, Joseph Joubert, Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, and André Gide), together with his critical reflections, were instrumental in his creation of conceptions of literature that exerted a strong influence on the avant-garde movements of the following decades, even though these avant-gardes rejected the introspective aspect of intimate writings. Furthermore, Blanchot produced a programme for how the diary might become a literary work, which was picked up again by Roland Barthes in 1979, and casts light on experimental uses of the diary in recent decades.
{"title":"Maurice Blanchot: ‘Theorist’ of the Diary?","authors":"Sam Ferguson","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0346","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0346","url":null,"abstract":"Maurice Blanchot’s writing on the diary has been presented as ignorant and contemptuous of its object, and as misrepresenting the diary by focusing on its literary qualities. This article rehabilitates Blanchot as a critic and theorist of the diary, and moreover, as a pivotal figure in realising the diary’s literary potential. Blanchot’s discussion of particular diarists (including Benjamin Constant, Joseph Joubert, Søren Kierkegaard, Franz Kafka, and André Gide), together with his critical reflections, were instrumental in his creation of conceptions of literature that exerted a strong influence on the avant-garde movements of the following decades, even though these avant-gardes rejected the introspective aspect of intimate writings. Furthermore, Blanchot produced a programme for how the diary might become a literary work, which was picked up again by Roland Barthes in 1979, and casts light on experimental uses of the diary in recent decades.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41928079","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Although Barthes never published a diary in his lifetime, his work possesses a subjective dimension in which we encounter writing practices that reflect on the diary or even approach diary writing itself. Barthes’s experience of mourning the loss of his mother and of a “désœuvrement” (Jean-Luc Nancy) led him to pursue a synthesis that would never see the light of day, the project of Vita nova. Would the idea of a synthesis be taken up by writers who came to diary writing after Barthes? A brief comparison with Éric Chevillard’s l’Autofictif will show, in the last part of this article, that the transformations that the material culture of literature has undergone have overturned the Barthesian idea of the synthesis between the Book and the Album.
{"title":"Le Journal avec et après Barthes: de l’écriture désœuvrée à l’écriture exposée","authors":"A. Matei","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0347","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0347","url":null,"abstract":"Although Barthes never published a diary in his lifetime, his work possesses a subjective dimension in which we encounter writing practices that reflect on the diary or even approach diary writing itself. Barthes’s experience of mourning the loss of his mother and of a “désœuvrement” (Jean-Luc Nancy) led him to pursue a synthesis that would never see the light of day, the project of Vita nova. Would the idea of a synthesis be taken up by writers who came to diary writing after Barthes? A brief comparison with Éric Chevillard’s l’Autofictif will show, in the last part of this article, that the transformations that the material culture of literature has undergone have overturned the Barthesian idea of the synthesis between the Book and the Album.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42849714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In Maghrebi literature, the diary remains a marginal genre and writers have an ambivalent relationship with diaristic writing. This article begins by identifying and studying four major situations of Maghrebi diaristic writing based on its relationship with fiction, history, politics and autobiography. A more focused study of the diaries of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, Abdelkébir Khatibi and Abdellatif Laâbi then sheds light on the constraints of diaristic practice. The diary, whether interrupted or diverted towards other forms of writing, is construed by the three Moroccan writers as hybrid and unstable, favouring the duplication of the ‘I’ and forming connections with the diarist’s œuvre. Driven by a complex and dynamic writing, the diary seems to tend toward the fragment that embodies both the uncertainty of the diarist and his quest for a literary work of which the diary could be the core, the margin or the horizon.
{"title":"Le Défi des diaristes maghrébins: situations, contraintes et horizons de l’écriture journalière au Maghreb","authors":"Khalid Lyamlahy","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0348","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0348","url":null,"abstract":"In Maghrebi literature, the diary remains a marginal genre and writers have an ambivalent relationship with diaristic writing. This article begins by identifying and studying four major situations of Maghrebi diaristic writing based on its relationship with fiction, history, politics and autobiography. A more focused study of the diaries of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine, Abdelkébir Khatibi and Abdellatif Laâbi then sheds light on the constraints of diaristic practice. The diary, whether interrupted or diverted towards other forms of writing, is construed by the three Moroccan writers as hybrid and unstable, favouring the duplication of the ‘I’ and forming connections with the diarist’s œuvre. Driven by a complex and dynamic writing, the diary seems to tend toward the fragment that embodies both the uncertainty of the diarist and his quest for a literary work of which the diary could be the core, the margin or the horizon.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47485625","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Renaud Camus’s Journal romain 1985–1986 is used here for an examination of the metatextual reflections present in it that demonstrate what the diary, as a genre, can become by combining several passions: topography, homosexuality, aesthetics and culture. Here, the diary becomes an oeuvre. To bring out the specific tone of Camus’s Journal romain, this analysis highlights the different facets of his diaristic writing. In fact, Camus’s work challenges a number of concepts, including that of contemporary political correctness. This vehement diarist reveals here how writing can become life and life can become writing. In his diaristic writing he adopts a practice that straddles literature and life, and elevates it to an unprecedented level, resulting in an aesthetics of existence. Thus, the first of his many “scandals” is that of the fetishisation of the diary. Unlike some others, perhaps, this one is both amusing and illuminating.
{"title":"Le Journal romain 1985–1986 de Renaud Camus et la fétichisation du Journal","authors":"M. Zorica","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0349","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0349","url":null,"abstract":"Renaud Camus’s Journal romain 1985–1986 is used here for an examination of the metatextual reflections present in it that demonstrate what the diary, as a genre, can become by combining several passions: topography, homosexuality, aesthetics and culture. Here, the diary becomes an oeuvre. To bring out the specific tone of Camus’s Journal romain, this analysis highlights the different facets of his diaristic writing. In fact, Camus’s work challenges a number of concepts, including that of contemporary political correctness. This vehement diarist reveals here how writing can become life and life can become writing. In his diaristic writing he adopts a practice that straddles literature and life, and elevates it to an unprecedented level, resulting in an aesthetics of existence. Thus, the first of his many “scandals” is that of the fetishisation of the diary. Unlike some others, perhaps, this one is both amusing and illuminating.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45198248","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses on several short stories in Linda Lê’s collection Autres jeux avec le feu (2002), and analyses identity as it is intertwined with the themes of inspiration and creation. ‘L’Échafaudage’ relates a visionary quest on the part of a protagonist whose name, Gemini, sets up the dynamic for this story and the collection. Fragmented identity is revealed by the name which indicates a twin nature. While he denies them, his quest reveals hidden selves, as demonstrated through readings informed by short story theory and centred on postcolonialism and gender. In the framing stories, ‘La Mouche’ and ‘Voix off’, the poet/muse trope is introduced. These stories present and perform an evolution of inspiration and creative voice as they relate to gender and memory. This evolution operates a reversal of the hierarchy inherent in the divided self as illustrated by Gemini, and opens the way to a feminine creative voice.
这篇文章聚焦于Linda Lê的作品集《Autres jeux avec le feu》（2002）中的几个短篇小说，并分析了身份与灵感和创作主题交织在一起的情况《Échafaudage》讲述了一位名叫双子座的主人公的富有远见的探索，为这个故事和系列奠定了动力。这个名字揭示了支离破碎的身份，它表明了一种双胞胎性质。虽然他否认了这些，但他的探索揭示了隐藏的自我，正如短篇小说理论所提供的阅读所证明的那样，并以后殖民主义和性别为中心。在框架故事“La Mouche”和“Voix off”中，引入了诗人/缪斯的比喻。这些故事呈现并表现了灵感和创造性声音的演变，因为它们与性别和记忆有关。正如双子座所示，这种进化逆转了分裂的自我固有的等级制度，并为女性创造性的声音开辟了道路。
{"title":"Inspiration, Creation and Memory in Linda Lê’s Autres jeux avec le feu","authors":"Laurel Cummins","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0336","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on several short stories in Linda Lê’s collection Autres jeux avec le feu (2002), and analyses identity as it is intertwined with the themes of inspiration and creation. ‘L’Échafaudage’ relates a visionary quest on the part of a protagonist whose name, Gemini, sets up the dynamic for this story and the collection. Fragmented identity is revealed by the name which indicates a twin nature. While he denies them, his quest reveals hidden selves, as demonstrated through readings informed by short story theory and centred on postcolonialism and gender. In the framing stories, ‘La Mouche’ and ‘Voix off’, the poet/muse trope is introduced. These stories present and perform an evolution of inspiration and creative voice as they relate to gender and memory. This evolution operates a reversal of the hierarchy inherent in the divided self as illustrated by Gemini, and opens the way to a feminine creative voice.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41934985","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"City Escapes: Around the World in Eight Free DaysRemembering Nick Hewitt","authors":"B. Mcguirk","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0341","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0341","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47868020","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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