History, like fiction, is a narrative interpretation of events, and its writing or telling of the past is always mediated from a present position. The narratological turn in historical discourse from the 1960s challenged the assumption that accounts of the past were the objective accumulation of documented facts and emphasized the ideological mediation of historiography. With a focus on Roland Barthes’s poststructuralist theory of myth as a hermeneutic structure for historical interpretation, this article argues that demythologization is less an elimination of ideological structures than an illumination; a counter- or re-mythologization that perpetuates interpretative work. As a demythologizing critique of Charles de Gaulle’s myth of post-Occupation resistancialism, Michel Déon’s Les Poneys sauvages (1970/2010) undermines the myth of a unanimous and united France and opens up spaces of ambiguity and subjectivity that reveal interpretative conflicts over the historical narratives of the Second World War and the Algerian War of Independence.
{"title":"Demythologizing de Gaulle: History as Myth and Myth as Hermeneutic in France after Vichy and Algerian Independence","authors":"Avril Tynan","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0335","url":null,"abstract":"History, like fiction, is a narrative interpretation of events, and its writing or telling of the past is always mediated from a present position. The narratological turn in historical discourse from the 1960s challenged the assumption that accounts of the past were the objective accumulation of documented facts and emphasized the ideological mediation of historiography. With a focus on Roland Barthes’s poststructuralist theory of myth as a hermeneutic structure for historical interpretation, this article argues that demythologization is less an elimination of ideological structures than an illumination; a counter- or re-mythologization that perpetuates interpretative work. As a demythologizing critique of Charles de Gaulle’s myth of post-Occupation resistancialism, Michel Déon’s Les Poneys sauvages (1970/2010) undermines the myth of a unanimous and united France and opens up spaces of ambiguity and subjectivity that reveal interpretative conflicts over the historical narratives of the Second World War and the Algerian War of Independence.","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":"43150606","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}
Auteur prolixe et maître imitateur, Catulle Mendès peut être considéré comme l’archétype du créateur décadent qui pallie un manque d’originalité par la virtuosité, le gigantisme et le maniérisme spectaculaires (Vladimir Jankélévitch). C’est en ce sens que convergent les critiques de l’époque, qu’elles soient favorables ou défavorables. Notre article étudie cette rhétorique du monstre littéraire et de l’écrivain monstrueux qui se trouve également déployée dans l’œuvre romanesque de Mendès, à travers les figures d’artiste impuissant et de créateur à succès. Si la tératogonie mendésienne révèle les faiblesses et les facilités de l’écrivain en mal d’inspiration, elle signale également une réflexion d’une grande sagacité sur l’essence, le pouvoir et les finalités de la création artistique.
{"title":"Catulle Mendès: écrivain du monstre, écrivain monstrueux","authors":"Evrard d'Ableiges","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0339","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0339","url":null,"abstract":"Auteur prolixe et maître imitateur, Catulle Mendès peut être considéré comme l’archétype du créateur décadent qui pallie un manque d’originalité par la virtuosité, le gigantisme et le maniérisme spectaculaires (Vladimir Jankélévitch). C’est en ce sens que convergent les critiques de l’époque, qu’elles soient favorables ou défavorables. Notre article étudie cette rhétorique du monstre littéraire et de l’écrivain monstrueux qui se trouve également déployée dans l’œuvre romanesque de Mendès, à travers les figures d’artiste impuissant et de créateur à succès. Si la tératogonie mendésienne révèle les faiblesses et les facilités de l’écrivain en mal d’inspiration, elle signale également une réflexion d’une grande sagacité sur l’essence, le pouvoir et les finalités de la création artistique.","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":"48718249","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}
After a period of postmodern innovation, readers as well as some writers in France have developed a taste for English fiction, preferably for texts that invite immersive reading. In contrast to earlier cross-Channel studies with their emphasis on French influence on English literature, an enquiry into current Anglo-French literary relations might show the reverse being true. For a start, this article discusses creative responses to English works in three French novels: Sylvia Tabet represents the Franco-British literary dialogue as an encounter with a variety of Victorian and post-Victorian voices; Julie Wolkenstein stages it as a negotiation between a novel by Henry James and her own fiction; and Jacqueline Harpman replies to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando with an updated version of the myth of the androgyne. Like the English pre-texts, the French offshoots encourage identificatory reading, yet by their mise en abyme techniques they also provoke critical reflection.
{"title":"English Fiction in France: A Cross-Channel Dialogue at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century","authors":"Ina Schabert","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0338","url":null,"abstract":"After a period of postmodern innovation, readers as well as some writers in France have developed a taste for English fiction, preferably for texts that invite immersive reading. In contrast to earlier cross-Channel studies with their emphasis on French influence on English literature, an enquiry into current Anglo-French literary relations might show the reverse being true. For a start, this article discusses creative responses to English works in three French novels: Sylvia Tabet represents the Franco-British literary dialogue as an encounter with a variety of Victorian and post-Victorian voices; Julie Wolkenstein stages it as a negotiation between a novel by Henry James and her own fiction; and Jacqueline Harpman replies to Virginia Woolf’s Orlando with an updated version of the myth of the androgyne. Like the English pre-texts, the French offshoots encourage identificatory reading, yet by their mise en abyme techniques they also provoke critical reflection.","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":"41804340","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}
L’émergence de l’empirisme de John Locke à la fin du dix-septième siècle semble annoncer une nouvelle manière, fondée sur l’expérience, de concevoir l’homme et ses connaissances. Une manière qui trouve sa concrétisation dans la fiction marivaudien au début du dix-huitième siècle. En renonçant à la déduction et à l’abstraction, Marivaux conçoit la fiction comme un lieu propice pour l’expression des expériences subjectives dans un contexte plus concret et plus proche du lecteur de l’époque, de sorte que ses écrits deviennent l’illustration de l’identité personnelle et de la théorie de la connaissance de John Locke. Une illustration qui semble faire de la fiction marivaudienne une « expérience de pensée ». Mais comment Marivaux conçoit-il cette expérience de pensée? Quel type de connaissance cette expérience fournit-elle? C’est à ces questions que cet article tente d’apporter des réponses en repérant les analogies entre la pensée de Locke et celle de Marivaux, en analysant la notion de l’identité personnelle et son illustration dans l’œuvre marivaudienne et en expliquant les mécanismes de l’expérience de pensée que propose la fiction marivaudienne et son impact sur le lecteur de l’époque.
{"title":"Marivaux empiriste: la fiction comme expérience de pensée","authors":"Laïth Ibrahim","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0337","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0337","url":null,"abstract":"L’émergence de l’empirisme de John Locke à la fin du dix-septième siècle semble annoncer une nouvelle manière, fondée sur l’expérience, de concevoir l’homme et ses connaissances. Une manière qui trouve sa concrétisation dans la fiction marivaudien au début du dix-huitième siècle. En renonçant à la déduction et à l’abstraction, Marivaux conçoit la fiction comme un lieu propice pour l’expression des expériences subjectives dans un contexte plus concret et plus proche du lecteur de l’époque, de sorte que ses écrits deviennent l’illustration de l’identité personnelle et de la théorie de la connaissance de John Locke. Une illustration qui semble faire de la fiction marivaudienne une « expérience de pensée ». Mais comment Marivaux conçoit-il cette expérience de pensée? Quel type de connaissance cette expérience fournit-elle? C’est à ces questions que cet article tente d’apporter des réponses en repérant les analogies entre la pensée de Locke et celle de Marivaux, en analysant la notion de l’identité personnelle et son illustration dans l’œuvre marivaudienne et en expliquant les mécanismes de l’expérience de pensée que propose la fiction marivaudienne et son impact sur le lecteur de l’époque.","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":"47486031","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 examines the role of sex work in Georges Bataille’s account of intersubjectivity through transgression and the erotic. It conducts a close reading of Madame Edwarda, a short text in which a sex worker takes centre stage. This text is cited as exemplary of Bataille’s rejection of the limits of reason, limits imposed by a socio-economic model wherein everything must be exchanged, invested, and subordinated to logics of profit and accumulation. The aim of this article is to show that the model of transgression that Bataille sets out in Madame Edwarda in fact depends on another person’s labour. However, it is able to disavow this dependency because it assumes the labour in question – sex work – to be a free act of generosity: Edwarda’s sex work disappears as work, because she is identified with sex absolutely. The article argues that Bataille’s intersubjectivity is thus founded on work, and so on subjection.
{"title":"‘Working Girl’: Sex Work and Intersubjectivity in Georges Bataille's Madame Edwarda","authors":"J. Hornsby","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2022.0340","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2022.0340","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the role of sex work in Georges Bataille’s account of intersubjectivity through transgression and the erotic. It conducts a close reading of Madame Edwarda, a short text in which a sex worker takes centre stage. This text is cited as exemplary of Bataille’s rejection of the limits of reason, limits imposed by a socio-economic model wherein everything must be exchanged, invested, and subordinated to logics of profit and accumulation. The aim of this article is to show that the model of transgression that Bataille sets out in Madame Edwarda in fact depends on another person’s labour. However, it is able to disavow this dependency because it assumes the labour in question – sex work – to be a free act of generosity: Edwarda’s sex work disappears as work, because she is identified with sex absolutely. The article argues that Bataille’s intersubjectivity is thus founded on work, and so on subjection.","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":"48395562","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 would like to show the rhetorical ambivalence of Émile Zola's Lourdes, in which the naturalist method (seeing, showing) is the one used by the young Sophie Couteau to convince her audience of the miracle of which she is the lucky one. It is precisely the paradox of this novel to denounce the religious imposture and the commercialization of the miracle, while underlining the similarity of the methods employed by the religious discourse, the medical discourse and by the naturalist novel.
{"title":"La Foi expérimentale: Lourdes d'Émile Zola","authors":"Véronique Cnockaert","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2021.0327","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2021.0327","url":null,"abstract":"This article would like to show the rhetorical ambivalence of Émile Zola's Lourdes, in which the naturalist method (seeing, showing) is the one used by the young Sophie Couteau to convince her audience of the miracle of which she is the lucky one. It is precisely the paradox of this novel to denounce the religious imposture and the commercialization of the miracle, while underlining the similarity of the methods employed by the religious discourse, the medical discourse and by the naturalist novel.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45134726","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}
On 7 February 1861, John Tyndall, professor of natural philosophy, delivered a historical lecture: he could prove that different gases absorb heat to a very different degree, which implies that the temperate conditions provided for by the Earth's atmosphere are dependent on its particular composition of gases. The theoretical foundation of climate science was laid. Ten years later, on the other side of the Channel, a young and ambitious author was working on a comprehensive literary analysis of the French era under the Second Empire. Émile Zola had probably not heard or read of Tyndall's discovery. However, the article makes the case for reading Zola's Rougon-Macquart as an extensive story of climate change. Zola's literary attempts to capture the defining characteristic of the Second Empire led him to the insight that its various milieus were all part of the same ‘climate’: that of an all-encompassing warming. Zola suggests that this climate is man-made: the economic success of the Second Empire is based on heating, in a literal and metaphorical sense, as well as on stoking the steam-engines and creating the hypertrophic atmosphere of the hothouse that enhances life and maximises turnover and profit. In contrast to Tyndall and his audience, Zola sensed the catastrophic consequences of this warming: the Second Empire was inevitably moving towards a final débâcle, i.e. it was doomed to perish in local and ‘global’ climate catastrophes. The article foregrounds the supplementary status of Tyndall's physical and Zola's literary knowledge. As Zola's striking intuition demonstrates, literature appears to have a privileged approach to the phenomenon of man-induced climate change.
{"title":"Émile Zola and the Literary Language of Climate Change","authors":"Johannes Ungelenk","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2021.0331","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2021.0331","url":null,"abstract":"On 7 February 1861, John Tyndall, professor of natural philosophy, delivered a historical lecture: he could prove that different gases absorb heat to a very different degree, which implies that the temperate conditions provided for by the Earth's atmosphere are dependent on its particular composition of gases. The theoretical foundation of climate science was laid. Ten years later, on the other side of the Channel, a young and ambitious author was working on a comprehensive literary analysis of the French era under the Second Empire. Émile Zola had probably not heard or read of Tyndall's discovery. However, the article makes the case for reading Zola's Rougon-Macquart as an extensive story of climate change. Zola's literary attempts to capture the defining characteristic of the Second Empire led him to the insight that its various milieus were all part of the same ‘climate’: that of an all-encompassing warming. Zola suggests that this climate is man-made: the economic success of the Second Empire is based on heating, in a literal and metaphorical sense, as well as on stoking the steam-engines and creating the hypertrophic atmosphere of the hothouse that enhances life and maximises turnover and profit. In contrast to Tyndall and his audience, Zola sensed the catastrophic consequences of this warming: the Second Empire was inevitably moving towards a final débâcle, i.e. it was doomed to perish in local and ‘global’ climate catastrophes. The article foregrounds the supplementary status of Tyndall's physical and Zola's literary knowledge. As Zola's striking intuition demonstrates, literature appears to have a privileged approach to the phenomenon of man-induced climate change.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46623640","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 makes the case for reading Zola’s protagonists Laurent and Thérèse as literary foils for one of the founding fathers of the experimental method, namely the physiologist Claude Bernard, and his wife, Fanny Martin. Drawing more particularly on elements from Bernard’s and Martin’s lives, as well as Bernard’s scientific writings, the article shows that Zola ‘performs’ two grueling experiments in the aforementioned novel: the first one, initiated by the author himself, results in the death of three protagonists and the paralysis of the fourth one; the second experiment, initiated by Laurent, reveals that the latter’s evaluation of Thérèse and his ensuing hypothesis are seriously flawed. In fact, Laurent’s gaze is marred by his tendency to ‘dirty’ nature (‘salir la nature,’ to borrow Zola’s expression), and his experiment doesn’t turn out the way he had originally planned, as both lovers turned murderers end up committing suicide together. This article thus argues that, in Thérèse Raquin, Zola resorts to critical posturing as a vivisector in a text that can be read as a revenge narrative which gestures towards the possibility for vivisectors to be ‘redeemed’ as individuals made fully capable of feeling compassion for their objects through angelic intervention.
{"title":"La Critique et le dépassement de la « méthode expérimentale » dans Thérèse Raquin","authors":"Hélène Sicard-Cowan","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2021.0330","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2021.0330","url":null,"abstract":"This article makes the case for reading Zola’s protagonists Laurent and Thérèse as literary foils for one of the founding fathers of the experimental method, namely the physiologist Claude Bernard, and his wife, Fanny Martin. Drawing more particularly on elements from Bernard’s and Martin’s lives, as well as Bernard’s scientific writings, the article shows that Zola ‘performs’ two grueling experiments in the aforementioned novel: the first one, initiated by the author himself, results in the death of three protagonists and the paralysis of the fourth one; the second experiment, initiated by Laurent, reveals that the latter’s evaluation of Thérèse and his ensuing hypothesis are seriously flawed. In fact, Laurent’s gaze is marred by his tendency to ‘dirty’ nature (‘salir la nature,’ to borrow Zola’s expression), and his experiment doesn’t turn out the way he had originally planned, as both lovers turned murderers end up committing suicide together. This article thus argues that, in Thérèse Raquin, Zola resorts to critical posturing as a vivisector in a text that can be read as a revenge narrative which gestures towards the possibility for vivisectors to be ‘redeemed’ as individuals made fully capable of feeling compassion for their objects through angelic intervention.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48964348","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}
La Curée is a novel about financial excesses and sexual appetites. A problem arises for Zola: how to describe sexual acts and avoid censorship? Zola's strategy is to portray sexuality in a slightly indirect way. He uses a scientific gaze as an alibi to describe human sexuality. This article demonstrates how Zola combines references to botany and fairground anatomy for this purpose. Botany allows Zola to write about sexuality in a way that is both explicit and indirect. In addition, the naturalistic method of observation offers a ‘neutral’ scientific perspective of sexuality. Finally, references to anatomical Venuses allow the pseudo-pedagogical observation of the naked female body. Therefore, an indecent, voyeuristic gaze reveals itself behind science as alibi, behind the naturalist gaze.
{"title":"De L'œil du savant au regard impudique dans La Curée","authors":"Aude Campmas","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2021.0329","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2021.0329","url":null,"abstract":"La Curée is a novel about financial excesses and sexual appetites. A problem arises for Zola: how to describe sexual acts and avoid censorship? Zola's strategy is to portray sexuality in a slightly indirect way. He uses a scientific gaze as an alibi to describe human sexuality. This article demonstrates how Zola combines references to botany and fairground anatomy for this purpose. Botany allows Zola to write about sexuality in a way that is both explicit and indirect. In addition, the naturalistic method of observation offers a ‘neutral’ scientific perspective of sexuality. Finally, references to anatomical Venuses allow the pseudo-pedagogical observation of the naked female body. Therefore, an indecent, voyeuristic gaze reveals itself behind science as alibi, behind the naturalist gaze.","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49469285","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","authors":"Hélène Sicard-Cowan","doi":"10.3366/nfs.2021.0325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/nfs.2021.0325","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":19182,"journal":{"name":"Nottingham French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46147499","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}