This article first outlines the characteristics of Alain Farah’s project in his latest novel, Pourquoi Bologne, in which his auto-fictional narrative develops out of an experimental approach that questions what literature can and cannot achieve. Farah’s writing thereby casts doubt on our capacity to account for the modern world and life in it. In its second part, the article engages in a detailed commentary of two passages in the novel to show how such a conception of literature conditions the use of writing and compositional strategies that create the impression of a game whose outcome is unclear but nevertheless worth playing.
{"title":"La Littérature comme jeu : Pourquoi Bologne d’Alain Farah","authors":"Jean-Michel Gouvard","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.15","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article first outlines the characteristics of Alain Farah’s project in his latest novel, Pourquoi Bologne, in which his auto-fictional narrative develops out of an experimental approach that questions what literature can and cannot achieve. Farah’s writing thereby casts doubt on our capacity to account for the modern world and life in it. In its second part, the article engages in a detailed commentary of two passages in the novel to show how such a conception of literature conditions the use of writing and compositional strategies that create the impression of a game whose outcome is unclear but nevertheless worth playing.","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43414498","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}
The nights of Harmony will be bright, writes Charles Fourier: instead of the “pallid mummy” (the moon), dazzling stars will give them “the appearance of our gardens illuminated at parties with multi-coloured glasses”. Each sleep will be but the prelude to a desired awakening. Fourier’s thought, particularly in its cosmogonic dimension, is thus a call for us to overcome “civilized” nights, which are the realm of subjugation, boredom and suffering. Doing away with nights is a way of achieving the “absolute gap” dear to Fourier.
{"title":"« Il n’y aura point de nuit dans l’ordre combiné » : Charles Fourier du jour au lendemain","authors":"T. Bouchet","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.04","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The nights of Harmony will be bright, writes Charles Fourier: instead of the “pallid mummy” (the moon), dazzling stars will give them “the appearance of our gardens illuminated at parties with multi-coloured glasses”. Each sleep will be but the prelude to a desired awakening. Fourier’s thought, particularly in its cosmogonic dimension, is thus a call for us to overcome “civilized” nights, which are the realm of subjugation, boredom and suffering. Doing away with nights is a way of achieving the “absolute gap” dear to Fourier.","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48347938","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}
Taking as its starting point a 1978 article by film critic Molly Haskell, in which she described Gérard Depardieu as “tactile […] grasping, eating, touching, coming to physical terms with everything in sight”, this article considers a largely overlooked Depardieu role, as the committed revolutionary leader Georges Danton in Andrzej Wajda’s Danton (1983)—a historical role that reflects the actor’s commitment to the relevance of the Revolutionary politician and intellectual. By examining three key scenes, the article scrutinizes Depardieu’s acting style (body language, vocal delivery, movement choices) and demonstrates that he is committed to new ways of engaging with the ideological processes of acting. In Danton, Depardieu pivots between a familiar set of performative registers—physical menace and self-regarding sensitivity, timidity and flamboyance, innocence and cunning—so that the performance ultimately serves as a timely reminder of his enduring mythic status in French cinema.
{"title":"“Une force qui va”: Reflections on Gérard Depardieu in Danton","authors":"B. McCann","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.08","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Taking as its starting point a 1978 article by film critic Molly Haskell, in which she described Gérard Depardieu as “tactile […] grasping, eating, touching, coming to physical terms with everything in sight”, this article considers a largely overlooked Depardieu role, as the committed revolutionary leader Georges Danton in Andrzej Wajda’s Danton (1983)—a historical role that reflects the actor’s commitment to the relevance of the Revolutionary politician and intellectual. By examining three key scenes, the article scrutinizes Depardieu’s acting style (body language, vocal delivery, movement choices) and demonstrates that he is committed to new ways of engaging with the ideological processes of acting. In Danton, Depardieu pivots between a familiar set of performative registers—physical menace and self-regarding sensitivity, timidity and flamboyance, innocence and cunning—so that the performance ultimately serves as a timely reminder of his enduring mythic status in French cinema.","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43544693","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}
The first mention of Gonneville’s land occurs in Abbé Jean Paulmier’s Mémoires of 1664 petitioning the Pope to approve a Christian mission to the as yet undiscovered Terres australes. Central to Paulmier’s argument was the extract from a document purporting to be the travel account of a sixteenth-century navigator, Gonneville. The extract details how the unknown land was discovered after the navigator’s ship L’Espoir had lost its way and landed in the fabled Terres australes, south-east of the Cape of Good Hope. His utopian account of the unknown land played an important role in French voyages of discovery during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After Cook’s refutation of the existence of a Great South Land, Gonneville’s land was identified in the nineteenth century as being in Brazil. Recent scholarship, however, has revealed that Gonneville and his story were probably invented by Paulmier. This article examines how and why the Gonneville story became part of the history of French exploration, then details the elements which led to its being discredited.
{"title":"Jean Paulmier, Gonneville and Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of a Myth","authors":"Margaret Sankey","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.02","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000The first mention of Gonneville’s land occurs in Abbé Jean Paulmier’s Mémoires of 1664 petitioning the Pope to approve a Christian mission to the as yet undiscovered Terres australes. Central to Paulmier’s argument was the extract from a document purporting to be the travel account of a sixteenth-century navigator, Gonneville. The extract details how the unknown land was discovered after the navigator’s ship L’Espoir had lost its way and landed in the fabled Terres australes, south-east of the Cape of Good Hope. His utopian account of the unknown land played an important role in French voyages of discovery during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After Cook’s refutation of the existence of a Great South Land, Gonneville’s land was identified in the nineteenth century as being in Brazil. Recent scholarship, however, has revealed that Gonneville and his story were probably invented by Paulmier. This article examines how and why the Gonneville story became part of the history of French exploration, then details the elements which led to its being discredited.","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48546966","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}
Drawing on recent innovations in detective criticism in France, this article broadens the quest to exonerate Poe’s famous orang-utan and argues that the Urtext of modern Anglo-American crime fiction is simultaneously a rejection of linguistic dominance (of English in this case) and an apologia for modern languages. This promotion of linguistic diversity goes hand in hand with the wilful non-self-coincidence of Poe’s detection narrative, which recalls, and pre-empts, the who’s-strangling-whom? paradox of deconstructionist criticism. Although “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is prescient, founding modern crime fiction for future generations, it is entwined with a nineteenth-century tradition of sculpture that not only poses men fighting with animals but also inverts classical scenarios, thereby questioning the binary of savagery versus civilization and investing animals with the strength to kill humans while also positing them as the victims of human violence.
{"title":"Primates in Paris and Edgar Allan Poe’s Paradoxical Commitment to Foreign Languages","authors":"Alistair Rolls","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.07","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Drawing on recent innovations in detective criticism in France, this article broadens the quest to exonerate Poe’s famous orang-utan and argues that the Urtext of modern Anglo-American crime fiction is simultaneously a rejection of linguistic dominance (of English in this case) and an apologia for modern languages. This promotion of linguistic diversity goes hand in hand with the wilful non-self-coincidence of Poe’s detection narrative, which recalls, and pre-empts, the who’s-strangling-whom? paradox of deconstructionist criticism. Although “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” is prescient, founding modern crime fiction for future generations, it is entwined with a nineteenth-century tradition of sculpture that not only poses men fighting with animals but also inverts classical scenarios, thereby questioning the binary of savagery versus civilization and investing animals with the strength to kill humans while also positing them as the victims of human violence.","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49146642","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 relationship between Baudelaire’s prose poem, “Assommons les pauvres!” (Le Spleen de Paris, 1869) and Shumona Sinha’s 2011 novel of the same title. Focusing on questions of reading and intertextuality, from Baudelaire’s reference to Proudhon to Sinha’s engagement with the prose poem and Le Spleen de Paris more broadly, it explores forms of confinement and creativity, the connections between narrative and freedom and the ways in which lyrical subjectivity and literary form reflect the social challenges of each period. In expressing socio-cultural and linguistic alienation, these texts centre the textual in an exploration of the marginal, thereby demonstrating that the connection between them goes beyond a critical act of violence and the presumed equality or dignity it confers, to represent a shared interrogation of universalism, multiculturalism, and authorial and political power.
{"title":"Creative Confinement and Narratives of Violence: Charles Baudelaire, Shumona Sinha and Assommons les pauvres!","authors":"S. Stephens","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.06","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.06","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This article examines the relationship between Baudelaire’s prose poem, “Assommons les pauvres!” (Le Spleen de Paris, 1869) and Shumona Sinha’s 2011 novel of the same title. Focusing on questions of reading and intertextuality, from Baudelaire’s reference to Proudhon to Sinha’s engagement with the prose poem and Le Spleen de Paris more broadly, it explores forms of confinement and creativity, the connections between narrative and freedom and the ways in which lyrical subjectivity and literary form reflect the social challenges of each period. In expressing socio-cultural and linguistic alienation, these texts centre the textual in an exploration of the marginal, thereby demonstrating that the connection between them goes beyond a critical act of violence and the presumed equality or dignity it confers, to represent a shared interrogation of universalism, multiculturalism, and authorial and political power.","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44337727","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}
Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s novel L’An deux mille quatre cent quarante: rêve s’il en fut jamais (1771) was the first futuristic utopia—or “uchronia”—and its treatment of food reveals that alimentary concerns were important markers of both contemporary inequality and future harmony in pre-revolutionary France. This article examines the utopian future of food via three alimentary features of Mercier’s novel: food justice, food security and commensality. By considering these tropes as reflections of perceived flaws in Parisian society, it demonstrates the importance of encouraging imaginary projections of ideal solutions to food crises through such literary experiments. The critiques and ideals related to food presented in L’An 2440 are contextualized through reference to the historical economic and social issues that inspired them. In conclusion, Mercier’s preoccupations in the eighteenth century and his predictions for the twenty-fifth century are considered with regard to their relevance to twenty-first-century food challenges, at a moment that is mid-way between these two points on the author’s alimentary history chronology.
Louis-Sébastien Mercier的小说《L'An deux mille quatre cent quarante:rêve’il en fut jamais》（1771年）是第一个未来主义乌托邦——或“uchronia”——其对食物的处理表明，对食物的关注是革命前法国当代不平等和未来和谐的重要标志。本文通过麦西耶小说的三个营养特征：食物正义、食物安全和共同性来考察食物的乌托邦式未来。通过将这些比喻视为巴黎社会公认缺陷的反映，它表明了通过此类文学实验鼓励想象粮食危机的理想解决方案的重要性。《L’An 2440》中提出的与食物有关的批评和理想是通过参考启发它们的历史经济和社会问题而被置于背景中的。总之，Mercier对18世纪的关注和他对25世纪的预测被认为与21世纪的食物挑战有关，而此时正处于作者饮食史年表上这两点之间。
{"title":"The Utopian Future of Food in Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s L’An deux mille quatre cent quarante: rêve s’il en fut jamais (1771)","authors":"J. Dutton","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.03","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.03","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s novel L’An deux mille quatre cent quarante: rêve s’il en fut jamais (1771) was the first futuristic utopia—or “uchronia”—and its treatment of food reveals that alimentary concerns were important markers of both contemporary inequality and future harmony in pre-revolutionary France. This article examines the utopian future of food via three alimentary features of Mercier’s novel: food justice, food security and commensality. By considering these tropes as reflections of perceived flaws in Parisian society, it demonstrates the importance of encouraging imaginary projections of ideal solutions to food crises through such literary experiments. The critiques and ideals related to food presented in L’An 2440 are contextualized through reference to the historical economic and social issues that inspired them. In conclusion, Mercier’s preoccupations in the eighteenth century and his predictions for the twenty-fifth century are considered with regard to their relevance to twenty-first-century food challenges, at a moment that is mid-way between these two points on the author’s alimentary history chronology.","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41437276","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}
Reading Gaspar Noé’s 2018 film Climax against the grain of the majority of critical reactions and the director’s own pronouncements, this article argues that this is a deeply political film. In line with West’s analysis of the films of the New French Extremity as works that are not (as suggested by Quandt) passive but a committed and politically engaged form of cinema, this article suggests that Climax can be read as an allegory of France’s current Realpolitik. Noé’s vision of this reality is revealed to be particularly bleak, for in line with the metaphysical stance of his other films, his is a universe ruled by entropic forces. The ramifications for Climax’s commentary on contemporary France are devastating, for the ideals of the Republic are shown to be no longer operational or capable of bringing people together, nor are they replaceable by any other form of identity politics.
{"title":"“Un film français et fier de l’être”: Gaspar Noé’s Climax in Context","authors":"Greg Hainge","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.09","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.09","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Reading Gaspar Noé’s 2018 film Climax against the grain of the majority of critical reactions and the director’s own pronouncements, this article argues that this is a deeply political film. In line with West’s analysis of the films of the New French Extremity as works that are not (as suggested by Quandt) passive but a committed and politically engaged form of cinema, this article suggests that Climax can be read as an allegory of France’s current Realpolitik. Noé’s vision of this reality is revealed to be particularly bleak, for in line with the metaphysical stance of his other films, his is a universe ruled by entropic forces. The ramifications for Climax’s commentary on contemporary France are devastating, for the ideals of the Republic are shown to be no longer operational or capable of bringing people together, nor are they replaceable by any other form of identity politics.","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46120709","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}
Claude Pichois claims that Baudelaire’s debt towards Fourier is limited to the notion of universal analogy. There is, however, another aspect of Fourier’s thought, one that had a profound impact on Les Fleurs du mal: the denunciation of universal evil. In this respect, the poet draws on Fourierist vocabulary to express his own vision of the world. This article provides examples of lexical borrowings by the poet who, disillusioned by the failure of the dreams of the Fourierist school, uses the word sin to stigmatize “the reign of evil” under which, according to Fourier, his contemporaries were living.
Claude Pichois声称波德莱尔对傅立叶的贡献仅限于普遍类比的概念。然而，傅立叶思想的另一个方面，对《堕落的花朵》产生了深远的影响:对普遍邪恶的谴责。在这方面，诗人利用傅里叶的词汇来表达他自己对世界的看法。这篇文章提供了诗人借用词汇的例子，他对傅里叶学派梦想的失败感到失望，用“罪”这个词来诋毁“邪恶的统治”，根据傅里叶的说法，他的同时代人生活在“邪恶的统治”之下。
{"title":"Baudelaire et le fouriérisme","authors":"P. Hambly","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.05","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Claude Pichois claims that Baudelaire’s debt towards Fourier is limited to the notion of universal analogy. There is, however, another aspect of Fourier’s thought, one that had a profound impact on Les Fleurs du mal: the denunciation of universal evil. In this respect, the poet draws on Fourierist vocabulary to express his own vision of the world. This article provides examples of lexical borrowings by the poet who, disillusioned by the failure of the dreams of the Fourierist school, uses the word sin to stigmatize “the reign of evil” under which, according to Fourier, his contemporaries were living.","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41575417","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":"The Culture of Commitment: Introduction","authors":"T. Unwin, J. West-Sooby","doi":"10.3828/AJFS.2021.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/AJFS.2021.01","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":8649,"journal":{"name":"Australian Journal of French Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70344204","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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