Recherche multi-critères

“Somewhere between coloured and white”: ambivalence and loss of bearings in Caryl Phillips’ A View of the Empire at Sunset par Mathilde Branchereau, publié le 14/02/2024

[Fiche] In A View of the Empire at Sunset, Caryl Phillips proposes a fictionalised version of the life of novelist Jean Rhys – a Creole woman from Dominica expatriated in Europe – as a mirror image of the decline and dissolution of the British colonial Empire over the course of the 20th century. By depicting the protagonist’s struggle to find a sense of belonging, the novel highlights how colonial subjects may be confronted to a feeling of identity ambivalence and a loss of bearings.

The American Wilderness: an Ambivalent Image of Self-regeneration and Psychological Disintegration. From Dead Man (1995) to Into the Wild (2007). par Martin Berny, publié le 03/06/2021

This presentation deals with the wilderness motif in contemporary American literature and American cinema. Going back to the origins of this ambivalent image, it aims at explaining the underlying ideology that actively contributes to the endless process of mythogenesis of the American nation. On the individual level, it is through a journey of self-reinvention or reconstruction of the self that the wilderness appears as either a path to a metaphorical rebirth or as a dangerous place where one has to face the perils of psychological disintegration. Focusing on historical notions and topics such as Turner’s Frontier thesis, the Transcendentalist movement, or the representation of Native Americans in popular culture, this article deals with the limits of the American dream of self-transcendence. It explores works such as Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995) and both Jon Krakauer’s non-fiction bestseller Into the Wild (1996) and its film adaptation directed by Sean Penn (2007).

Fiche de lecture : The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir d'Alex Marzano-Lesnevich (2017) par Jillian Bruns, publié le 25/03/2021

Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir (Deckle Edge, 2017). French translation: L’empreinte (2020).

"Ideas don't exist, except within emotions": Interview with Joshua Cohen par Joshua Cohen, Benjamin Ferguson, publié le 20/12/2019

Joshua Cohen is an American writer and literary critic, whose first collection of essays, ATTENTION: Dispatches from a Land of Distraction (2019) explores the notion of attention in today's society. In this interview, Joshua Cohen talks about writing for a global readership, being a novelist in the age of non-fiction, the effects of #MeToo on literary production and the invention of facts.

Reconfigurations of space in Partition novels par Sandrine Soukaï, publié le 19/09/2019

This article examines two Indian novels Clear Light of Day (1980) by Anita Desai and The Shadow Lines (1988) by Amitav Ghosh along with Burnt Shadows (2009) by Anglo-Pakistani novelist Kamila Shamsie, books written about the Partition of India that accompanied independence in 1947. Partition led to violence on an enormous scale; the exact number of people who were killed has never been ascertained, and estimates vary between one and two million. Partition also caused massive displacements of population, estimated between 12 and 18 million. This paper examines the way in which space – national, familial and communal – was divided and then reshaped by and through Partition. After discussing the fractures, ruptures and uprooting brought about by this trauma, I will consider the way in which diasporic writers devise fictional maps of memory of the past that foster exchanges across geographical borders.

William Finnegan on Memory and Non-Fiction par William Finnegan, publié le 09/10/2017

A l'occasion des Assises Internationales du Roman (2017), William Finnegan a écrit un texte sur la mémoire et la non-fiction.

“How does art come out of common clay?”: The Ordinary and the Extraordinary in Alice Munro’s Dance of the Happy Shades par Cécile Fouache, publié le 12/03/2016

Cet article a été rédigé dans le cadre d'une journée d'étude consacrée aux thématiques de l'agrégation (session 2017), qui a eu lieu à l'Université de Caen-Normandie.

David Samuels: My Troubles, and Yours par David Samuels, publié le 01/09/2015

David Samuels nous propose dans ce texte inédit, écrit à l’occasion des Assises Internationales du Roman 2015, une réflexion saisissante sur le principe d’ « auto-imagination » en dressant un parallèle entre l’autofiction et la montée des extrémismes politiques et religieux.

End of Story par Avital Ronell, publié le 19/01/2015

"For my part, I practice affirmative dissociation. Prompted mostly by a Nietzschean will to fiction and love of masks, I “fake it ‘til I make it,” assuming shrewd yet fragile identities, rotating signatures, reappropriating for myself syntactical maneuvers and rhetorical feints."

Gulliver's Travels (Jonathan Swift) par ENS Lyon La Clé des Langues, publié le 21/11/2014

Travel books were very fashionable in the eighteenth century. Real travelers sometimes included elements of fiction in their accounts of their wanderings to make them sound more exotic and interesting. In Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift makes fun of this literary genre by introducing a fictitious traveler, Gulliver, who tells us about his encounters with strange creatures and countries. Gulliver's first person narrative is introduced by a fake publisher's note which is also written in the first person...

L’espace post-apartheid dans les longs métrages de fiction sud-africains, une étude panoramique par Annael Le Poullennec, publié le 19/11/2014

Annael Le Poullennec propose une étude de l'espace sud-africain post-apartheid par l’intermédiaire des films. Après quelques rappels sur l’histoire de la ségrégation en Afrique du Sud et une brève introduction au cinéma sud-africain, elle évoque la problématique de l’espace, à l’échelle nationale et urbaine, dans la réinvention de la nation sud-africaine après la fin de l’Apartheid. Elle s’arrête notamment sur les dichotomies ville/campagne, township/suburb, cloisonnement/ouverture, en insistant sur l’image du déplacement, de l’évolution. Par l’analyse de films tels que Hijack Stories (Oliver Schmitz, 2001), The Wooden Camera (Ntshaveni WaLuruli, 2003), Tsotsi (Gavin Hood, 2005) et White Wedding (Jann Turner, 2009), elle pose les bases de ce qui constitue l’espace post-apartheid cinématographique dans le cinéma de fiction.

Writing on the self par ENS Lyon La Clé des Langues, publié le 14/11/2014

Critics and academics tend to draw a line between autobiography and fiction. However, it is sometimes difficult to make such a clear distinction between what is made up and what is not. Here are some short texts written by authors who reflect on their use of the first person.

First person narratives par ENS Lyon La Clé des Langues, publié le 10/11/2014

Ce dossier sur le thème des auteurs écrivant à la première personne regroupe trois ressources accompagnées d'exercices de compréhension et de production orales et écrites, ainsi que d'analyse d'image.

Jeux vidéo et cinéma à rebours du mouvement transhumaniste : le cas de District 9 par Julien Buseyne, publié le 07/11/2014

District 9 de Neil Blomkamp (2009) projette la structure de l’Apartheid dans un univers de science-fiction où les extraterrestres dont le vaisseau s’est échoué au dessus de Johannesburg sont victimes d’une forme de ségrégation. En marge de son thème principal, c’est à dire la projection de la mécanique d’oppression entre humains sur le canevas de la science-fiction, District 9 illustre aussi un procédé technique qui constitue le ressort principal du jeu vidéo : la projection des sens et du corps dans un système technique. Cinéma, télévision et jeux vidéo partageant les mêmes schèmes de la pratique audiovisuelle, les convergences entre ces domaines ne sont pas rares. Par la mise en scène de la technologie extra-terrestre, Disctrict 9 expose une grammaire de la captation de l’être sensible dans un système technique qui étend ses sens et ses potentialités, trait qu’il partage avec le jeu vidéo. Il s’agit là d’un acte politique qui s’oppose à la pensée transhumaniste, et affiche une convergence frappante avec les systèmes d’immersion dans les univers numériques actuellement à l’étude. Cette prise de position est cohérente avec le discours humaniste déroulé par cette œuvre, et s’inscrit dans la continuité de celles qui explorent la relation entre l’humain et la machine.

Présentation de Come Back Africa (Lionel Rogosin, 1959, US 82 minutes) par Monique Peyriere, publié le 05/11/2014

Après avoir réalisé un film sur les sans-abris aux Etats-Unis, Lionel Rogosin part avec une équipe de tournage en Afrique du Sud en déclarant aux autorités locales qu’il veut produire un documentaire sur la musique. Filmé clandestinement par un réalisateur américain blanc dans Sophiatown, un township noir de Johannesburg, Come Back Africa nous montre la vie des communautés noires sous l’apartheid. Entres brimades et défiance, le film de Lionel Rogosin expose les relations blancs/noirs dans l’Afrique du Sud des années 50. Les militants y jouent leur propre rôle dans un scénario de fiction qui nous invite à découvrir le ghetto au travers du regard d’un nouvel arrivant, Zacharia. Les images ont pu sortir d'Afrique du Sud pour être montées aux Etats-Unis puis diffusées dans le monde entier ; c’est un film politique, le premier à dénoncer l’Apartheid.

Kirsty Gunn: Sound and Writing par Kirsty Gunn, publié le 08/09/2014

That sound you hear, as though coming off the lonely Scottish hills, through the fine Highland air, passing across straths and glens, along rivers and to the sea... Is the sound of the piobaireachd, the classical music of the great Highland bagpipe, a music made for Gatherings, Salutes and Laments, a grand and grave and complicated music - Ceol Mor it is in Gaelic - The Big Music. The Big Music, too, is the title of my latest work of fiction - not a novel, but an elegy, as Virginia Woolf described all her work - a story that sounds as much as it says... An experience of words, of a story of people and a landscape, of a love story played across generations, that nevertheless sounds in the mind...

Are You Going to Write That in Your Book? par Siddhartha Deb, publié le 03/12/2013

Born in north-eastern India in 1970, Siddhartha Deb is the recipient of grants from the Society of Authors in the UK and has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Studies at Harvard University. His latest book, a work of narrative nonfiction, ((The Beautiful and the Damned)), was a finalist for the Orwell Prize in the UK and the winner of the PEN Open award in the United States. His journalism, essays, and reviews have appeared in Harpers, The Guardian, The Observer, The New York Times, Bookforum, The Daily Telegraph, The Nation, n+1, and The Times Literary Supplement.

David Vann: Secret and subtext par David Vann, publié le 07/10/2013

All of the conventions of literary fiction can be successfully broken except one: there must be subtext, a second story beneath the surface. We don’t have to care about a protagonist or even really have a protagonist. We’re not limited to any particular style or structure. But our entire idea of literature being “about” something is based on a second narrative, something else that the surface narrative can point to. What’s interesting to me about this is that we live in a time when surface narratives are taking over. Blogs are generally so worthless for this one reason, that they lack subtext. The online world is, above all, earnest, saying exactly what it means.

Rebelling as a female in the 18th and 19th century literature. From Pamela to Jane Eyre: a path to equality? par Marion Lopez-Burette, publié le 23/09/2013

This article intends to study and compare the way Pamela, Richardson's early heroine of the novel genre, and Charlotte Brontë's romantic Jane, rebel. What follows will underscore the path trodden by female fictional characters in terms of shaping the individual, from the Enlightenment period to the romantic era. The patterns of entrapment and self-willed seclusion the protagonists are involved in function as incentives for rebellion. The ideals they rebel for play the role of living forces in a way that is meaningful to comprehend how the essence of rebellion evolved with time. No matter how much the protagonists' respective procedure may differ, from moral conservatism to personal answering of moral questions through rites of passage, the two female heroines are equally conscious of their value as human beings. Their handling of their hardships and their allegiance to God, however, points to the qualitative and quantitative evolution of the notion of equality.

Keith Scribner: Representation and Psychology of Conflict par Keith Scribner, publié le 27/08/2013

In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech William Faulkner famously said that all real meaning in fiction comes from the human heart in conflict with itself. As a novelist I’m compelled by the internal conflicts inherent in the stories we tell ourselves in order to live and how those stories come to define us, how they allow us to justify our actions and possibly delude ourselves about who we are. Like any narrative, these stories help us shape otherwise disparate experiences into a comprehensible form. Over time we become so heavily invested in these narratives that when their veracity is challenged, the resulting conflict can be explosive.

Hugo Hamilton on memory and fiction par Hugo Hamilton, publié le 24/06/2013

It’s a stormy night in Dublin. My father comes into the bedroom to close the window. But the old sash window is rotten. As he tries pull it down, the wooden frame comes apart in his hands like a piece of fruit cake. The glass is smashed. So my father has to find a way to cover over the gaps. He looks around and picks up the nearest thing at hand. In the corner of the room there is a map of the world, a big rolled up school atlas which he’s kept from the time he was a schoolteacher. He rolls it out and nails the atlas up against the window frame. It’s a temporary solution, he says. Go to sleep. So that’s how I fall asleep, with the wind blowing across the world, flapping at the oceans and the continents. The world is there in the morning with the sun coming through.

For a public service of human augmentation par Thierry Hoquet, publié le 04/01/2013

Thinking about humanity begins with the myth of Epimetheus and Prometheus: forgotten during the distribution of efficient organs, humans remained naked. While Epimetheus gave claws to some, shells to others, speed or cunning to still others, humans were neglected and ended up the poorest of creatures. To help them provide for the necessities of life and to repair as best he could his brother’s fundamental and foundational omission, Prometheus came to the rescue.

Dystopia in the plays of Samuel Beckett : Purgatory in Play par Eleanor Bryce, publié le 14/09/2012

The literary genre of dystopia remains popular in the English-speaking world, particularly in young adult fiction. In this age of rapid technological advances, and the threat (or indeed reality) of political and media control, works of literature which question the benefits of these developments are thriving.

Kate Colquhoun on the blurred boundaries between fiction and non-fiction par Kate Colquhoun, publié le 11/09/2012

Truman Capote called his 1966 book In Cold Blood the first non-fiction novel. Since then, the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction have become increasingly blurred. Are these false definitions? At least we could say that novelists are able to articulate the internal worlds – the thoughts and feelings – of their characters while non-fiction relies entirely on evidence.

An interview with Nick Flynn - Assises Internationales du Roman 2012 par Nick Flynn, Julia Arnous, publié le 05/06/2012

Nick Flynn took part in the sixth edition of the Assises Internationales du Roman, organised by the Villa Gillet and Le Monde. He answered our questions on Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and his approach to non-fiction.

Stylistics from Scratch: My ‘Take’ on Stylistics and How to Go About a Stylistic Analysis par Mick Short, publié le 24/04/2012

Mick Short was invited by Manuel Jobert as part of the tenth edition of the Discourse Analysis Conferences, organised by the Société de Stylistique Anglaise and Lyon 3. After giving some precious advice to students in stylistics and explaining the "foregrounding theory", he analysed a number of texts including the front page of a British tabloid, a poem by Robert Frost and a passage from Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin.

The Neurosciences and Literature: an “exquisite corpse” or a “meeting of the minds”? par Lionel Naccache, publié le 16/02/2012

In the context of the Walls and Bridges project in New York, a meeting has been organized for October between an American novelist - Siri Hustvedt - and a French neuroscientist on the topic of "fiction," both mental and literary. This will obviously be the time to ask ourselves: can we imagine a promising future for meetings between the neurosciences of cognition and the world of literary creation? Is this merely the random juxtaposition of two terms to which we are attached, or the genuine dialectical culmination of self-consciousness? An amusing, trendy quid pro quo, or a key moment in our knowledge of ourselves as tale tellers?

Conscious and Unconscious Narrative Literature, Psychoanalysis and Neuroscience par Siri Hustvedt, Lionel Naccache, publié le 20/01/2012

Nous passons une grande partie de notre vie à élaborer des fictions, à nous raconter des histoires et à en raconter aux autres. La narration est profondément enracinée dans l'esprit humain, à un niveau à la fois conscient et inconscient. Produire une narration est une façon de donner du sens à l'expérience factuelle. Mais les fictions créées par le cerveau humain et celles que les romanciers imaginent sont-elles de même nature ? L'écrivain américain Siri Hustvedt et le neurobiologiste français Lionel Naccache exprimeront leurs points de vue originaux, pénétrants et empathiques sur cette question. We all spend our time constructing fictions, telling stories to ourselves and to others. Narration is deeply rooted in the human mind, at a conscious and unconscious level. Producing a narrative is a way of giving meaning to factual experience. Are the fictions created by the human brain and those imagined by novelists of the same nature? American writer Siri Hustvedt and French neurobiologist Lionel Naccache express their original, incisive and empathetic views on these questions.

The modern child and Romantic monstrosity in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child par Camille François , publié le 17/05/2011

This study investigates the articulation between "child" and "monster" in Lessing's novella, linking the text to a tradition of contemporary fiction about the child in which the much beloved literary figure inherited from the Romantics has become a frightening other. We hope to understand the Fifth Child 's shifting boundaries between the monstrous and the ideal, the "real child" and childhood as a locus of adult desires, by tracing these dichotomies back to Romantic myths of childhood, or the distorted versions that have made it to our time.

James Frey - Assises Internationales du Roman 2010 par James Frey, publié le 03/09/2010

James Frey was one of the guests of the Assises Internationales du Roman, organised by the Villa Gillet and Le Monde in Lyon. He introduced his novel Bright Shiny Morning and told the audience about his perception of Los Angeles and his conception of storytelling.

Marilynne Robinson - Assises Internationales du Roman 2010 par Marilynne Robinson , Kédem Ferré , publié le 14/06/2010

Marilynne Robinson was invited to the fourth edition of the Assises Internationales du Roman, organised by the Villa Gillet and Le Monde. She was interviewed for La Clé des langues and read an extract from Gilead, a novel which was awarded the 2005 Pulitzer Prize.

Incroyable fiction : L’histoire de Pi de Yann Martel (2001), relecture contemporaine de Noé et Robinson par Anne Besson, publié le 14/12/2009

Le roman de Yann Martel, typique de la post-modernité, dont l'intrigue "surfictionnelle" mêle théologie et zoologie, exploite de façon à la fois massive et désinvolte ses références intertextuelles, et en premier lieu le parallèle avec le Noé biblique, dans un hymne à la fiction et à la foi ne faisant qu'une, à la croyance et au déguisement métaphorique du réel comme enchantement de l'existence.

Proche de l'indigestion intertextuelle : "Des Hottentotes" de Paul Di Filippo par Jérôme Dutel, publié le 09/10/2009

Prenant comme champ d’étude la novella trépidante "Hottentots", tirée de The Steampunk Trilogy (1995), de l’auteur américain Paul Di Filippo (1954-…), cette communication cherche à montrer comment l’auteur, en virtuose reconnu du pastiche et de la parodie littéraire mais aussi scientifique, démonte, à travers un récit brouillé et comme parfois étouffé par différents niveaux d’intertextualité, les mécanismes de création littéraire à l’œuvre dans la littérature fantastique et la science-fiction des XIXème et XXème siècles pour peut-être mieux révéler les idéologies qui pourraient avoir contribué à leur élaboration.

Entre raillerie et révérence : A Suitable Boy ou le pastiche renouvelé par Mélanie Heydari, publié le 09/10/2009

Pastiche de la grande tradition littéraire victorienne, A Suitable Boy, de Vikram Seth, se situe de manière éminemment originale dans le renouveau de la production littéraire postcoloniale. Entre raillerie et révérence, désir d’imitation et volonté de changement, ce roman-fleuve révèle l’affiliation de l’auteur aux canons victoriens : cette écriture délibérément lisse, sans aspérités, aux antipodes de celle d’un Rushdie, ne trahit en effet nulle autre appartenance, nulle généalogie.

A reading of The Brooklyn Follies through the lens of autofiction par Marie Thévenon, publié le 02/10/2009

From his very first novel, The Invention of Solitude, to his very last, Man in the Dark, Paul Auster has always played with the mixture between autobiography and fiction. The Brooklyn Follies pertains to this tradition and it is through the lens of autofiction that this article proposes to explore this novel. The author starts by observing the similarities between Paul Auster and his characters and pays close attention to the intertextual dimension. She then analyses the metafictional aspects of the narration. Finally, she places this novel among Paul Auster's other works and wonders if there has been an evolution in his writing.

Interview with Will Self par Will Self , Beth Harper , David Belaga , publié le 23/06/2009

On 29th May 2009, the London-based writer Will Self came to Lyon to take part in the Villa Gillet's "Assises Internationales du Roman". He was to give a talk on his perspectives on the works of the influential French writer, Louis Ferdinand Céline, but before he did so I managed to catch up with him to ask a few questions about his interests, influences and views on modern fiction.

Paul Auster - Bibliographical resources par Jocelyn Dupont, publié le 13/02/2009

A critical bibliography, list of online resources, and Paul Auster's prose and fiction.

Littérature et société aux Etats-Unis : 1917-1968 par Alice Béja , publié le 27/11/2008

Cet article propose un regard sur la littérature américaine du 20e siècle dans son rapport à l'idée d'Amérique. Les guerres et crises que traversent les Etats-Unis au cours de la période 1917-1968 contribuent à une dégradation de l'"American Dream" en "American way of life" à laquelle les écrivains américains réagissent en recherchant de nouvelles origines pour construire, en fin de compte, leur propre idée d'Amérique.

La naissance du roman en Angleterre au XVIIIe siècle par Anne Dromart, publié le 14/02/2008

Après la grande époque de la poésie, la prose revient au goût du jour vers la fin du XVIIe siècle en Angleterre pour progressivement s'épanouir en une forme nouvelle au cours du XVIIIe siècle. Les "novels" qui apparaissent sous les plumes de Defoe, Richardson, Fielding et Sterne se démarquent des "romances" qui les avaient précédées et se caractérisent par une attention portée à la vraisemblance des faits narrés.

Les "Newgate Novels" : esthétique d'un genre populaire par Hubert Malfray , publié le 26/10/2007

Dans cet article, Hubert Malfray nous présente un genre mineur et éphémère regroupant une vingtaine d'oeuvres de fiction des années 1830-1847 relatant, de façon plus ou moins romancée, la vie de criminels. Comment, à une époque marquée par la rigueur morale, ces romans ont-ils pu représenter la criminalité et devenir des best-sellers ?

La linguistique-fiction dans la littérature anglaise du 20e siècle : Notes sur Orwell, Burgess, Hoban et Golding par Sandrine Sorlin, publié le 22/05/2007

Sur le modèle de la science-fiction, Sandrine Sorlin nous parle ici de linguistique-fiction et se penche sur les langues imaginaires dans la littérature.