Wednesday 30th November - Marine Roussillon (Worcester College, Oxford)


Usages politiques des récits : raconter le passé médiéval au 17e siècle


Marine Roussillon


17.00-18.30
St John's College, New Seminar Room
(wine, nibbles and Christmas treats provided)

Ex Libris: Denis Salvaing de Boissieu 

Paper and Discussion

Marine Roussillon, Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College, was our guest speaker for this term’s final session. Her paper explored how the Middles Ages was conceived and deployed in seventeenth-century French writing, focusing in particular on the political value of its uses. Using a number of texts (including discourses about the writing of history, descriptions of fêtes organised in honour of Louis XIV and examples of genealogy), Marine analysed notions of plaisir and vérité in relation to the purpose, validity and success of these references to the past—employed, or appropriated, to promote the King’s glory. Marine’s paper met with an enthusiastic response from all present. Questions included queries about her corpus; how narratives conceiving of the Middle Ages relate to the nouvelle historique or histoire secrète; the role of allegory in these récits; and how the Middle Ages might be employed for moral ends, or polemical ones.

Many thanks to Marine for such an inspiring and thought-provoking presentation. It was a really excellent way to end this term’s seminar series. And many thanks to the participants both at this session and all the previous ones for their commitment, engagement and contributions. We look forward to seeing you next term!

Abstract

Y a-t-il un pouvoir des récits ? Cette communication posera la question des usages politiques des lettres au 17e siècle à partir d'exemples de textes racontant le passé médiéval. L'étude d'une généalogie fictive permettra de poser la question de ce qui fait l'efficacité politique des récits : le récit du passé fonctionne-t-il comme une preuve, dans une logique juridique, ou bien suscite-t-il un autre type d'adhésion ? En observant la manière dont la monarchie utilise les récits dans le cadre de la politique de la gloire, on pourra se demander ce qui fait l'efficacité de cette construction narrative du pouvoir. Enfin, les éditions savantes de récits médiévaux qui apparaissent au début du 18e siècle seront l'occasion d'une réflexion sur l'histoire des rapports entre la valeur littéraire des récits et leur efficacité politique.

Marine Roussillon is a Junior Research Fellow and Lecturer in early modern French at Worcester College. She has just finished her Dphil on "Plaisir et Pouvoir. Usages des récits chevaleresques à l'âge classique (1600-1750)", dealing with reception of the Middle Ages in early modern France, and political uses of representation of the past and story-telling, particularly in the context of the restructuring of the nobility.

Wednesday 16th November - Alain Ausoni (Lincoln College) and Sam Ferguson (New College)

JOINT SESSION: FRANCOPHONE LIFE WRITING
17:00 - 18.30, St John’s College, New Seminar Room 
(Wine and nibbles provided) 

Papers and Discussion
Week 6 saw the first double session of the year, with two papers exploring the theme of Francophone Life Writing. Alain Ausoni, a third year DPhil student in French at Lincoln College, opened the proceedings with a paper examining the translingual autobiographies of Nancy Huston and Vassilis Alexakis. Alain analysed the phenomenon of ‘autotraduction’ in the work of both autobiographers, focusing in particular on the revisions and transformations that inevitably occur when an author translates a work written in a second language back into his or her native tongue. Alain’s paper was followed by a presentation from Sam Ferguson, a third year DPhil student in French at New College, exploring the publication and reception of the journal intime in France (1880 - 1939) through the prism of real and fictional diaries in the work of André Gide. A lively discussion followed in which participants raised questions concerning the relationship between publisher and intended audience, the degree to which Gide anticipated the publication of his own diaries, the political dimension of choosing to write in French, and the implications of ‘autotraduction’ for literary prizes.

Once again, thanks to all for the huge turnout and a special thanks to those who came for the post-seminar dinner in Pierre Victoire! 






L’autobiographie translingue comme autotraduction
Alain Ausoni

Marc Chagall, Paris Through the Window (Paris par la fenêtre), 1913. © 2009 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

Abstract
Dans l’avant-propos de Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (1967), Vladimir Nabokov évoque la genèse autotraductive tortueuse de la version finale de son autobiographie en ces termes : ‘The re-Englishing of a Russian re-version of what had been an English re-telling of Russian memories in the first place, proved to be a diabolical task, but some consolation was given to me by the thought that such multiple metamorphosis, familiar to butterflies, had not been tried by any human before’ (Nabokov 2000: 10). Ces métamorphoses multiples, Vassilis Alexakis et Nancy Huston les ont aussi provoquées en pratiquant l’écriture de soi en langue étrangère, puis en autotraduisant leurs textes du français vers leur langue maternelle. Par l’étude de quelques caractéristiques des versions de Paris-Athènes (1989/1993) et de Nord perdu (1999/2002), on se demandera ce que l’autotraduction fait à l’autobiographie translingue.

Alain Ausoni is a third year D.Phil in French (Lincoln College). In his thesis, provisionally entitled ‘In other words: translingual autobiographies in French’, he explores a corpus of life narratives written in French as a foreign language.

The Journal Intime: From Document to Literary Œuvre in André Gide's Hybrid Works

Sam Ferguson

Abstract

André Gide's career forms a bridge between two points in the history of the journal intime in France: the 1880s, in which the form achieved popularity and success (if not critical acclaim) principally for its documentary interest with the diaries of Henri-Frédéric Amiel, Marie Bashkirtseff and the Goncourt brothers, and its consecration as a literary genre in 1939 with the publication of Gide's own Journal 1889-1939, the first volume of any living author to be published in Gallimard's prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Gide and other authors published excerpts from their diaries throughout these fifty years, but these alone fail to account for the subsequent change in the way published diaries were presented and read. I propose that, just as for autobiography, the journal intime's development as a genre involves fictional and hybrid forms as well as its 'real' form. Three works by Gide demonstrate this process, each of which combines elements of reality and fiction in an innovative use of the journal intime: Les Cahiers d'André Walter (1891), Paludes (1895) and the writing project which unites Les Faux-monnayeurs and Le Journal des faux-monnayeurs (1926). These works foreground different literary possibilities of the journal intime, and effectively teach readers new ways of approaching them. They therefore simultaneously provide a literary context for the Journal 1889-1939, and create a readership that is ready to appreciate it as a literary œuvre.

Sam Ferguson read Classics and French at New College, Oxford, and is now in the third year of a DPhil, still at New College, writing a thesis entitled 'Diaries Real and Fictional in Twentieth-Century French Writing'. This work follows the history of the diary as a published form, including fiction, nonfiction and various combinations of the two, through the work of André Gide, Raymond Queneau, Roland Barthes and Annie Ernaux.