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.