Oxford French Graduate Seminar, All Souls College (Hovenden Room)

Tuesday 24^th May, 5-6.30pm

‘The Dramatic Quality of Verse in Translations of Molière's Comedies’

Cédric Ploix (St Hugh’s, Oxford)

Many seventeenth-century French drama critics and practitioners have defended the alexandrine for its ‘musical’ dimension and held verse superior to prose, mostly on account of a pure ‘formal pleasure’. The fact that the practice remained generally unquestioned resulted in the absence of any comprehensive theoretical reflection on the aesthetic and dramatic use of versification on stage. Surprisingly, even now, the dramatic qualities of the alexandrine have been the object of little attention in critical studies on Molière. When critics do reflect on Molière’s verse, they usually limit their remarks to reproaching the dramatist with often poor and awkward versification. Thoroughly reflecting on the dramatic quality of verse forms seems relevant inasmuch as verse is often regarded as a major constraint in modern productions. 

My paper attempts to reassess the value of prosody and rhyme and their contribution to the dramatic text. Not to dismiss prose as a valid and efficient dramatic medium, I will argue that Le Misanthrope, l’Ecole des femmes, Tartuffe and Les Femmes savantes would lose many qualities if they were not written in alexandrines. Among others things, the alexandrine plays a great role in creating a self-conscious language conducive to comic effects, parodying tragic tone, buttressing argumentation, setting a hypocritical tone, building up dramatic tension and dynamising conflicts.

‘'Ça craint, ça fait trop retour aux sources': Immigrant Writers and the (Impossible?) Quest for Origins’

Jordan Phillips (Oriel, Oxford)

This paper will give a general overview of what one might call francophone immigrant literature. The tentative approach to this categorization is deliberate: indeed, my broad aim is to examine the extent to which ‘immigrant literature’ can be considered a viable category, by looking for common issues which could bind texts and authors together.

One obvious issue is that of origins: the very term ‘immigrant’ seems to presuppose multiple (perhaps even conflicting) sites of home. More specifically, then, this paper will analyse how a reconciliation with origins is configured in three fairly recent novels written in French. L’Exil selon Julia (1996) by Gisèle Pineau, Garçon Manqué (2000) by Nina Bouraoui and Black Bazar (2009) by Alain Mabanckou approach this problematic through various prisms, be it the notion of return, coming to terms with a dual heritage, or building a new life in a multi-cultural city. Engaging with theories of nomadism and exile, as well as sociological data, I argue that while these prisms represent powerful concepts and literary devices, an emphasis on origins is missing the point. Once we recontextualize the texts into the particular socio-politcal landscape of contemporary France, they read as a challenge to the constant judgement as to the ‘Frenchness’ (or otherwise) of immigrants. Faced with an overwhelming discourse of mistrust, telling one’s story, in all its incoherency and confusion, becomes an act of resistance.

French Graduate Seminar

Tuesday 10th May 5 - 6.30pm

All Souls College (Hovenden Room) 

Walking Into Walls, or, What You Can't See on the Map of Paris

Macs Smith (Princeton University)

Since its pioneering by Nadar, aerial photography has grown as a tool for city planning. Beginning in the 1950’s, however, Situationist International expressed dissatisfaction with aerial views, arguing that by stripping out the chaos and traffic of the city, they made invisible the very thing they hoped to capture: the nature of urban life. SI argued instead for maps drawn from the perspective of the pedestrian. They valued randomness and subjectivity over the clean geometry of aerial views. In the process, SI conceded the basic validity of the map as a tool for knowing the city. In recent years several projects have interrogated both the epistemological role of the pedestrian and the aptitude of maps to represent the city. These projects differ from SI’s primarily in their dismissal of randomness as a methodology. They instead adopt algorithmic or geometric trajectories. I provide a brief overview of these projects before examining Philippe Vasset’s 2007 book, Un livre blanc. Vasset visits on foot every blank area in the official map of Paris. His compulsory trajectory forces him to challenge legal, social, and psychological barriers. In the process he reveals power structures inherent to mapping, including the effacement of certain populations. Vasset’s failed attempt to compensate these lacunae through other media demonstrates the difficulty of transforming the pedestrian’s subjective experience into a totalizing representation of the city. I argue, however, that by embracing forms of hypermediatic representation, the programmatic walk maintains a contagious potential that leaves open SI’s dream of collective, unitary urbanism. 

The Interface Between Literature and History in the Late Writing of Marguerite Yourcenar

Rodney Mearns (St Cross, Oxford)

Marguerite Yourcenar (1903 – 1987) was already an established author when the Second World War broke out.  She had had a number of novels published as well as a range of verse, many essays, short stories, translations and numerous experimental pieces.  As the war approached she was invited by Grace Frick to settle with her in Petite Plaisance, a small property on Mount Desert Island off the coast of Maine. Frick was to take over the management of their affairs and also set about supporting the Yourcenar writing project in every possible way.

In 1951 Yourcenar published Mémoires d’Hadrien.  Her imaginative recreation of the life of one of the last great emperors made her an international writing celebrity.  In 1968 she published L’Oeuvre au noir, a second major work which explores the complexities and tensions of the sixteenth century and the birth of modern science.  On 27 March, 1971, MY was elected to membership of L’Académie Royale de Belgique and on 3 March 1980 to the Académie française, the first woman to be so.  In 1974 the first volume of her Mémoires, Souvenirs pieux, appeared.  Archives du Nord, was published in 1977; Quoi? L’Éternité, was published the year after her death.

Mémoires d’Hadrien and L’Oeuvre au noir carry detailed bibliographical notes.  The first two volumes of the Mémoires carry similar short explanations of source material.  This concern with the historical record, with the verificational and the veredictional is a core concern of her writing, an aspect this paper will seek to highlight and discuss.