Francophone Literature: Eastern Europe and Switzerland
[RIEF2443]
[] 5 credits
This course is not taught in 2009-2010
Teacher(s):
Language: French
Level: Second
Aims
- recognizing the existence,
- knowing the complex history,
- understanding the worth and the particular characteristics,
- and analysing the main works
of French-speaking literatures of Eastern Europe and Switzerland.
Main themes
A thorough analysis of five XXth and XXIth centuries texts will take place in order to uncover the specific themes in French-speaking Swiss literature :
Ch. F. Ramuz, La beauté sur la terre, Ed. Plaisir de lire, 1927.
Alice Rivaz, La paix des ruches, LUF, Paris et Fribourg, 1947 ; L'Aire bleue 1999.
Nicolas Bouvier, Le poisson-scorpion, Gallimard, 1996.
Robert Pinget, L'Apocryphe, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1987.
Michel Layaz, Les Larmes de ma mère, Zoé, 2003.
Second part: French-speaking literature in the Central and Eastern Europe and problems of exile and between-two-languages situations.
Exiled from totalitarian regimes, many writers use French as their writing language and live the experience of exile and between-two-languages situations in various ways. Which relationship have these writers set up with their adoptive language? How do they perceive their own mother tongue? Do they change of identity by changing of language? Do they write and mean the same things in their mother tongue and in the adoptive language? To which literature can we refer these writers? To deterritorialized French-speaking literature, to migrant literature which develops some kind of aesthetics of the "non-lieu"? Unlike the other French-speaking writers (French-speaking Africa, Quebec, and so on), it is difficult to similarly classify French-speaking writers from Central or Eastern Europe for obvious historical reasons.
Thorough analysis of five texts :
Bessa Myftiu, Confessions des lieux disparus, roman, Éditions de l'Aube, 2007.
Julia Kristeva, Étrangers à nous-mêmes, Fayard, 1988.
Agota Kristof, Le Grand Cahier, Paris, Seuil, 1986.
Maria Maïlat, La cuisse de Kafka, Fayard, 2003.
Andreï Makine, Le Testament français, Mercure de France, 1995.
Content and teaching methods
1. Literary life in French-speaking Switzerland (XIVth-XVth centuries; XVIth century chronicles.
2. Calvinism; XVIIIth century helvetism; Romanticism in Switzerland.
3. New poetics in prose: Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz.
4. Theatre and poetry in Switzerland: 1900-1939.
5. Novel in Switzerland from World War II to the Seventies.
6. Feminine writing. Travel novels.
7. The Geneva School.
Second part:
1. Writing in exile.
- To write in exile.
- Exile, uproot, abroad.
- Genres of exile.
2. Historical context: otherness in Europe.
3. The aesthetics of the "out of place": language and identity.
- Language as impotency?: "le monstre du carrefour" (Julia Kristeva).
- French - hostile language? Between-two-languages experience in Agota Kristof's writing.
- Tzvetan Todorov - the fish out of water and its double.
- To be uproots in the works of Ying Chen.
4. Rejection of the native country: Kundera. Fishes out of water. Here and there. What does remain from what was out there in the oeuvre, as remembrance and as trace.
5. The myth of Paris; welcoming lands.
6. Why French? Cioran.
7. European perspectives: roots/uproots.
Other information (prerequisite, evaluation (assessment methods), course materials recommended readings, ...)
Evaluation : Written essay.
Support :
Histoire de la littérature en Suisse romande v. I, 1996, v. II, 1997, v. III, 1998, v. IV, 1999, Editions Payot, Lausanne.
Leroy Claude, La Main de Cendrars, Lille, Presses universitaires, 1996.
Maggetti Daniel, L'invention de la littérature romande : 1830-1910, Lausanne, Ed.Payot, 1995.
Meizoz Jérôme, L'âge du roman parlant (1919-1939) : écrivains, critiques, linguistes et pédagogues en débat, préf. de Pierre Bourdieu, Genève, Droz, 2001.
Reszler André, Mythes et identité de la Suisse, Genève, Georg, 1986.