French Odysseys: Greece in French Travel Literature from the Renaissance to the Romantic Era by Olga Augustinos (review)

Abstract

Like the characters in Six Degrees of Separation, far too many of the writers in An Other Tongue appear to subscribe to the idea that a rarified dialect is somehow necessary, that it is important to separate themselves from the rest of us by employing a language of exclusion. These writers seem to believe that in some way it legitimizes their scholarship, when, in reality, it simply distances them from the very people of whom they write. I do not believe the Chicana/o students I teach every semester would ever consent to being labeled "intercultural heteroglots" (13), nor would they wade through the ocean ofjargon which camouflages the scholarship in An Other Tongue. And if a collection of academic essays does not serve students—especially students who are a part of the population which it claims to represent—then what is its purpose?