FRENCH REVIEW最新文献

{"title":"Le vent du nord dans les fougères glacées by Patrick Chamoiseau (review)","authors":"Jane E. Evans","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911338","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911338","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Le vent du nord dans les fougères glacées by Patrick Chamoiseau Jane E. Evans Chamoiseau, Patrick. Le vent du nord dans les fougères glacées. Seuil, 2022. ISBN 978-2-02-147041-3. Pp. 336. The protagonist of this novel, Boulianno Nérélé Isiklaire, a renowned maître conteur, has disappeared. His admirers, speculating on his whereabouts, recall his storytelling talents and mishaps in Part I of the novel: “Le silence de Boulianno.” These other characters, mentioned by name but not elaborated further, piece together their information in the hope of sending a search party to a limited area to find him. They include Man Delcas, a basket weaver and Boulianno’s contemporary; Bèbert-la-science, a mathematician-philosopher; the unidentified narrator, who uses “je” and “nous” with the audience, but addresses Chamoiseau, the author, formally with the second-person pronoun “vous;” the “anecdote” (32), seen as an unimportant young woman whose name nobody remembers; and Boulianno, the protagonist, who comes alive thanks to the descriptions that others give of him. Part I of the novel also abounds with cultural details, such as the fact that most conteurs designate a male successor before their retirement, unlike Boulianno. One learns as well that the “anecdote” has come from far away not only to meet the protagonist, but to inform him that she would like to be the first recognized conteuse to carry on his traditional storytelling. Her revelation, deemed scandalous by the conservative community because women cannot be storytellers, imparts a feeling of distrust among the villagers. Another dimension of the cultural richness of Le Vent du Nord dans les fougères glacées pertains to its language usage: expressions in créole designating storytelling expressions and perhaps, the educational diversity of the audience, precede their French counterparts. For example, Boulianno says, “Tiré mwen la, man pa byen la! Sortez-moi de là, je ne suis pas bien là”! (25). And the novel conveys the reality of scholars among its population by including references in footnotes to local professors and experts in sociology and history, for instance. In Parts II and III of the novel, “Convoi vers Boulianno” and “Gloriye Boulianno,” respectively, the characters merely sketched in Part I evolve into active participants in the narrative. Besides enriching the present time of the story, the information about each one’s past contributes to their becoming memorable entities. For instance, the “anecdote,” through her naturalness when confronted with unexpected circumstances such as rough terrain, fallen fellow hikers, and the necessity to help them physically, impresses everyone: thus, they can retain her name, Anaïs-Alicia Carmélite. In a similar way, after sharing his own failure as a conteur, the narrator identifies himself as “Osphare Tertullien Philogène” (123). Populo, a young man keen on replacing Boulianno as a conteur, and therefore Anaïs-Alicia’s competition, becomes roma","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136169189","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Le monastère buissonnier par Simon Nadeau (review)","authors":"Khadija Khalifé","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911332","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Le monastère buissonnier par Simon Nadeau Khadija Khalifé Nadeau, Simon. Le monastère buissonnier. Boréal, 2022. ISBN 978-2-7646-3722-7. Pp. 368. Les grands poètes et penseurs sont des novateurs qui s’inscrivent nettement contre l’orthodoxie de tous genres grâce à leur liberté d’esprit et de réflexion. Par l’intermédiaire de son protagoniste La-Mèche-Noire, Simon Nadeau réfléchit aux concepts de la liberté et de l’évolution humaines dans un monde naturellement dominé par le joug des aliénations. Le protagoniste relit les philosophes, dont Hegel pour qui le progrès de l’humanité réside “dans la conscience que l’esprit a de sa liberté” (58). Il conclut que l’esprit doit trouver un appui—paradoxalement un ailleurs—pour “se dégager de ce qui l’asservit du dedans comme du dehors” (60). L’auteur illustre ses conclusions à travers une multitude d’histoires enchaînées les unes aux autres. Et, nous transportant d’un ailleurs à un autre, chaque histoire a ses personnages, sa trame et son envol. On commence par La-Mèche-Noire résidant à Montréal au caravanier et son fils en Égypte, et on passe à la princesse Sinalayoura, et puis à d’autres personnages à Novossibirsk, à Tokyo, au Cameroun. Et on continue avec d’autres histoires passionnantes survenues en Inde. Bien que les unités de lieu et de temps éclatent, toutes ces histoires, récentes, anciennes ou légendaires, ont comme fil conducteur des personnages vagabonds qui partagent le même rejet des doctrines figées et la même utopie d’un ailleurs qui mènerait à la plénitude. L’allégorie du “monastère buissonnier”—oxymore combinant l’exil extérieur et l’exaltation intérieure—est rendue par l’image de ces moines gyrovagues qui ne sont établis nulle part et qui se déplacent au gré de “leur ferveur ou leur fantaisie” (129). Le vagabondage à la bohémienne n’est pas une fin en soi, mais un prérequis permettant aux différents personnages de s’aventurer dans l’inconnu “pour créer du nouveau” (168–69). Comment ne pas y voir des résonances avec l’invitation baudelairienne: “Allons au fond de l’inconnu pour trouver du nouveau”? La quête est sans fin, et l’acte de créer est en gestation, en devenir, parce qu’on ne fait, encore et encore, que se préparer à partir, comme l’atteste la dernière phrase de l’ouvrage: “Audrey put dire ce qui avait été le rêve de sa vie: Partons! C’était sa manière à elle de dire: Créons!” (297). Tous les personnages partent—littéralement—pour une destinée qui leur est propre car chacun boit aux “sources secrètes qui exaltent [sa] soif” (12). Or, chaque fois qu’on est sur le point d’atteindre sa destination (qu’elle soit nommée liberté suprême, exaltation, sublimation ou plénitude), celle-ci se dérobe parce qu’elle est fugace, constamment ailleurs. Tout comme l’écriture qui ne parvient jamais au bout de son parcours. Et comme l’auteur, dont le premier roman L’art de rater sa vie (FR 93.1) marque déjà une vocation à l’encontre de “l’esprit du temps”, et qui continue ici ses fugues da","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136169197","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love and Rivalry in 1920s Paris by Mark Braude (review)","authors":"Virginie Ems-Bléneau","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911387","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911387","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love and Rivalry in 1920s Paris by Mark Braude Virginie Ems-Bléneau Braude, Mark. Kiki Man Ray: Art, Love and Rivalry in 1920s Paris. W. W. Norton & Co, 2022. ISBN 978-1-324-00601-5. Pp. 304. Readers will certainly be intrigued by the title of this book. Was Kiki Man Ray a person, a little-known pseudonym of the famous American photographer, perhaps? Or will this book tell the story of two individuals, Kiki and Man Ray, two lovers––or rivals as suggested by the subtitle––two artists whose lives and contributions are so closely intertwined that even in crafting a title, the author did not, or could not, separate them. And yet, this book is perhaps better described as the story of an era, the interwar years, and more accurately, the story of a neighborhood and a people: the bohemian artists of Montparnasse. As astutely shown by Braude, Kiki and Man Ray embodied the heart and soul of that time and place. Kiki, born Alice Prin in a small town of Burgundy in 1901, is one of the most famous yet forgotten characters of interwar Paris. She is best known as the muse and lover of photographer Man Ray, and subject (or object) of his illustrious 1924 Violon d’Ingres: a photo of Kiki transformed into an instrument by affixing two black f-holes to her disrobed back. The two met in 1921; Kiki, a young model who had already posed for several aspiring artists such as Maurice Mendjizky (with whom she lived for three years) and more famously Moïse Kisling, caught the attention of Man Ray and a friend after making a scene in a restaurant. While Kiki had never posed for a photographer, she was immediately charmed by the confidence of this mysterious American man. Inspired by his friend Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray had moved to France in the hopes of joining the Dada movement as a painter, but as his photographs gained attention, he perfected this artform despite his own dreams. That is perhaps the root of their rivalry: while he helped increase her fame, leading many artists such as Tsuguharu Foujita, Kees Van Dongen or Per Krohg to paint her, she became a well-regarded artist of her own. She began performing in cabarets around Paris, but most importantly, she secured a solo art show in 1927 where she sold all her paintings, a feat that Man Ray never achieved. The couple entertained an eclectic crowd of avant-garde writers, musicians and artists: Desnos, Cocteau, Breton, Kisling, Krohg, Léger, and Picabia, to name a few. But this thrilling life had a dark side: depression, drugs, and alcohol consumed the couple as much as their passion. Their separation, along with the Wall Street crash of 1929, marked the end of an era, but also of their love and their fame. She spent the last twenty years of her life battling addiction while his depression took him to the edge of suicide. Kiki collapsed in front of her home at the age of 51, dying alone a mere shadow of her former glamourous self. This is the fascinating biography of two talented individu","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136167316","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Écrire à l’encre violette: littératures lesbiennes en France de 1900 à nos jours éd. par Aurore Turbiau et al (review)","authors":"Miléna Santoro","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911369","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911369","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Écrire à l’encre violette: littératures lesbiennes en France de 1900 à nos jours éd. par Aurore Turbiau et al Miléna Santoro Turbiau, Aurore, Margot Lachkar, Camille Islert, Manon Berthier et Alexandre Antolin, éd. Écrire à l’encre violette: littératures lesbiennes en France de 1900 à nos jours. Le Cavalier bleu, 2022. ISBN 979-10-318-0516-0. Pp. 293. With a “lavender” title borrowed from Wittig to accentuate its focus on lesbian literature, this collection of chronologically organized chapters by five contributing authors traces the history of those who have explored lesbianism and other apposite themes since the Belle Époque in France. Although the choice to use inclusive language (auteurices, iel, celleux) is deliberately open-ended, the vast majority of authors considered in this volume were or are women, from the celebrated early icons like Barney, Colette, Vivien and Leduc, through the theoretical pioneers de Beauvoir, Cixous, and Causse, and concluding with writers of the twenty-first century, such as Bouraoui, Daas, Debré and Delorme. That this volume is devoted mainly to white women is acknowledged, as is the dearth of trans representation, and of course, women from the Francophone world whose work is scarcely mentioned, mostly because few are published in France. If there is little identity intersectionality, the literary diversity covered is vast: genres mentioned include poetry, autofiction and memoir, essays, correspondence, and novels, and popular literature like SFF, thrillers and mysteries, and romance. The corpus excludes youth fiction, comics, songs and theatre, but the ample bibliography and constellation of names mentioned in the preface by Robichon and the postface by Bonnard and Lebovici point the reader to further avenues of exploration. The dual goal of this first “synthesis” of French lesbian literature (239) is to bring to light a marginalized community of writers and texts and to show how, within the literary and political context of their publication, they question, alter, or transgress the limits of gender and genre, love and language, the body and its politics. If “identifier une œuvre comme ‘lesbienne’ ne suffit […] pas à la comprendre” (237), this volume’s overview of over a century of lesbian writings allows us to grasp how much has been marginalized, forgotten, or simply not been made visible by editors and booksellers who have historically not identified lesbian and LGBTQ+ works. This volume is most useful when it connects the dots, showing how mentoring or supportive communities helped some, like Leduc or Bessette, to find publishers, how reappropriating Sappho or mythological figures connect authors across time (from Vivien to Wittig), and how periods of effervescence, like the interwar years, could be followed by moments of regression, where opportunities for lesbian self-expression were scarce, due to legal, social, or economic conditions. This is as much a social as a literary history, despite ","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136167859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Eros and Noesis: A Cognitive Approach to the Courtly Love Literature of Medieval France by Don A. Monson (review)","authors":"Miao Li","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911366","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911366","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Eros and Noesis: A Cognitive Approach to the Courtly Love Literature of Medieval France by Don A. Monson Miao Li Monson, Don A. Eros and Noesis: A Cognitive Approach to the Courtly Love Literature of Medieval France. Brill, 2022. ISBN 978-90-04-50448-6. Pp. 369. As the first study to apply modern cognitive research to medieval love literature, Monson’s monograph reflects the author’s pioneering efforts in this field. Courtly poetry, since its appearance in the twelfth century, has been a subject of fascination for literary scholars and the public. Andreas Capellanus attempted to codify the courtly themes in De amore and modern scholars Gaston Paris and C.S. Lewis proposed the theory of “courtly love,” widely accepted during the first half of the twentieth century. However, later scholars such as D. W. Robertson, Jr. challenged this paradigm by stating that “courtly love” was an impediment to the study of medieval texts. Feminist scholars even denounced “courtly love” as a product of patriarchy. When “courtly love” was deflated, cognitive science gradually found its way into literary studies, despite its minimal impact on medieval literature. Monson’s work, extending the analysis undertaken in his earlier articles by applying some of the results of cognitive research to the corpus of medieval love literature, suggests that cognitive theory can fill the theoretical void left by the disrepute regarding “courtly love.” Our understanding of human sexual psychology helps to determine the relative contributions of biological universality and the cultural specificity to medieval poetic love, the principal theme of this literature. Cognitive science clarifies the modes of expression for various courtly ideas and emotions and proposes a new ordering of courtly themes and poetic genres in terms of their relationship to the mechanisms of reciprocal desire and consummation. Through amplification of courtly paradigms, it facilitates our understanding of the evolution of medieval courtly genres, which, according to Monson, is a fluid and flexible system developed in accordance with human cognitive processes. Guided by a cognitive taxonomy based on three courtly “hyper-genres” (lyric, narrative, and didactic) constituting basic pragmatic situations for the discussion of love, Monson proposes an in-depth look at common courtly themes appearing in the corpus of Old Occitan, Old French, and medieval Latin literature of “courtly love” of the twelfth- and thirteenth-century France. He eloquently demonstrates that the logical relationships between these hyper-genres correspond to their chronological development in medieval French literature and the development of human cognitive processes. The lyric mode represents an initial cognitive operation of self-awareness leading to the expression of love, the narrative mode provides a referential function of explaining past events, and the didactic mode guides future behavior. The inclusion of anti-courtly parody","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136168562","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"La guerre sans nom, la guerre sans visage : Amnesia and Mutilation in Japrisot’s Piège pour Cendrillon","authors":"Jennifer Brown","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911318","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911318","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Sébastien Japrisot’s novel Piège pour Cendrillon , written in 1962, just at the end of the Algerian War, revolves around the identity of a young woman who awakens with total amnesia and badly burned by a fire. I propose that through this novel of investigation, Japrisot is most interested in representing the paradoxes of a changing French national identity complicated by France’s wartime crimes and its ultimate relinquishment of l’Algérie française . It is through images of amnesia and mutilation that this novel speaks to the anxieties that the French soldiers and public experienced during the war.","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136169183","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Le visage tout bleu by Patrice Robin (review)","authors":"Warren Motte","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911335","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Le visage tout bleu by Patrice Robin Warren Motte Robin, Patrice. Le visage tout bleu. P.O.L, 2022. ISBN 978-2-8180-5465-9. Pp. 128. This is Patrice Robin’s tenth book, and his ninth for the Éditions P.O.L, in a career inaugurated in 1999 with a novel entitled Graine de chanteur. There are no writerly acrobatics here, no virtuoso performances; it is, quite simply, a well-written piece of work. All of Robin’s books are confessional in character, either in a frankly autobiographical mode or a thinly-veiled fictional mode. Here, he practices autobiography; but two of the three stories he tells focus principally on people other than himself. There is very little that is out of the ordinary here (with the exception of an explosion), and certainly no adventure, but Robin is extremely attentive to the fabric of daily life, and to the ways the people he speaks about make their way precariously through the quotidian. His own beginnings were precarious enough, for, as he puts it in the first tale, “Je suis né avec le cordon ombilical enroulé autour du cou, le visage tout bleu” (13). Resuscitated with the help of oxygen from an uncle’s forge, that event will take its place firmly in family mythology. It clearly serves Robin as a foundational tale in terms of his sense of himself, as he wonders how those initial circumstances structured his view of the world and his place in it, why he came to feel stifled in his hometown, why he would eventually (and as if inevitably) choose to leave and to become a writer. The second narrative involves the explosion of a steam-driven harvester that came very close to killing Robin’s mother when she was merely four years old. In the narrative present, she is elderly; her memory of that event was a slim one, made still more slight now that she is afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. In a sense, Robin undertakes to remember that event because his mother no longer can. He points out that, though it may seem trivial when seen on the broad horizon of History, it was crucial with regard to local history—and, more locally still, with regard to himself, indisputably enough: “J’aurais pu ne pas naître” (29). The third story is that of a young man from Robin’s town named “Richard” who had a brilliant educational record, landed an exceptional job as an engineer in Paris, and killed himself at the age of twenty-six. Robin ponders Richard’s life, thinking about the way he failed to find a place for himself, either in his family’s world or in the broader world to which he emigrated with such apparent success. Robin muses that he shares some of Richard’s fragility, remarking, “parce qu’elle aurait pu être la mienne, j’avais ressenti le désir d’écrire l’histoire de Richard” (64). Death looms thus in all three of these narratives; in two cases it is very narrowly avoided, in one case it is self-inflicted. Throughout, that theme underscores how uncertain things are in any life, even when one seeks to live within the boundaries of","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136169185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Servir les riches: les domestiques chez les grandes fortunes par Alizée Delpierre (review)","authors":"Edward Ousselin","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911390","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911390","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Servir les riches: les domestiques chez les grandes fortunes par Alizée Delpierre Edward Ousselin Delpierre, Alizée. Servir les riches: les domestiques chez les grandes fortunes. Découverte, 2022. ISBN 978-2-348-06902-4. Pp. 200. Comme le signale l’autrice dans son introduction, “les domestiques sont loin d’avoir disparu et on les nomme encore ainsi” (9). Même si plusieurs expressions euphémistiques sont utilisées à la place de “domestique” dans les études statistiques (aide ménagère, travailleuse familiale, etc.), le terme “se trouve sur toutes les lèvres des personnes fortunées que j’ai rencontrées durant mon enquête” (9). Sociologue de formation, Alizée Delpierre a en effet mené une longue enquête auprès des domestiques en France—qui sont majoritairement des femmes—comme de leurs employeurs fortunés (dans les deux cas, plusieurs extraits d’entretiens sont inclus dans le livre). Cette enquête met à jour une grande variété de statuts professionnels (majordome, gouvernante, nanny, aide-cuisinière, femme de ménage, etc.) et une large fourchette salariale. Ce qui est commun à presque toutes les employées de maison, ce sont les longs horaires et, le plus souvent, la pénibilité des tâches quotidiennes. Néanmoins, ce que Delpierre appelle plusieurs fois “l’exploitation dorée”, surtout dans les maisons les plus somptueuses, continue d’attirer de nombreuses personnes, qui sont loin d’être uniquement d’origine immigrée. Certaines y voient la possibilité d’une ascension sociale, pour elles ou (plus vraisemblablement) pour leurs enfants. D’autres semblent fascinées, à travers un curieux phénomène psychologique, par ce que l’autrice décrit comme l’illusio de la domesticité: “Elles vivent par procuration la vie professionnelle de leurs patrons et s’en imprègnent, à tel point qu’elles ont l’impression de travailler un peu avec eux, et non plus pour eux” (45–46). Du côté des employeurs, le fait de pouvoir déléguer les tâches ménagères ne constitue pas seulement une question de comfort ou de gain de temps. Avoir des employées de maison, c’est aussi un signe extérieur de richesse, une façon ostentatoire de tenir son rang, de montrer clairement que l’on fait partie des “CSP+” (les catégories socioprofessionnelles les plus favorisées). Même au vingt et unième siècle, les astreintes que subissent les domestiques sont sévères et nombreuses. Elles doivent être présentes et disponibles quasiment en permanence, tout en ne faisant pas de bruit. Étant faciles à licencier, elles ne peuvent se plaindre et n’ont d’ailleurs pas de syndicat qui puisse les défendre. Dans le cas des travailleuses immigrées sans papiers, les lois ne s’appliquent guère et l’exploitation n’a même pas de vernis “doré”. En haut de l’échelle de la domesticité, les majordomes ou les gouvernantes sont parfois diplômées et ont fait un choix de carrière souvent fort rémunératrice. Cette situation reste toutefois minoritaire. La plupart des domestiques, subjuguées par l’illusio de la domestic","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136169191","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Misère de l’homme sans Dieu: Michel Houellebecq et la question de la foi éd. par Caroline Julliot et Agathe Novak-Lechevalier (review)","authors":"Éric Touya de Marenne","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911378","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911378","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Misère de l’homme sans Dieu: Michel Houellebecq et la question de la foi éd. par Caroline Julliot et Agathe Novak-Lechevalier Éric Touya de Marenne Julliot, Caroline et Agathe Novak-Lechevalier, éd. Misère de l’homme sans Dieu: Michel Houellebecq et la question de la foi. Flammarion, 2022. ISBN 978-2-08027-317-8. Pp. 384. L’ouvrage collectif auquel participent plusieurs spécialistes de Michel Houellebecq s’efforce de sonder l’horizon religieux de l’auteur de Soumission. Face à la “misère de l’homme sans Dieu”, la religion et la littérature apparaissent comme deux espaces de résistance face à la perte de sens qui afflige le monde contemporain. La littérature est à cet égard la “seule transcendance qui nous reste” (17). Les auteurs explorent également comment Houellebecq s’inspire d’Auguste Comte. Ainsi qu’il l’affirme dans Les particules élémentaires, “aucune société n’est viable sans l’axe fédérateur d’une religion quelconque” (12). D’un point de vue politique, la religion constitue le dernier rempart contre le libéralisme. Elle est seule capable de “fournir un sens, une voie à la réconciliation de l’individu avec son semblable dans une communauté que l’on pourrait qualifier d’humaine” (13). L’ouvrage est constitué de deux parties. La première est intitulée “Religions de Michel Houellebecq”. La nouvelle religion que prône Houellebecq est fondée selon Jérôme Grévy sur l’amour et l’harmonie des corps. Son rôle est de sortir les hommes de leur individualisme désabusé. La recherche du salut chez Houellebecq est cependant “mise en œuvre sans enthousiasme et illusion, voire avec pessimisme” (44). Mathilde Hug analyse comment les romans de Houellebecq s’inspirent de l’arrière-plan théologique et philosophique de la pensée de Schopenhauer et du darwinisme social, particulièrement dans La possibilité d’une île, et Christos Grodanis explore chez Houellebecq “l’incapacité de l’individualisme à remplacer le Christianisme et conférer du sens à la vie” (78). Pour Olivier-Thomas Venard, Houellebecq conserve cependant “une nostalgie de chrétienté” (99), alors que Peter Frei met en lumière la dimension fictionnelle de toute religion dans l’œuvre de Houellebecq. Dans la deuxième partie intitulée “Le moment Soumission”, Bruno Viard soutient que le roman lance un défi à une République en pleine décadence: “N’y-a-t-il vraiment que le recours à l’Islam qui puisse rétablir un peu de chaleur humaine dans nos familles et dans notre société?” (197). Sylvie Triaire interroge la possibilité de lire Soumission “comme un récit de refondation d’une société en déclin” (211), Caroline Julliot analyse la dimension politique du roman et Bertrand Bourgeois souligne la dimension ironique d’une conversion religieuse qu’il voit plutôt comme une “insoumission” (275). L’entretien entre Michel Houellebecq et Agathe Novak-Lechevalier qui figure à la fin du livre nous éclaire davantage sur le sens et la place que l’écrivain donne à la religion dans son œuvre et dans le monde c","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136168894","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Amour par Stefania Rousselle (review)","authors":"Edward Ousselin","doi":"10.1353/tfr.2023.a911336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2023.a911336","url":null,"abstract":"Reviewed by: Amour par Stefania Rousselle Edward Ousselin Rousselle, Stefania. Amour. Actes Sud, 2022. ISBN 978-2-330-17185-8. Pp. 272. Journaliste franco-américaine, Stefania Rousselle décrit la genèse de ce livre comme un sursaut face au désespoir: “J’avais le cœur brisé [...] l’amour, je n’y croyais plus” (7). Ce sentiment de désolation résultait à la fois du catastrophisme lié à ses activités professionnelles (elle donne comme exemples ses reportages sur le massacre au Bataclan en 2015 et sur l’esclavage sexuel des femmes en Espagne) et de la fin d’une relation amoureuse (avec un homme pourtant décrit comme étant manipulateur et dénigreur). Au lieu de changer de métier ou de partir en vacances, Rousselle a pris la décision quelque peu étonnante de se rendre “dans des villes au hasard, [d’]aborder des gens au hasard, pour leur poser une question: ‘C’est quoi, l’amour?’” (9). La courte introduction est suivie par une série de “rencontres” ou d’entretiens avec une ou deux personnes vivant dans l’Hexagone ou aux Antilles. Dans le livre, chaque rencontre produit une transcription courte et une ou deux photographies. Très courtes (chacune occupant trois pages en moyenne), ces rencontres peuvent être lues dans le désordre. S’il n’y a pas de regroupement thématique, on aperçoit rapidement une tendance générale, que n’auraient pas démenti bien des romanciers ou poètes: l’éblouissement initial de l’amour est souvent suivi par l’abattement, parfois dû à la mort de l’être aimé, le plus souvent à une rupture ou tout simplement à la lassitude. Il semble qu’il soit plus facile de parler de l’amour lorsqu’il a disparu et qu’on souffre de solitude. Ce livre n’est donc exempt ni de lieux communs, ni de mièvrerie, ni de misérabilisme. On ne sait si les transcriptions des entretiens sont des documents bruts ou si elles ont été éditées. Vraisemblablement par souci d’authenticité, elles penchent parfois vers le mot-à-mot, ce qui donne des expressions telles que: “Ah ouais ouais” (149) ou “Et ça marche putain!” (185). Il n’y a pas de conclusion au bout de ces rencontres. Cependant, Rousselle indique dans son introduction que son projet initial a eu un effet cathartique: “Donc, oui, ce voyage m’a sauvée. Parce que, oui, l’amour existe. La douceur est là. La tendresse surtout. Ils m’ont réparé le cœur, j’espère qu’ils répareront le vôtre” (13). À chaque lectrice ou lecteur d’évaluer la valeur réparatrice de ce qui reste un coffee table book, un “beau livre” publié au moment des fêtes de fin d’année et qui a sans doute vocation à constituer un beau cadeau. Notons que le livre est disponible en français et en anglais et que la version anglophone est sous-titrée “How the French Talk About Love”. Apparemment, les stéréotypes sur “the French” peuvent encore servir à aguicher les lecteurs américains. Dans l’ensemble, il s’agit ici d’un beau coup de marketing qui n’a pas grand-chose à voir avec la littérature. [End Page 251] Edward Ousselin Western Washington University Cop","PeriodicalId":44297,"journal":{"name":"FRENCH REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136169179","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}