French Global: A New Approach to Literary History

570 Pages·2010·43.536 MB·English

by  Christie McDonald, Susan Suleiman

FRENCH GLOBAL

EDITED BY
CHRISTIE MCDONALD
& SUSAN RUBIN SULEIMAN
FRENCH GLOBAL
A NEW APPROACH
TO LITERARY
HISTORY
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS
New York
Columbia University Press
Publishen Situe IS93
New York Chichester, \Vest Sussex
Copyright © 2010 Columbia University Press
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
French global: a new approach to literary history / edited by
Christie McDonald and Susan Rubin Suleiman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-23I-I4740-8 (cloth : alk. paper)-IsBN 978-o-23I-I4741-S (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-231-51922-9 (ebook)
1. French literature-History and criticism. 2. French literature-Foreign countries-History and criticism.
3. Literature and globalization-France-History. 4. Culture and globalization-France-History.
s. Language and culrure-France-History. 6. Other (Philosophy) in literarure. 7. National characteristics,
French, in literature. 1. Mc Donald, Christie, 1942- II. Suleiman, Susan Rubin, 1939- III. Tide.
PQ14S·!.GS6F742010
840·9'3Ss2-dC22
20100I0727
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United Stares of America
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P
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References to Internet ccurate at the rime ofwriting.
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for URLs that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
CONTENTS
Introduction: The National and the Global ix
Susan Rubin Suleiman and Christie McDonald
Acknowledgments xxiii
PARTI SPACES
Worlding Medieval French 3
Sharon Kinoshita
2 "There's a New World Here": Pantagrue/ via Oronce Finé 21
Tom Conley
3 The Global and the Figurai:
Early Modern Reflections on Boundary-Crossing 42
Jacob Vance
4 Globality and Classicism: The Moralists Encounter the Self 61
Eric Méchoulan
5 From the Rectangle to the Globe: Theater in
the Ancien Régime 79
Jérôme Brillaud
6 Planetary Perspectives in Enlightenment Fiction
and Science 94
NatashaLee
7 Homesickness in an Expanding World:
The Case of the Nineteenth-Century Lyric 110
Evelyne Ender
8 Critical Conventions, Literary Landscapes,
and Postcolonial Ecocriticism 127
Françoise Lionnet
9 Literature, Space, and the French Nation-State
After the 1950s 145
Verena Andermatt Conley
10 Ali Over the Place:
Global Women Writers and the Maghreb 160
Alison Rice
PART Il MOBILITIES
11 Speaking the Other:
Constructing Frenchness in Medieval England 179
Kimberlee Campbell
12 Walking East in the Renaissance 193
Phillip John Usher
13 Versailles Meets the Taj Mahal 207
Faith E. Beasley
14 On the Ethnographic Imagination
in the Eighteenth Century 223
Christie MeDonald
15 The Slave Trade, La Françafrique, and the
Glabalization of French 240
Christopher L. Miller
16 The Voyage and Its Others:
Nineteenth-Century Inscriptions of Mobility 257
Janet Beizer
17 TraHic in Translation: Rereading Supervielle 273
Sylvia lvIolloy
18 From the French Roman Colonial ta the Francophone Postcolonial
Novel: René Maran as Pt'ecursor 282
FAbiola Irele
vi Contents
19 French Literature in the World System of Translation 298
Gise!e Sapiro
20 Intellectuals Without Borders 320
Lawrence D. Kritzman
PART III MULTIPLICITIES
21 Language, Literature, and Identity in the Middle Ages 339
Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet
22 Negotiating with Gender Otherness:
French Literary History Revisited 352
Danielle Haase-DuboS'c
23 Specters of Multiplicity:
Eighteenth-Century Literature Revisited from the Outside ln 372
Yves Citton
24 Speculation and Economie Xenophobia as Literary World Systems:
The Nineteenth-Century Business Novel 388
Emi~yApter
25 Jews and the Construction of French Identity
from Balzac to Proust 404
Maurice Samuels
26 Traversai of Languages The Québecois Laboratory 419
Lise Gauvin
27 Space, Identity, and Difference in Contemporary Fiction:
Duras, Genet, NDiaye 437
Jvfichael Sheringham
28 "Présence Antillaise": Hybridity and the Contemporary
French Literary Landscape 453
My!ene Priam
29 Choosing French: Language, Foreignness, and the
Canon (Beckett/Némirovsky) 471
Susan Rubin Suleiman
Bibliography 489
List of Contributors 529
Index 535
Contents vii

INTRODUCTION
The National and the Global
Susan Rubin Suleiman and Christie lvlCDonald
s it possible to reread the whole sweep of French literature in a world perspec
tive? That question is the foundation of this volume. Our aim is not to be
exhaustive, but to provide roadmaps. We propose an approach to literary history, as
defined by the multiple implications and resonances of the "global."
The equation of the globe with the world dates from the sixteenth century,
contemporaneously with the first great wave of European explorations-and
exploitations-of the New World. 'The Oxford English Dictionary cites as the hrst
of
use of the word in English Richard Eden's 1553 A Treatise the New India, itselfa
translation from an earlier work in Latin: "The whole globe of the world hath been
sailed about." The adjective global as defined by the OED is even broader, encom
passing not only geography but also everything under the sun: "aIl inclusive, uni
fied, total; involving the whole world; world-wide; universal." The global as the
total, or totalizing, is the meaning ofren associated with economic globalization,
especiaIly in its negative or anxious connotations: the whole world converted into
a single marketplace, where true differences are elided in an endless vista of iden
tical (but differently labeled) "products" and services offered to the consumer. In
this economic sense, the global is a synonym for homogenization and concentra
tion of capital.
In the sphere of culture and ideas, the drive to totalization is the drive to assimi
late and to elide cultural differences. This is a kind of "globalization" that has often
been castigated (and parodied) about French colonialism, which defined its expor
tation of French culture to the colonies as a "civilizing mission"; hence generations
of African and Caribbean schoolchildren grew up reciting "nos ancêtres les Gaulois
[our ancestors the GaulsJ" in their history lessons. France's tendency to describe
French thought as universal goes back a long way, and it was one of the mainstays
of French pedagogy-including especially the teaching of French literature, which
was seen as a "mirror" of the soul of the nation-fi-om Napoleon's foundingofthe
public system of education in the early nineteenth century onward.
1his is not the sense in which we use the tenn global in this volume. For us,
the definition of global is more like that ofa global positioning system (to cite the
OED a last time): "a world-wide navigation system which allows users to deter
mine their location very precisely by means of receiving equipment that detects
timed radio signaIs fi-om a network of satellites in stable, predictable orbits." TIie
satellites move in stable and predictable orbits, but the GPS device itself accom
panies people who move around a great deal, ofren in haphazard, unpredietable
trajectories. One of the best things about a GPS deviee is its constant ability and
willingness to "recalculate." The fact that the system can be used by the Defense
Department-which created and still manages the system-in cases of national
emergency is its less utopie side. We emphasize that in our somewhat fanciful (and
tongue-in-cheek) rnetaphor, the relevant aspect of the GPS device is that it allows
users to situate and navigate themselves; it has also found uses in mapmaking and
land surveying, activities apposite to our project.
Setting technological metaphors aside, what we mean by a global approach to
literary history was stated in our original project statement, which has informed
aIl the contributions to this book: "The sense of a globe that is interconnected,
of cultural diffèrence within and beyond the nation." Transactions between and
among cultures and peoples, both outside and inside France's national boundaries
(which themselves have changed over time) have been present in every period of
literature in French. The approach we are proposing places, paradoxically, negotia
tions with otherness and boundary crossings at the very center of French literary
history.
The most important changes in the field of French studies over the pa st fort Y
yeaTs have been the theoretical explosion ofthe 1960s, the fèminist revolution that
started in the 1970s, and the recognition of "Francophone" literatures. We can
add to these the even more recent development of the field of migration studies
and the study of diasporic communities, which French studies shares with other
disciplines. 111e 1960s saw the development of the human sciences beginningwith
"the linguistic turn," which produced important mutual influences among philos
ophy, anthropology, psychoanalysis, and literary studies. 111e feminist revolution
beginning in the 1970S questioned the accepted canon, broke through and resisted
the disciplines as they had been defined, and made possible new ways of reading
gender in literature and society. The rise of Francophone studies has broadened
thinking beyond the "hexagon," France's geopolitical territory, to include the
overseas departments of France (Martinique, Guadeloupe, Réunion, Guyane) and
x INTRODUCTION