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Gender has been an extremely lively area of research for decades, and this is especially true in medieval studies. Recently, medievalists have directed efforts to understanding cross-cultural and cross-religious contacts. However, these two research directions-- gender and cross-cultural encounters-- have yet to merge in a sustained exploration. My project aims to investigate the link between religious difference and gendering in a study of Le Conte de Floire et Blanchefleur. This romance crafts a narrative that suggests that there is a correlation, if not causation, between religious status and gender presentation. Floire is a pagan (though presumably Muslim) prince who falls in love with Blanchefleur, who is the daughter of aChristian servant. The young prince voyages to the East to save his beloved from the clutches of an emir. However, what is curious is the process of religious conversion he undergoes and the resulting changes in his appearance as his journey progresses. His travels and the people heencounters apper to function to underscore Floire’s various attributes. One can trace how Floire’s physical appearance changes from something feminine to masculine as he assumes a Christian identity through his rescue quest and conversion.Floire’s metamorphosis is compelling in that is it an inversion of the later medieval paradigm of Saracen women falling in love with Christian men. I plan to examine the significance of Floire’s inversion and conversion toward Christianity and masculinity. The text offers one of the earliest examples of gendering discourse in the romance genre, and it is distinct from the later conversion tales that involve Saracen women. The project will thus examine the topos of converted Saracen women in other medieval texts that deal with issues of gender and religious difference in order to understand how potentially transgressive Floire’s transformation is. This comparative investigation would elucidate if Floire et Blanchefleur is unique in how it treats gender and religion in a multicultural context. The romance offers a glimpse into some medieval French notions of the Other through this lens of travel, which uncovers attitudes toward gender and religion.

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Le Ravissement de Lol V. Stein, Marguerite Duras’s 1964 novel, tells the tale of Lol V. Stein, a young woman whose fiancé leaves her for another, older woman during a dance, never to return. The character remains shrouded in ambiguity throughout the novel, as another character, Jacques Hold, recounts her tale through a narrative structure interspersed with doubt, multiplicity, and fragmentation. Through a textual genetic comparison of the manuscripts from the novel with the final, published text, this paper argues that the main, eponymous, female character, “Lol”, represents an allegory of the subtractive writing process by which she is created. Simultaneous elements of creation and destruction within the character seem to echo themes of genesis and apocalypse both in the diegesis and meta-textually, suggesting the author’s preoccupation with creating ambiguity in the text. Lol’s presence and absence signals the interactions between the text and the reader, who experiences the lack of details in Lol’s character and description both through the laconic image that the narrator creates and destroys, and the fragmentary experience of the ever-elusive text.

Disparu en février 2011, Edouard Glissant laisse une œuvre poétique, théâtrale, théorique et romanesque fortement imprégnée par ses origines martiniquaises. Refusant la domination occidentale, en général, et française, plus particulièrement, Glissant s’est attaché à inscrire son œuvre dans une histoire des Caraïbes revue et corrigée. Cette « contre-histoire » qu’Alain Ménil analyse dans Les voies de la créolisation refuse une hiérarchisation du passé des peuples (européens vs. peuples africains & américains) et utilise des références subtiles à la Révolution française. Dans La Lézarde, les personnages agissent comme guidés par des principes révolutionnaires alors qu’au lendemain de la seconde guerre mondiale la population martiniquaise aspire à un renouveau politique. Le désir d’indépendance prend forme par la prise de conscience des souffrances passées, le cheminement vers une volonté de changement et se poursuit par le débat et l’engagement politique. Le militantisme du roman se double d’une écriture imprégnée de symboles, de poésie et d’un sous-texte si riche que La Lézarde, roman qui obtint le prix Renaudot à sa sortie en 1958, est devenue un roman de premier ordre dans les études francophones. Littérature et engagement politique se rejoignent donc pour écrire l’histoire d’un acte fondateur, celui de la Martinique et des Antilles modernes.

This paper will examine the expanded role Contemporary art has assumed in rebranding Paris, France’s flagship capital, as a cutting edge, technological, innovative and competitive global city. Paris has effectively incorporated contemporary art into the fabric of the whole city with exhibitions such as those originating at the Grand Palais spreading to venues throughout the inner and outer ‘quartier’. France has used arts and culture to claim supremacy in the world whether colonial or local for centuries with Paris the ultimate ‘brand’. Post WWII Paris however, saw this brand diminished and claims to artistic supremacy replaced by New York. In an effort to regain some relevancy Paris, and by extension France, began the process of re-branding concordant with political, economic and technological advancement through the fervent promotion of contemporary art. Contemporary Paris through contemporary art aspires to a transnational and post-national site of spectacle; a leading locus for art to be consumed. Paris’s mass contemporary art consumption era began in 1972 with De Gaulle’s efforts to replace military and imperial power with cultural dominance (though the recent concurrent inaugurations of outposts for the French military and the Louvre in Abu Dhabi may suggest a ‘rapprochement’ of the domains), inaugurating a litany of new contemporary exhibitions, art fairs, monuments and museums. Furthermore, with the redefinition of contemporary French art from an art produced by French artists to art produced in the “territory of France”, this universalizing re-branding of contemporary art attempts to validate Paris’s claim to global cultural supremacy. I discuss particular events such as the art fair FIAC, La Force de L’ Art and Monumenta to illustrate the use of Contemporary art to shape and brand contemporary Paris.

Michel Houellebecq has encouraged the French press and media to cast him as an isolated writer with “island status.” Despite his attempts to revolt against trends in criticism since poststructuralism, Houellebecq creates an intertextual “archipelago” that links his work to both literary history and contemporary cultural thought. In addition to making reference to twentieth-century Anglo-Saxon novels and film, Houellebecq employs narrative techniques typical of nineteenth-century realist writers from the French tradition, like Zola, Flaubert, and, especially, Balzac. His use of speculation as a narrative device and his attention to moral defects in his characters could lead readers to believe that he supports a return to Humanist philosophy that shuns literary developments since May ‘68. However, the rebellious stance that appears in his novels and his recently published correspondence with Bernard-Henri Lévy ultimately betrays an engagement with the same literary and cultural ideas against which he attempts to rebel. As a result, Houellebecq illustrates the impossibility of being an island even while depicting himself, like his characters, as a social outcast.

This article begins by arguing that medieval texts were by nature the product of collaboration due to their conditions of production and the concept of translatio, which required writers in the Middle Ages to derive “authority” from their predecessors. Next, the article analyses how Robert de Boron modified Le Conte du graal in order to turn it into a Christian tale. Rather than enriching interpretations of the work, his rewriting misled readers for centuries to interpret the grail in Chrétien de Troyes? text as a holy object. With this process in mind, the article defines a “collaborative lens” as the filter by which the perspective of a single author is imposed on a text with multiple authors. It argues that the collaborative lens not only corrupts our understanding of the “original” work, but also affects its future reinterpretations. Comparing medieval translatio to current-day intertextuality, it demonstrates that they both call into question dominant notions of “originality.” Finally, it draws on scholarship by Howard Bloch, Michelle Freeman and Zrinka Stahuljak in order to situate the “collaborative lens” within existing frameworks for “genealogies” in Medieval Literature.

This article explores the nature of collaboration under the early reign of Louis XIV. Whereas absolute monarchy tended to discourage the interpersonal cooperation required for collective projects, this study focuses on literary works that resulted from private collaborations and the spontaneous blend of multiple authors’ talents. In this aim, it analyzes La Logique de Port-Royal, by Arnauld and Nicole, as well as Psyché, a ballet drama co-written by Molière and Corneille. These two works highlight distinct forms of collaboration based on differing motivation and working relationships. On the one hand, friendship between the two authors of La Logique preceded their decision to create a joint project. It inspired them to forge and fuse their thoughts to the benefit of the coherence of the work, leading even their names to recede into the anonymity of their combined thoughts. On the other hand, the need to produce a play rapidly for royal entertainment motivated the authors of Psyché to divide the task: Corneille completed scenes for a plot already devised by Molière alone. Although their collaboration brings together texts that each author wrote independently, a common goal arose from the prestige of satisfying royal request. These two literary collaborations involve different concepts of community that engage the audience in divergent ways. Yet, both demonstrate a commitment to sharing that proves essential to the community and serves as the fundamental basis for creative writing.