Compte rendu : Lilia Hassaine, Soleil amer, Paris, Gallimard, 2021

Book review

L’(im)possible regard fenestral chez Toussaint et Viel ou comment poser les yeux sur le monde contemporain

It is quite legitimate to ask whether the gaze – a function which, nowadays, is considered to be inherent to the window – is still possible in a world felt more and more opaque by an alienated individual, who no longer has any roots and who finds himself abandoned to the emptiness of his existence, hopelessly fallen inside his own body, with his “eyes in the void”. Both the protagonists of Toussaint and those of Viel seem to inhabit a world that can be described as equivocal, false, devoid of benchmarks to which they do not belong. The empty immensity of an increasingly opaque society frightens and we find them in interior spaces which they fill but which they have not necessarily tamed. Thus, to speak of any window and of the inherent gaze, in this perspective, means also speak of a non-window or an absence of the window from which an impossible gaze emerges through it.

Rapports intertextuels et (re)constructions identitaires dans le roman Bois rouge de Jean-Marie Touratier

Published in 1993, the novel Bois rouge by Jean-Marie Touratier brings to life the history of the short-lived French colony of Brazil, the Antarctic France, whose existence, reduced to only five years (1555-1560), was described in the travelogues written in the 16th century by André Thevet (Les Singularitez de la France Antarctique - The New Found World, or Antarctike) and Jean de Léry (Histoire d’un voyage faict en la terre du Brésil – History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil). Beneath the appearance of a simple story told by an ironic voice, sometimes even satirical towards the military leader of the French colony, the Knight of Malta Nicolas Durand de Villegagnon and his chaplain, André Thevet, future cosmographer of the kings of France, the novel delves into issues of great complexity, such as (the issue of) identity and the relationship to the Other (the American “savage”).

Compte rendu : François Noudelmann, Les Enfants de Cadillac, Paris, Gallimard, 2021

Book review

Explorer les frontières poreuses de la poésie. Variations prigentiennes

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the prigentian poetical experience of deconstruction and the poetry conceived as a work in progress based this time on an inter-art dialogue. At the crossroads of literary theory and comparative literature, we will explore the author’s efforts to redefine the limits of the poetical experience and his intentions to even erase the conventional boundaries between literary or artistic categories. Since the poetical oeuvres of Prigent, as well as his theoretical work advance various reflections on the limits of the language and the medium of expression, we aim to analyze how this aspects impact the relation between text and image in the prigentian poetical work. Eventually, our work interrogates the role of the intertextual and intermedial dialogue in Prigent’s attempt to radically redefine the limits of the poetical experience.

Compte rendu : Christine Angot, Le Voyage dans l’Est, Paris, Flammarion, 2021

Book review

Écrire, ne pas écrire à la lisière de l’(in)humain. La Liste Goncourt – Le Choix de la Roumanie 2021

Proceedings of the Goncourt Jury – the Romanian choice, 2021

La mythologie des dévorations : corps mangé et corps mangeant chez Matéi Visniec

This article aims to comprehend the complexity of the mythology of devoration in Matei Visniec’s dramaturgy, to identify the paradigms of the consumed and the consuming body while gravitating around the concept of corporality, because the body represents a macro-sign, a matrix of meanings and the very identitary root of the individual. We attempt to emphasize the complementary dimensions of consuming, the pleasure and the terror, according to Gilbert Durand and to analyze the role played by food and the act of eating in the economy of Visniec’s theater.

Compte rendu : Tanguy Viel, La Fille qu’on appelle, Paris, Minuit, 2021

Book review

Violences contre les femmes : termes en tous genres…

Violence against women is a still existent worldwide phenomenon. The scope of the present article is to illustrate the terminological variety of glossary entries according to ISO 12616: 2002 (F). The examples and methodology are those used in the terminological work I undertook when writing my Master Thesis (consisting in a bilingual legal terminological glossary) on violence against women.