This guide will help you find library resources on French-speaking regions of the world (primarily outside of continental Europe). See the French Language and Literature guide for additional resources.
From Francophonie to World Literature in French by Thérèse Migraine-George; Thérèse Migraine-GeorgeIn 2007 the French newspaper Le Monde published a manifesto titled "Toward a 'World Literature' in French," signed by forty-four writers, many from France's former colonies. Proclaiming that the francophone label encompassed people who had little in common besides the fact that they all spoke French, the manifesto's proponents, the so-called francophone writers themselves, sought to energize a battle cry against the discriminatory effects and prescriptive claims of francophonie. In one of the first books to study the movement away from the term "francophone" to "world literature in French," Thérèse Migraine-George engages a literary analysis of contemporary works in exploring the tensions and theoretical debates surrounding world literature in French. She focuses on works by a diverse group of contemporary French-speaking writers who straddle continents--Nina Bouraoui, Hélène Cixous, Maryse Condé, Marie NDiaye, Tierno Monénembo, and Lyonel Trouillot. What these writers have in common beyond their use of French is their resistance to the centralizing power of a language, their rejection of exclusive definitions, and their claim for creative autonomy.
Call Number: Online
Publication Date: 2013
Le(s) français dans la mondialisation : Essai sur les sciences sociales et le langage by Véronique CastellottiDans l’environnement géo-sociolinguistique actuel, peut-on encore parler DU français, comme d’une entité uniforme, voire universelle ? Peut-on enseigner ou apprendre Le français, comme s’il s’agissait d’un français « éternel », attaché à une France figée dans son passé, qui en serait propriétaire ? Les contributions réunies dans ce volume explorent, a contrario, les conditions de développement de dynamiques francophones hétérogènes, en relation aux dimensions linguistiques et culturelles plurielles des situations contemporaines.
Call Number: Online
Publication Date: 2015
France's Colonial Legacies: Memory, Identity and Narrative by Fiona Barclay (Editor)France's Colonial Legacies contributes to the debates taking place in France about the place of empire in the contemporary life of the nation, debates that have been underway since the 1990s and now reach across public life and society, with manifestations in the French parliament, media, and universities. Fiona Barclay brings together distinguished scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including history, sociology, politics, literature, and film, to examine the extent to which the French colonial empire and its collapse have contributed to and shaped contemporary France.
Call Number: Online
Publication Date: 2013
American Creoles: The Francophone Caribbean and the American South by Martin Munro (Editor); Celia Britton (Editor)The Francophone Caribbean and the American South are sites born of the plantation, the common matrix for the diverse nations and territories of the circum-Caribbean. This book takes as its premise that the basic configuration of the plantation, in terms of its physical layout and the socialrelations it created, was largely the same in the Caribbean and the American South. Essays written by leading authorities in the field examine the cultural, social, and historical affinities between the Francophone Caribbean and the American South, including Louisiana, which among the Southernstates has had a quite particular attachment to France and the Francophone world.The essays focus on issues of history, language, politics and culture in various forms, notably literature, music and theatre. Considering figures as diverse as Barack Obama, Frantz Fanon, Miles Davis, James Brown, Edouard Glissant, William Faulkner, Maryse Conde and Lafcadio Hearn, the essaysexplore in innovative ways the notions of creole culture and creolization, terms rooted in and indicative of contact between European and African people and cultures in the Americas, and which are promoted here as some of the most productive ways for conceiving of the circum-Caribbean as a culturaland historical entity.