Journals
- Alternative Francophone Alternative Francophone endeavours to rethink the concept of francophonie according to the following principles: 1) to envision French as a minor language as opposed to a universal or an exceptional language; 2) to promote fruitful exchanges between francophonies; 3) to develop a francophone postcolonialism; 4) to explore the many cultural and identity configurations produced in the francophone context; 5) to implement a francophonie of resistance in reaction to linguistic and cultural totalitarianisms of any kind.
- Nouvelles études francophones Nouvelles Études Francophones (NEF) is the official refereed journal of the International Council of Francophone Studies / Conseil International d’Études Francophones (CIÉF). NEF publishes scholarly research in the language, arts, literatures, cultures, and civilizations of Francophone countries and regions throughout the world.
- International Journal of Francophone Studies Presents a wide range of research in the literature, culture, language, society, history, politics, film, arts, theatre and media of French-speaking areas from the colonial period to the present day.
- Expressions maghrébines Expressions maghrébines is a peer-reviewed journal publishing new, cutting edge research in French and English on literature and other cultural forms rooted in the Maghreb and its diasporas.
- Continents Manuscrits Continents manuscrits est une revue semestrielle consacrée à la recherche sur les manuscrits littéraires des Suds, dont notamment l’Afrique, la Caraïbe et les diasporas africaines et caribéennes dans le monde.
Websites
- Île en île Île en île contient une riche documentation littéraire, présentant des centaines d'auteurs francophones des îles et de leur diaspora avec des dossiers approfondis : photos, biographies, bibliographies, entretiens et extraits de textes, souvent lus.
- Le Progressiste: organe du Parti Progressiste Martiniquais Le Progressiste was an influential weekly newspaper published and edited by Pierre Aliker, activist and politician, and Aimé Césaire, poet, author, and politician. The digitized issues range from 1958 (year of the first publication) to 2009.
- Littérature maghrébine d'expression française Panorama général de la littérature maghrébine d'expression française, le présent ouvrage obéit à une logique géographique en présentant successivement les ensembles littéraires de l'Algérie, du Maroc et de la Tunisie. L'accent a été mis sur le développement et la cohérence des oeuvres : on a donc consacré à chaque écrivain déjà reconnu (de Kateb Yacine à Driss Chraïbi, de Mohammed Dib à Tahar Ben Jelloun, d'Albert Memmi à Rachid Mimouni...) un chapitre particulier constituant une véritable monographie de l'auteur. La préface, la conclusion et la postface (qui tient compte de l'évolution récente) permettent de replacer chacun de ces écrivains dans l'évolution plus générale de la littérature du Maghreb.
Background Sources
- Oxford Reference This link opens in a new window Published by Oxford University Press, it is a fully-indexed, cross-searchable database containing dictionaries, language reference and subject reference works.
- Country Studies (via Library of Congress) This link opens in a new window Contains the electronic versions of 80 books previously published in hard copy as part of the Country Studies Series by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress. Intended for a general audience, books in the series present a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of select countries throughout the world.
Introduction Aux Littératures Francophones by
Location: Mugar Stacks PQ3809 .I587 2004 and OnlinePublication Date: 2004
The Cambridge Introduction to Francophone Literature by
The literature of French-speaking countries forms a distinct body of work quite separate from literature written in France itself, offering a passionate creative engagement with their postcolonial cultures. This book provides an introduction to the literatures that have emerged in the French-speaking countries and regions of the world in recent decades, illustrating their astonishing breadth and diversity, and exploring their constant state of tension with the literature of France. The study opens with a wide-ranging discussion of the idea of francophonie. Each chapter then provides readers with historical background to a particular region and identifies the key issues that have influenced the emergence of a literature in French, before going on to examine in detail a selection of the major writers. These case studies tackle many of the key authors of the francophone world, as well as authors writing today.
Location: Mugar Stacks PQ3897 .C67 2007Publication Date: 2007
Encyclopedia of Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1900-2003 by
The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Latin American and Caribbean Literature, 1900-2003 draws together entries on all aspects of literature including authors, critics, major works, magazines, genres, schools and movements in these regions from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present day. With more than 200 entries written by a team of international contributors, this Encyclopediasuccessfully covers the popular to the esoteric. The Encyclopedia is an invaluable reference resource for those studying Latin American and/or Caribbean literature as well as being of huge interest to those folowing Spanish or Portuguese language courses.
Location: Mugar Memorial Library Reference X (PQ7081.A1 E558 2004 ) and OnlinePublication Date: 2004
The Cambridge Companion to the French Novel: From 1800 to the present by
This volume offers a unique and valuable insight into the novel in French over the past two centuries. In a series of essays, acknowledged experts discuss a variety of topics including nineteenth-century realism, women and fiction, popular fiction, experiment and innovation, war and the Holocaust, the Francophone novel, and postmodern fiction. They offer a challenging reassessment of major figures, while deliberately reading traditional views of literary history against the grain. Theoretical discussion is combined with close reading of texts and exploration of context, comparison with other genres and other literatures, and reference to novels from earlier periods. This companionable introduction includes a chronology and guide to further reading. From it emerges a strong sense of the vitality and energy of the modern French novel, and of the debates surrounding it.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 1997
The Mauritian Novel: Fictions of Belonging by
On 12 March 2018, Mauritius celebrated fifty years as an independent nation amidst much fanfare. Yet behind the nation's official image of multicultural "unity in diversity" lurk deep socio-economic inequalities and inter-ethnic tensions that are insistently critiqued in its literature.Against this backdrop, this book analyses how the idea of belonging - a sense of attachment to, and identification with, a place or people - is problematised in a range of contemporary francophone Mauritian novels.The island-nation's complex history and the multi-ethnic composition of its modern-day population mean that belonging is a central but fraught issue in both reality and fiction. Waters explores how diverse forms of affirmative, affective belonging intersect with, and are frequently inhibited by,exclusionary "politics of belonging" at communal, national or international levels. Using an eclectic theoretical approach to the central concept of belonging, Waters offers in-depth textual analyses of novels by leading Mauritian writers Nathacha Appanah, Ananda Devi, Shenaz Patel, Bertrand deRobillard, Amal Sewtohul and Carl de Souza. Despite their thematic and formal diversity, these novels are shown to be characterised by a common rejection of dominant discourses of ethnic, diasporic affiliation and by a common commitment to the ongoing, future-orientated project of Mauritiannationhood. As such, this book offers an original insight into the dynamics of belonging and exclusion in diverse, multi-ethnic societies.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2019
Antillanité, Créolité, Littérature-Monde by
This collection of essays explores concepts present in literatures in French that, since the 2007 manifesto, more and more critics, suspicious of the term Francophonie, now prefer to designate as litterature-monde (world literature). The book shows how the three movements of antillanite, creolite and litterature-monde each in their own way break with the past and distance themselves from the hexagonal centre. The critics in this collection show how writers seek to represent an authentic view of their history, culture, identities, reality and diversities. According to many of the contributors, creolization and litterature-monde offer new perspectives and possibly a new genre of literature.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013- Dictionnaire du roman populaire francophone byLocation: Mugar Memorial Library Reference X (PQ637.P68 D53 2007 )Publication Date: 2007
- Dictionnaire des écrivains francophones classiques : Afrique subsaharienne, Caraïbe, Maghreb, Machrek, Océan Indien byLocation: Mugar Memorial Library Reference X (PQ3897 .C3 2010 )Publication Date: 2010
Literary Biography
- Île en île Île en île contient une riche documentation littéraire, présentant des centaines d'auteurs francophones des îles et de leur diaspora avec des dossiers approfondis : photos, biographies, bibliographies, entretiens et extraits de textes, souvent lus.
- Contemporary Authors This link opens in a new window A bio-bibliographical guide to current writers in fiction, general nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, motion pictures, television, and other fields.
- Gale in Context: Biography This link opens in a new window Biography In Context offers biographical information about historically significant figures as well as present-day newsmakers. It includes reference content alongside magazine and journal articles, primary sources, videos, audio podcasts, and images.
- Literature Online This link opens in a new window LION includes texts, criticism, and reference material, including thousands of literary articles, essays, biographies and encyclopedia entries on over 350,000 works of poetry, prose, and drama from the 8th to the 21st century.
Postcolonial Francophone Autobiographies: From Africa to the Antilles by
Bringing a comparative perspective to the study of autobiography, Edgard Sankara considers a cross-section of postcolonial francophone writing from Africa and the Caribbean in order to examine and compare for the first time their transnational reception. Sankara not only compares the ways in which a wide selection of autobiographies were received locally (as well as in France) but also juxtaposes reception by the colonized and the colonizer to show how different meanings were assigned to the works after publication. Sankara's geographical and cultural coverage of Africa and its diaspora is rich, with separate chapters devoted to the autobiographies of Hamp#65533;t#65533; B#65533;, Valentin Mudimb#65533;, Kesso Barry, Patrick Chamoiseau, Rapha#65533;l Confiant, and Maryse Cond#65533;. The author combines close reading, reception study, and postcolonial theory to present an insightful survey of the literary connections among these autobiographers as well as a useful point of departure for further exploration of the genre itself, of the role of reception studies in postcolonial criticism, and of the stance that postcolonial francophone writers choose to take regarding their communities of origin. Modern Language Initiative
Location: Mugar Stacks PQ3897 .S26 2011 and OnlinePublication Date: 2011
Against the Postcolonial: "Francophone" Writers at the Ends of French Empire by
Richard Serrano begins his provocative new work Against the Postcolonial with the bold statement that OFrancophone studies is mostly a mirage, while postcolonial studies is mostly a delusion.O He argues that many attempts to use postcoloniality to account for francophone writers tell us more about the criticsO assumptions than about the writersO works. Furthermore, he asserts that postcolonial studies, with its antecedents as an Anglophone Indian project that emerged in response to the weakening British Raj, is but one sort of narrative of colonialism into which writers of French expression do not neatly fit. In an insightful exploration of the work of five writers from lands formerly or currently ruled by France_Algeria, Cambodia, Guiana, Madagascar, and Mali_Serrano demonstrates the rewards of research that engages in textual analysis within its historical and literary context. He deftly argues against the relevance of a homogenizing critical practice; considering these writers Opostcolonial, O he claims, is to misunderstand their aesthetic strategies for survival in the face of French colonialism and modernism. Scholars of Francophone literature, postcolonial studies, and world literature will relish SerranoOs lively invitation to debate and masterful analysis of five brilliant artists.
Location: Mugar Stacks PQ3897 .S47 2005Publication Date: 2005
Francophone Women Writers: Feminisms, Postcolonialisms, Cross-Cultures by
This anthology seeks to introduce women writers in the "global" Francophone world by investigating the place of feminist, postcolonial and cross-cultural theories in interpreting women francophone literature. The book also allows the reader to examine the extent to which women writers reflect or negate the conventional archetypes of Francophone literature, how they reinvent the political, cultural and critical discourse of their time and place, and create their own identity from objectification to subjectivity.The ambition of this anthology is to explore these themes at a time when globalization is redefining the concepts of language, identity, space and history, and transforming the rapport of each individual to the "other". While most research on the subject focus on specific countries or regions, this volume offers a new critical introduction to Francophone women authors from a broad geographical range in North and West Africa, the Near East, the Pacific, North America, the Caribbean Islands and Europe. Significantly, this study assembles a broad and representative collection of texts written by women authors that will generate a fruitful and critical reflection among students and scholars. The selected texts present critical issues that students and readers at large need to explore to further their knowledge of francophone literature and culture.
Location: Mugar Stacks PQ149 .T68 2011Publication Date: 2011
Connecting Histories : Francophone Caribbean writers interrogating their past by
The Francophone Caribbean boasts a trove of literary gems. Distinguished by innovative, elegant writing and thought-provoking questions of history and identity, this exciting body of work demands scholarly attention. Its authors treat the traumatic legacies of shared and personal histories pervading Caribbean experience in striking ways, delineating a path towards reconciliation and healing. The creation of diverse personal narratives--encompassing autobiography, autofiction (heavily autobiographical fiction), travel writing, and reflective essay--remains characteristic of many Caribbean writers and offers poignant illustrations of the complex interchange between shared and personal pasts and how they affect individual lives. Through their historically informed autobiography, the authors in this study--Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edwidge Danticat, and Dany Laferrière--offer compelling insights into confronting, coming to terms with, and reconciling their past. The employment of personal narratives as the vehicle to carry out this investigation points to a tension evident in these writers' reflections, which constantly move between the collective and the personal. As an inescapably complex network, their past extends beyond the notion of a single, private life. These contemporary authors from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti intertwine their personal memories with reflections on the histories of their homelands and on the European and North American countries they adopt through choice or necessity. They reveal a multitude of deep connections that illuminate distinct Francophone Caribbean experiences.
Location: Mugar Stacks PQ3940 .T56 2017Publication Date: 2017
Primary Sources
- Gallica Explore the digital collections of the French National Library by theme, chronological period or geographic region
- Réseau francophone numérique Collects digital documents from participating Francophone countries
BU Subject Databases
- BU Libraries Search This link opens in a new window BU Libraries Search provides a single place to search for a wide variety of research material provided by the library. Resources covered by the search includes books and eBooks, journals, scores and sheet music, video and audio recordings, and other physical and electronic items held by the library. Coverage encompasses materials relating to the prehistoric and antique world through to the present.
- Literature Online This link opens in a new window LION includes texts, criticism, and reference material, including thousands of literary articles, essays, biographies and encyclopedia entries on over 350,000 works of poetry, prose, and drama from the 8th to the 21st century.
- MLA International Bibliography This link opens in a new window Indexes critical materials on literature, languages, linguistics, and folklore. Includes citations from worldwide publications: periodicals, books, essay collections, working papers, proceedings, dissertations and bibliographies.
- Literature Criticism Online This link opens in a new window Contains critical and biographical essays on authors currently living or who died after Jan. 1, 2000. May be searched simultaneously with Contemporary Authors and the Dictionary of Literary Biography.
- JSTOR This link opens in a new window This database provides full text access to the back issues of core scholarly journals in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Book reviews are included as well as journal articles. Abstracts are available for some of the articles.
- Project Muse This link opens in a new window Project Muse provides digital access to scholarly journals and books in the humanities and social sciences. The scholarly content comes from non-profit scholarly publishers, including university presses and societies. The full text resources include journal articles, book reviews and book chapters.
- ARTstor This link opens in a new window ARTstor is a database of images from museums, artists, libraries, colleges and universities, scholars, private collections, and photo archives available for teaching, education, and scholarship, with all images cleared for educational use.
Francophone Literature
Browse Books/eBooks on:
Selected Francophone Writers
Francophone Cultures and Geographies of Identity by
"This collection of original essays challenges French-centered conceptions of francophonie as the shaping force of the production and study of the French language, literature, culture, film, and art both inside and outside mainland France. The traditional view of francophone cultural productions as offshoots of their hexagonal avatar is replaced by a pluricentric conception that reads interrelated aspects of francophonie as products of specific contexts, conditions, and local ecologies that emerged from post/colonial encounters with France and other colonizing powers. The twenty-one papers grouped into six thematic parts focus on distinctive literary, linguistic, musical, cinematographic, and visual forms of expression in geographical areas long defined as the peripheries of the French-speaking world: the Caribbean, the Indian Ocean, the Maghreb, sub-Saharan Africa, Quebec, and hexagonal cities with a preponderance of immigrant populations. These contested sites of French collective identity offer a rich formulation of distinctly local, francophone identities that do not fit in with concepts of linguistic and ethnic exclusiveness, but are consistent with a pluralistic demographic shift and the true face of Frenchness that is, indeed, plural."
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2013
From Francophonie to World Literature in French by
In 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.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2020
Creole Renegades: Rhetoric of Betrayal and Guilt in the Caribbean Diaspora by
In Creole Renegades, Bénédicte Boisseron looks at exiled Caribbean authors--Edwidge Danticat, Jamaica Kincaid, V. S. Naipaul, Maryse Condé, Dany Laferriére, and more--whose works have been well received in their adopted North American countries but who are often viewed by their home islands as sell-outs, opportunists, or traitors. These expatriate and second-generation authors refuse to be simple bearers of Caribbean culture, often dramatically distancing themselves from the postcolonial archipelago. Their writing is frequently infused with an enticing sense of cultural, sexual, or racial emancipation, but their deviance is not defiant. Underscoring the typically ignored contentious relationship between modern diaspora authors and the Caribbean, Boisseron ultimately argues that displacement and creative autonomy are often manifest in guilt and betrayal, central themes that emerge again and again in the work of these writers.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2014
American Creoles: the Francophone Caribbean and the American South by
he 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 social relations 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 Southern states has had a quite particular attachment to France and the Francophone world.
Location: OnlinePublication Date: 2012
Francophone Post-Colonial Cultures by
A collection of discussions of literary texts from areas as diverse as Europe and North Africa, the Caribbean and South Asia, regions of the world that seem to have only their language in common. But despite enormous differences among all the countries where French is spoken, Francophone literatures tend to deal with a smiliar spread of issues. This volume positions the study of the Francophone world and its cultures as a comparative project, in which post-colonial Francophone cultures and the specific alterity of these cultures emerge as inextricable from and essential to an understanding of modern France. The volume is organized by region, with an international roster of contributions, and includes summaries of selected creative and critical works and a guide to selected terms and figures.
Location: Mugar Stacks PQ3897 .F73 2003Publication Date: 2003
Memory, Empire, and Postcolonialism: Legacies of French Colonialism by
Long repressed following the collapse of empire, memories of the French colonial experience have recently gained unprecedented visibility. This interdisciplinary volume explores the multiple forms of this upsurge and the forces driving it in popular culture, scholarly research, and public commemorations.
Location: Mugar Stacks PQ3897 .M46 2005Publication Date: 2005
Algeria in Others' Languages by
For decades the superimposition of languages in Algeria has had growing cultural and political consequences. The relations between identity and language, already complicated before independence, became all the more entangled after 1962 when the new state imposed standard Arabic as the sole national language. The vernacular brand of Arabic spoken by the majority of the population as well as Berber, spoken by an important minority were denied legitimacy. Moreover, French, the colonial language, continued to be important all the while that its position changed. The violence that ensued in the late 1980s cannot be fully understood without considering the politics of language. This timely book is devoted to Algeria's linguistic predicament and the underlying disagreements over notions of identity, power, and belonging.What problems arise when a new national language is adopted by a postcolonial state? How does the status of the former colonial language change? What becomes of the original "mother tongue(s)" of the populace? The authors of Algeria in Others' Languages address these questions as they explore the historical, cultural, and philosophical significance of language in Algeria, and its relation to issues of politics and gender. Their topics range from analyses of political violence to the status of the principal of evidence in the legal system to the place of "Francophonie" in the 1990s.The authors represent the fields of literature, history, sociology, sociolinguistics, and postcolonial and gender studies; some are also historical players in Algeria's linguistic debates."
Location: Mugar Stacks PJ6074 .A44 2002Publication Date: 2002
Writing Postcolonial France: Haunting, Literature, and the Maghreb by
This book examines the way in which France has failed to come to terms with the end of its empire, and is now haunted by the legacy of its colonial relationship with North Africa. It examines the form assumed by the ghosts of the past in fiction from a range of genres (travel writing, detective fiction, life writing, historical fiction, women's writing) produced within metropolitan France, and assesses whether moments of haunting may in fact open up possibilities for a renewed relational structure of cultural memory. By viewing metropolitan France through the prism of its relationship with its former colonies in North Africa, the book maps the complexities of contemporary France, demonstrating an emerging postcoloniality within France itself.
Location: Mugar Stacks PQ673 .B36 2011 and OnlinePublication Date: 2011
