AF/M165 Contemporary Francophone Literatures
Tutor:
Teaching:
Value:
Assessment:
Prof Nick Harrison
one two-hour seminar per week in Semester 1
20 credits
one 5000-word essay
Course description
One of the liveliest and most significant aspects of contemporary literature in French is so-called ‘francophone’
literature, a category usually reserved for writers from former French colonies. This area of research has been
reinvigorated in recent years through the upsurge in critical interest in ‘postcolonial’ literatures and cultures, as
well as through the richness and ambition of the work of the best contemporary francophone writers.
This module offers an overview of the themes and debates that could be said to characterize
francophone and postcolonial literatures, and at the same time calls into question the value of such general
categories. The challenge, for the postcolonial/francophone critic, is to grasp texts in their historical context
without reducing them to mere ‘reflections’ of it. With these aims in mind, the module focuses on authors
from North Africa, of diverse ethnic backgrounds (including Arab, Berber and Jewish), and on two particular
periods of literary production. The first half of the course concentrates on seminal texts written between
World War II and the Algerian war of independence, whose recurring concerns include anti-colonialism, the
forms of oppression and ‘hybrid’ cultures produced by colonial regimes, and the uses of literature as testimony
and polemic. The second half of term focuses on texts written in the last ten years or so, when authors have
reconsidered the ‘postcolonial’ legacy and the myths associated with it. These texts repeatedly address
questions of gender, ethnicity and language, and the relation between individual and collective history; all could
be seen as exercises in ‘self writing’, and all extend the processes of literary and formal experimentation
already begun by ‘francophone’ writers of the colonial era.
Initial background reading
It would be useful for you to read about the history of North Africa and Algeria: e.g. the single-volume North
Africa: A History from Antiquity to the Present by Phillip C Naylor (University of Texas Press, 2009); or the singlevolume histories of Algeria available in English by Ruedy, Stora or Ageron; or Martin Evans and John Phillips,
Algeria: Anger of the Dispossessed (Yale University Press, 2007). For more details on these secondary reading
suggestions and others, see the bibliography that can be downloaded from the departmental website.
There are many ‘readers’ and introductory works in the area of postcolonial studies, e.g.:
- Postcolonial Criticism, ed. Bart Moore-Gilbert et al. (Harlow: Longman, 1997);
or, with a greater ‘francophone’ emphasis:
- Francophone Studies: Postcolonial Issues and the Study of the French-Speaking World, ed. Charles
Forsdick and David Murphy (London: Arnold, 2003).
- Nicholas Harrison, Postcolonial Criticism: History, Theory and the Work of Fiction (Cambridge: Polity,
2003).
Or, on the global history of anticolonialism, you could read (from):
- Young, Robert J. C., Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
Order of seminars
1.
General introduction; assignment of presentations
2.
Fadhma Aïth Mansour Amrouche, Histoire de ma vie (Paris: La Découverte, 2000 [1946/1962]);
selected essays from Assia Djebar, Ces voix qui m’assiègent (Paris: Albin Michel, 1999)
3.
Mouloud Feraoun, Le Fils du pauvre ([1950/edited version1954] Paris: Points, 1997)
4.
Mohammed Dib, La Grande Maison (Paris: Seuil, ‘Points’, 1952)
5.
Albert Memmi, La Statue de sel (Paris: Gallimard ‘Folio’, 1953)
6.
Driss Chraibi, Le Passé simple ((Paris: Gallimard ‘Folio’, 1954)
7.
READING WEEK
8.
Assia Djebar, Femmes d'Alger dans leur appartement ([Paris: des femmes, 1980]; expanded edition, Paris:
Albin Michel, 2002)
9.
Jacques Derrida, Le Monolinguisme de l’autre (Paris: Galilée ‘Incises’, 1996)
10. Leila Sebbar (ed), Une enfance algérienne (Paris: Gallimard ‘Folio’, 1997)
11. Assia Djebar, La Femme sans sépulture (Paris: Livre de poche, 2002)
12. Final comparisons and essay preparation
You may also find it useful to read further texts by the primary authors, e.g.
Dib: other texts from the trilogy: L’Incendie (1954) and Le Métier à tisser (1957); later texts for contrast
Memmi: Portrait du colonisé (an essay; 1st edition 1957; Paris: Gallimard, 1985)
Chraïbi: Vu, lu, entendu: Mémoires (Paris: Denoël, 1998)
Derrida: Jacques Derrida, co-authored with Geoff Bennington (Paris: Seuil, 1991)
Feraoun: Journal 1955-1962 (Paris: Seuil, 2001; also available in translation); and see too the foreword to the
English translation The Poor Man's Son (University of Virginia Press, 2005)
Sebbar: authors too numerous to mention; but Cixous may be particularly interesting to you for various
reasons, and you might try Hélène Cixous, Photos de racines, co-authored with Catherine Clément
(Paris: des femmes, 1994)
Djebar: Le Blanc de l’Algérie (1995); any other texts, including her speech at the Académie française
(available from Académie website: http://www.academie-francaise.fr/immortels/index.html).