Search

Étienne-Léon de Lamothe-Langon (1786-1864) was the author of numerous novels belonging to different genres. However, if he wasn't completely forgotten by the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th c., it was thanks to a long list of apocryphal memoirs attributed to famous people which in fact he wrote himself. At first, this paper shows reactions from the press in 1829 after the publication of Mémoires d'une femme de qualité sur Louis XVIII and Mémoires de la comtesse Du Barri. Although some journalists chose to perpetuate the fiction that the memoirs were authentic, others denounced them as false and heavily criticized this kind of literary enterprise. Thereafter, the article focuses on Lamothe-Langon's response to his critics and on his vision of apocryphal memoirs in his preface to Les Après-diners de S. A. S. Cambacérès (1837). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents a review article of Paul B Preciado’s major work, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era, recently translated by Daniel Clinci at frACTalia. I will proceed to do so by offering a short contextualization of Preciado’s academic formation and activity, followed by a tackling of the main concepts he borrows from post-structuralist thought. Given Preciado’s fragmented manner of writing this text, which brings together theory and auto-biographical fiction, I will also engage in a type of media analysis that the reader might find atypical for a review, whose main focus is to draw on some cinematic parallels, in order to extract an account for the new emerging kind of subjectivity that the pharmacopornographic regime creates. I will present Preciado’s analysis of the pharmacopornographic regime by following three main concepts that consolidate his body of work: the deconstruction of sex, the economic analysis of potentia gaudendi (orgasmic force) and the political construction of categories. At the same time, I will evaluate Preciado’s materialist turn by offering a critique of consistency. Lastly, I will emphasize the importance of this book in intersectional analysis while criticizing some points that Preciado either fails to consider, or whose dangers he minimizes while proposing a praxis for political dissidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

«La grande voix», a narrative published in Le Digamma in 2012, tells of the amazement of the narrator at hearing a woman’s voice singing in a church assembly in England. Her voice reminds him of a possible life that humanity seldom reaches. Wanting to bear witness of what he heard, the narrator later imagines an encounter in a brief fiction. This paper aims at analysing the paradox of choosing fiction to tell an encounter, as fiction for Yves Bonnefoy, far from bringing closer, risks locking up in an image. Nonetheless, here, only fiction can attest the dream heard in this voice, a desire to get closer to others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Movement & Sport Sciences / Science & Motricité is the property of EDP Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

A discussion of Romantic literature examines the links between literature and history and a mythic mechanism, a recurrent polarization between two opposite trends (myth and history) at the level of discourse, symbols, and representation. Mytho-romantic and neo-romantic are distinguished and examined. (Author/MSE)

Trends and cultural differences are examined in the history of the novel in France and the United States since 1906. These trends and cultural differences are proposed as a way of teaching American culture. (MSE)

Three types of written conversation are examined: the interview, the dialog in a comic strip, and fictional dialog. These are compared to the function of conversation in spoken language, and pedagogical indications are given for each of the types as well as in general. (AMH)

Copyright of Papers of the Bibliographical Society of Canada / Cahiers de la Société Bibliographique du Canada is the property of Bibliographical Society of Canada and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Acta Universitatis Lodziensis: Folia Litteraria Romanica is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The paper discusses the representation of Lizzie Borden in true-crime and crime-fiction prose texts, as well as in a stage production. It centers on the hypothesis of sociocultural aspects which constitute the accounts written about her and feminist readings. Regardless of genre, these narratives portray Lizzie Borden in various ways--from a female tormenter to a guilt-free spinster. Both true-crime books and crime-fiction novels, together with the ballet, are modified by sociocultural factors and are also subject to intertextuality. In addition, the lines between fiction and non-fiction literary works of primary concern are blurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Yod is the property of INALCO: Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper dedicated to the issue of the memory and the novel in the 18th century aims at questioning the memoir-novels, as a privileged form of the fiction during the first half of the century. The memoir-novel is indeed based on memories of a hero-narrator reminiscing about his past love life. As memory and imagination are strongly linked in the thought of the 17th and 18th century, the question of their relationship is particularly relevant in the novels by Antoine Prévost, insofar as his heroes claim to produce a pathetic effect and seduce their interlocutor/reader. Our reflection takes as an example La Jeunesse du Commandeur (1741) -- a kind of "reverse story" to that of the Chevalier Des Grieux -- where memory and imagination are put at the service of a burlesque treatment of passion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny is the property of Polish Academy of Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Al-Tawasul is the property of Al-Tawasul Journal and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Thélème is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present work deals with the genre of literary testimony and explores its double literary-historical status, as well as its unique position at the crossroads between memory and imagination. The paper analyses the specificity of Jorge Semprún's literary testimonies and focuses itself on the phenomenon of the imaginary memories and the image of snow, considering emblematic examples of the fusion of mnemonic and imaginary faculties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Nasleđe is the property of University of Kragujevac, Faculty of Philology & Arts and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper is an analysis of the notion of commitment in Léonora Miano and Alain Mabanckou's novels. These two writers, through writing mechanisms and strategies, are constantly renewing the novel genre. Their aesthetic and rhetorical choices provide a new formulation of the writer's commitment and relationship to literature. Understanding their works thus amounts to distinguishing the different breaks and forms of distancing that they operate with the literary practice of previous generations. It is also to analyze how their fictions problematize and question contemporary social phenomena in a language and writing that are characterized by hybridity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relevance of the aging discourse is driven by the need of understanding the increase in life expectancy that is reflected in recent fiction. Age studies and gerontological studies of the 20th century recommend socio-psychological and historical-cultural analyses to comprehensively cover the phenomenon of aging. To achieve this goal is possible with the help of diachronic consideration of the subject of a certain society with its specific features. The purpose of the article is to outline the main milestones of social and artistic representations of aging in Western civilization in a diachronic perspective, based on the philosophical, anthropological and historical works of de Beauvoir, D.H. Fischer, T.R. Cole etc. They discern opposing attitudes towards the elderly in the history of Western civilization: reverence as much as neglect. At the same time in the framework of the available data a straight story cannot be written, because the references to late adulthood concerned mainly the representatives of the privileged classes. The elderly representatives of other social strata stayed on the margins of society and public interest. Therefore the challenges of old age are a significant problem of governmental and social concerns. This is especially true of the aging women who perceived their physiological and psychological transformations in old age as a source of embarrassment, shame, and disgrace for centuries. Yet the period of late adulthood has turned into “decline” even more conspicuously in recent centuries largely due to the disengagement of the elderly from their practical activities. The author traces the representations of old age in the landmark works of antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, 17th-20th centuries in junction with anthropological observations of a particular period. The religious and communal understanding of late adulthood can be traced in Western civilization from the time of antiquity to the end of the 16th century. Then there is a sharp transition to a scientifically-individualistic perception of old age in Europe and the USA in the period from the 18th to the 20th centuries. The author claims that the dominant aspect of the aging discourse in fiction for a long time has been and remains the motive complex of intergenerational conflicts. Apart from that a contemporary discourse of the dynamics of aging in fiction also develops representations of the routine life of elderly characters, their social statuses, relations within their families and issues of transcendence. The methods used in the paper are mixed: historical data processing, analyses of interdisciplinary resources (anthropology, literary gerontology, social gerontology, age studies). The results can be practical for classes of theory of literature and social gerontology. The findings of the paper conclude that societal attitudes toward old age and aging and its literary manifestations have undergone dramatic, sometimes polar, transformations over more than two millennia.

Copyright of Romanica Olomucensia is the property of Palacky University in Olomouc and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of XVIIe Siècle is the property of Presses Universitaires de France and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 1975, Georges Perec published W ou le souvenir d'enfance, a work that is both fictional and autobiographical, and in which there are two different systems of enunciation side by side, thus opposing the distinction drawn by Gérard Genette between fiction and diction. In his book, Perec shows this undecidability between the imperative of narrating that which he hasn't lived and the complete impossibility of such narrative. By developing a narration strategy based on a certain use of fiction, Perec tries to face his lack of memories. This paper aims at analyzing how these two systems operate in order to create a double space where author and narrator get mixed up, creating a game in which the subject can only exist at the risk of his complete dissolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In life narratives, authors unveil their lives, and autobiography also inspires authors from Muslim Arab societies. In contemporary societies, some authors have talked about their "ego" without fully revealing all their secrets. Things are more complex in a Maghrebian context in which disclosing and recounting one's life (childhood, adolescence or even adult life) becomes a vital act. Our reasoning in this paper consists in showing that, to Malika Mokeddem, despite the criticisms and taboos, writing and being emancipated are no impediments; on the contrary, these taboos or proscriptions have motivated and served her life choices. Algerian authors often write about themselves by referring to their childhood, education and readings. Often the history of their country is at the center of their autobiographical novels. In this article, we focus on Malika Mokeddem's childhood and adolescence, two very important periods for her, and proceed to analyze the different processes used by the novelist who in her autobiographical works seeks to "recover" her identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Résumé Objectifs L’objectif de cet article est d’analyser les limites de la représentation et les caractéristiques des fictions dans leurs relations à la métapsychologie freudienne. Cette approche comporte ainsi une dimension épistémologique qui interroge les sources et les modèles de la fiction, notamment dans l’élaboration du concept de pulsion. Méthode Cet article correspond à une recherche théorique sur les fictions et les fondements des concepts psychanalytiques, à travers l’analyse épistémologique et historique de la métapsychologie freudienne. La théorie des pulsions est située dans le processus historique de sa construction. Résultats Cette étude démontre que les fictions correspondent à une approche heuristique pour penser « quelque chose d’inconnu ». Cet article suggère aussi que les fictions métapsychologiques ont différents modes d’existence : « fictions théoriques », « concepts fondamentaux », mythes… Ainsi, d’importants arguments en faveur des fictions mythologiques sont exposés : dans le cas de la pulsion de mort, les mythes peuvent fournir une représentation des pulsions et ainsi donner une place à ce qui échappe au savoir scientifique. Discussion L’article propose une approche synthétique du positionnement fictionaliste à l’œuvre dans L’interprétation du rêve . La caractérisation des « fictions théoriques » est reliée à un champ philosophique et aux principaux précurseurs du fictionalisme freudien : Kant et Hans Vaihinger. Un aspect important consiste à montrer comment la métapsychologie intègre un questionnement philosophique concernant la possibilité de la représentation. La question des « concepts fondamentaux » est abordée : la réflexion se concentre alors sur la notion de « convention » et la signification du « concept-limite ». Si le modèle freudien de 1915 est clairement scientifique et conceptuel, l’approche métapsychologique de 1920 devient fondamentalement mythologique et narrative. Ce tournant épistémologique est examiné et sa signification est discutée. Conclusion Cet article propose une conclusion générale : l’épistémologie freudienne de la fiction repose sur une aporie qui est au cœur de la possibilité même de la représentation métapsychologique. D’un point de vue épistémologique, la métapsychologie formule et maintient une position critique sur la question des « concepts fondamentaux » et des constructions théoriques : cette conclusion propose de faire des liens entre le problème des fictions et la question de la croyance. Aims The purpose of this study is to analyse the limits of representation and the characteristics of fictions in Freudian metapsychology. As such, this paper has an epistemological angle, which looks at the sources and models of fiction in the elaboration of the drive concept. Method This article is a theoretical research on fictions and foundations of psychoanalytical concepts, through an epistemological and historical analysis of Freudian metapsychology. The drive theory is located in the process of its construction. Results This study shows that fictions correspond to an heuristic approach to thinking “something unknown”. This article suggests that metapsychological fictions have different modes of existence: “theoretical fictions”, “fundamental concepts”, myths… In this paper, important arguments for mythological fictions are exposed: in the case of death drive, myths may provide a representation of drives and a place for that which escapes the realms of scientific knowledge. Discussion The article contains a brief overview of the fictional position in The Interpretation of Dreams . The characterization of “theoretical fictions” is connected with a philosophical field and the principal precursors of Freudian fictionalism: Kant and Hans Vaihinger. An important aspect is to show how metapsychology integrates a philosophical investigation of the possibility for representation. The question of “fundamental concepts” is examined: the focus concerns the notion of “convention” and the significance of “limit-concept”. If the 1915 drive model is clearly scientific and conceptual, Freud's 1920 approach is fundamentally mythological and narrative. This epistemological shift is examined and its significance is discussed. Conclusion This paper proposes a general conclusion: the Freudian epistemology of fiction is based on an aporia which is present at the core of the possibility of metapsychological representation. From an epistemological point of view, metapsychology formulates and maintains a critical position on the question of “fundamental concepts” and theoretical constructions: this conclusion connects the problem of fictions with the question of belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conference paper about the novel "Paraíso inhabitado" by Spanish author Ana María Matute is presented. It discusses the notions of reference and self-reference, the theory of possible worlds, the author's creation of a world that switches between reality and fairy tales, and the relationship between the reader and the text.

Copyright of Studii de Ştiintă şi Cultură is the property of Studii de Stiinta si Cultura and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Humanitas: International Journal of Social Sciences / Uluslararasi Sosyal Bilimler Dergisi is the property of Humanitas: International Journal of Social Sciences and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the formal intermediality relationship between the videogame Remember Me, and the novel Les furtifs, by Alain Damasio. The two fictions work on the same configuration of ecumenal relations (that is to say the technical and symbolic relations which unite an individual to his environment and to others) - the same inhabiting - according to their own media specificities and a homologous tensioning of dystopian and eutopian discourse. This gives rise to a critique of contemporary inhabiting within an algorithmic society punctuated by the surveillance and presence of social enclaves, as well as an alternative inhabiting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to examine two conflicting conceptions of identity: the first, trivial, is actually a scholarly term specific to formal logic; the second one, which we will call naïve, is revealed to us through ordinary language, including fiction. Utterances often appear fuzzy from a logical point of view - that is to say if we consider their truth value; hence their flexibility and ability to adapt to contexts which do not fulfil truth conditions, i.e. they cannot be reduced to a true vs false binary opposition, and thus they contradict the principle of the excluded third. This claim is striking for the apparently contradictory statements of identity like: The room was, yet was not mine (The lost room, Fitz James O'Brien). To conclude, we will study among other cases of duplication, the famous but Strange Case of Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde to see precisely how common language used in fiction enables us to grasp and represent this kind of experience about personal identity - knowing that identity is largely made up of identifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the brief text under the title L'instant de ma mort Maurice Blanchot recounts a singular event experienced by the character of his fiction: a young man was nearly executed towards the end of the second world war and escaped death by pure chance. Blanchot uses third-person narration and switches to first person only in the last sentence, creating a feeling of doubt about the truthfulness of the narrated incident and making the reader wonder whether the character, the narrator and the author himself are more than one person. The mystery seems unraveled thanks to former first-person references to the same event in La folie du jour. However, rather than assuming that this is a proof of fiction giving way to autobiography, one should see a bigger enjeu, which concerns the only experience capable of driving to the threshold of literature. This very experience transgresses the boundaries of the writer's identity, questioning even the possibility of writing in the first person. L'instant de ma mort cannot be seen as a typical récit de vie for a further reason: what is narrated is actually a moment in a lifetime. It embraces the whole life as it concerns the borderline experience par excellence but the focal point is displaced: rather than the narration of one's life, it is the narration of a suspended death. This suspended death, always behind us and yet to come, haunts every Blanchotian narration. It is this very question of death - deeply related to the literary experience and largely exceeding literary genres - as well as the (im)possibility of testyfying for it that the paper examines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Caravelle: Cahiers du Monde Hispanique et Luso-Bresilien is the property of Presses Universitaires du Mirail and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

"Vagabond," "nomad" or "marginal" are the key terms in almost all studies on Panait Istrati's literature. This paper aims to overview the multiple and complex meanings of the "vagabond" typology, based on stories like Kir Nicolas, Sotir, Mikhaïl, Bakâr, La Maison Thüringer, Le Bureau de placement or Méditerranée, in which the "vagabond" is the central character. The theoretical framework of our investigation is shaped by concepts like "migrant literature" and "marginality," but our study also encompasses a strand that implies an imagological analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our aim is to identify the specificities of short film scripts, which are not limited to formal structures; this is why we suggest in this paper examining the imaginary constructs that determines both the possibility for the short film to exist and the interpretation it triggers. With a view to defining an imaginary universe connected to short film scripts, we focus on two films: J’attendrai le suivant directed by Philippe Orreindy (2002) and Next Floor by Denis Villeneuve (2008). This paper aims at taking stock not only of the formal features characterizing short film narrative, but also at grasping the pragmatic elements that influence our interpretations of it. In conclusion, we show that short films, thanks to plots assorted to an aesthetics of brevity, send spectators some types of phasing signals which foster a perceptual adhesion to the script being staged on screen.

This paper offers a look back over the rise of the visibility, and the rise as a category, of Asian Australian fiction from the beginning of the 1990s, and especially in the twenty-first century, and some of the main questions that have been asked of it by its producers, and its readers, critics, commentators and the awarders of prizes. It focuses upon women writers. The trope of “border crossings”—both actual and in the mind, was central in the late-twentieth century to much feminist, Marxist, postcolonial and race-cognisant cultural commentary and critique, and the concepts of hybridity, diaspora, whiteness, the exotic, postcolonising and (gendered) cultural identities were examined and deployed. In the “paranoid nation” of the twenty-first century, there is a new orientation on the part of governments towards ideas of—if not quite an imminent Yellow Peril—a “fortress Australia,” that turns back to where they came from all boats that are not cruise liners, containerships or warships (of allies). In the sphere of cultural critique, notions of a post-multiculturality that smugly declares that anything resembling identity politics is “so twentieth-century,” are challenged by a rising creative output in Australia of diverse literary representations of and by people with Asian connections and backgrounds. The paper discusses aspects of some works by many of the most prominent of these writers. In its mediation, through similar-but-different travelling women’s eyes, of the past and present histories of different national contexts, Asian Australian fictional writing is a significant and challenging component of the “national” culture, and is continuing to extend its audiences within, and beyond Australia.

Copyright of Issues in Ethnology Anthropology is the property of Issues in Ethnology Anthropology and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ancient Narrative is the property of Barkhuis Publishing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

If Mariana Marin’s tragic posture was largely built posthumously by her friends, the ethical one is assumed by the author herself and entitled by a collective ethos in terms of Meizoz. Interdependent, yet with distinct effects, the two categories mentioned – the tragic and the ethical – certify at least two wrong pathways regarding the author's reception. Firstly, the woman poet becomes a romanticized-heroic fiction. Secondly, the ethical posture, is ambiguous because of a misreading: Mariana Marin's so-called dissidence – a fake posture that is constructed for her from outside the country (by the two exiled personalities: Monica Lovinescu and Virgil Ierunca, as well as by the American translator Adam J. Sorkin) – versus a social-political engagement, perfectly valid, but which ends up diverting the hermeneutics of the texts towards the univocality of moral strands. So, being a study of the author and tangentially of her poems, I will also discuss the fictionalization of Mariana Marin within some poems by others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes James Agee’s only published novel, A Death in the Family. As an autobiographical novel published posthumously, it is a partially completed project in which Agee planned to insert photographs and to develop a form of writing focused on the factual and the real, with minimal resort to fiction. Eschewing a first-person narrative, he chooses to write using the third person, and to name the main character Rufus (after his own middle name). In studying this “documentary writing of the self,” we shall see how Agee strives to go beyond the limits between referentiality and fiction, and to avoid defining fiction purely as invention or imagination. We shall base our analysis on a comparison of two versions of the novel: the 1957 edition, and the 2007 edition revised and restored by Michael Lofaro, which contains previously unpublished chapters. We will point out the characteristics of this form of writing, from its close links to the visual arts (most notably photography) to the emphasis Agee puts on the depiction of scenes of everyday life. Thus, instead of being considered as a self-portrait of the artist as a young man, A Death in the Family can be read as a portrait of Agee through the eyes of his family.

This paper is centred on « A Flight », an article published by Dickens in Household Words in 1851, the narrative of a train journey from London to Paris. Dickens’s article is published today by Penguin both as a piece of journalism (in Selected Journalism) and as a piece of fiction (in Selected Short Fiction), which raises the question of the genre(s) to which it belongs. This paper aims at showing that far from being a classic travel narrative offering a modicum of objectivity, « A Flight » shows us how fiction is created when a hyper-active narrator uses every exterior detail as a pretext to the expression of his creative energy. In Dickens’s text, the aim of the train journey, France, is portrayed as a fictional place where imagination can truly express itself and even run wild.

One culture within a culture is the culture of LGBT people in Latvia or, to use a contemporary designation, queer culture. In Latvia, queer culture is still practically invisible. In this paper I will analyse two types of queer narratives: documentary life stories collected by Rita Ruduša in her book Forced Underground (2012) and the manuscript of a collection of 12 short stories by Klāvs Smilgzieds (2014), originally published serially during the 1990s in an under ground Latvian gay magazine. Both types of texts employ different emphasis talking about queers in Soviet and post-Soviet life. Ruduša’s interviews reflect on the situation of being in the closet and on fear and loneliness, while Smilgzieds’ stories celebrate the male body, casual sex, and unfulfilled loves. While Ruduša’s interlocutors (mostly gay men, more or less closeted) construct their narratives to seem acceptable to straight women, Smilgzieds, a closeted bisexual himself (or, as he calls himself in Latvian, divdabis), uses various modes of narrative (parable, miniature, pornographic prose) to express both his experience and imagination. Both Ruduša and Smilgzieds reveal the slow changes in consciousness taking place in Latvia in its transition from a Soviet to a post- Soviet society that result in actions such as the decriminalization of male homosexuality, the existence of LGBT organizations and clubs, the use of queer issues as topics for tabloids and TV shows etc. The habitus of gay people is changing very slowly as a consequence. In this paper the construction of queer Latvian narratives is analysed in comparison to other queer narratives.

Elias Al-Mawsili, a Chaldean cleric from Baghdad, traveled to the American continent and based there from 1675 to 1683. The lack of accounts of non-Western travelers to the American continent has attracted our attention to the underlying incentives of his journeys. His travel narrative is the oldest known Arabic manuscript of the New World. This research focuses on how the account of this Arab traveler differs from Western representations and foregrounds. It also features the approach on how Al-Mawsili portrays the Amerindian and the Spanish settlers. This draft traces Al-Mawsili's travels from Baghdad to Europe and then his arrival to America. The study approaches his descriptions of large parts of the south to the center of the American continent and emphasizes themes as the hunt of gold, the avarice of the Spaniards, the perils and the adventure in America. In addition, the article considers the candidness of Al-Mawsili's observations by highlighting the means used in his accounts, especially informative, descriptive, and anecdotal. This paper discusses the reasons about why this narrative has been forgotten for many years.

Copyright of Annee Sociologique is the property of Presses Universitaires de France and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In his numerous pieces of prose, Vasile Alecsandri reveals his profile of a writer, traveller and memoirist. Describing places, sceneries and characters, the writer actually performs an exercise of evoking his own travel memories. In his travel notes, portrayals or publicist texts, the author combines the reality of the described facts with fiction, always in different proportions. Otherwise stated, these types of texts are generic platforms on which the writer hides the fictional structures meant to captivate the reader. In the texts to which we are going to refer in the paper, Vasile Alecsandri exploits various pictures, ideas, aesthetic and ideological codes, and notes, thus recreating his travel memories. Even though it has received less attention on part of Romanian literary critics, Alecsandri’s prose deserves to be explored since it undoubtedly completes the artistic profile of the writer. Despite the fact that we are talking about marginal epic literary pieces written by Alecsandri, it can be included in the range of the greatest memoirs from Romania and at the international level.

Melville’s famous tale relies on a significant number of attempts to “measure” or “fathom” what the narrator himself calls “the unaccountable Bartleby.” Paradoxically, if we accept the narrator’s inaugural statement assessing Bartleby as “an irreparable loss to literature,” how can the scrivener’s “presence” be measured in Melville’s fiction? The aim of the paper is to study the unaccountability of Bartleby from a writerly angle, mainly focusing on the use of typography and punctuation in the text (italics, inverted commas) which literally attempt to corner an irreducible presence in their signs. From the first apparition of the enigmatic scribe to the literary “advent of Bartleby” the problematic exposition of the ever-escaping figure will be studied.

Based on the work of the American microbiologist Lynn Margulis, this paper proposes an overview of the ontological, epistemological and methodological contribution made by scientific and anthropological analyses concerning bacteria. The aim is to show how attention to bacterial microfauna has led to a renewed understanding of both the living world and materiality, opening up a horizon of thought for living matter. Bacteria transform organic and inorganic matter and appear therefore to be capable of agentivity, of doing and acting. In order to understand, from their point of view, the meaning of materials, and to think about matter through the prism of its particular combinations and specific transformations, an alchemist reading of the bacterial world, based on the new materialisms, allows us to underline the entanglement of matter and interactions, and to deepen the decentring in a more-than-human direction.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the status of the poet in the third tale (maḥberet) of Sefer ha-Meshalim, by Yaakov ben Eleazar, written in the thirteenth century. This examination focuses on the very thin line between reality and fiction, as is reflected in the tale. The tale describes a competition between Lemuel (the narrator and protagonist of the tale but also the alter‑ego of Yaakov, the “historical” author) and the poet’s rival. Their challenge is to improve a verse written by Yemima (a poetess, the protagonist of another tale) by composing a verse on the same subject with the same number of images, and then to continue the contest by increasing the number of metaphors. Through this competition, the readers are introduced to a representation of the poet, caught between the anguish of failure and his confidence in his talent, eager to be recognized by the public. The article analyses these features based upon the staging of the competition, the names given to the characters, the interpretation of selected metaphors and the technical virtuosity demonstrated at each stage, as well as the status of each of the figures, especially that of the poetess.