[Review of] John Reed and Clive Wake, eds . A New Book of African Verse

A New Book of African Verse, edited by John Reed and Clive Wake, is actually a new edition of A Book of African Verse, which appeared in 1964 just as black literature of Africa and of the United States was gaining recognition, particularly in academic circles. The authors\u27 intention has been consistently modest. From the first, the authors chose works from contemporary poets of French or English expression from Africa south of the Sahara. Certainly in 1964 their first volume brought attention to almost unknown poetry and was useful as an introduction to new readers of African poetry

Poetry of the Resistance, Resistance of the Poet

The expression French Resistance poetry tends to immediately suggest a poetry written for an audience belonging to a specific historical period, namely that stretching from 1940, the time of the French defeat and collaboration, to 8 May 1945, the date of the Allied Victory over Nazism..

Translating Contemporary French Poetry

This article examines a bilingual anthology edited by the authors and published in 2016. It argues that the process of editing an anthology of contemporary poetry with multiple translators is a form of re-writing that not only introduces new writers into the target-language poetic system, but also recasts their positions in the poetic system of the source culture by giving them new readers who have no or few preconceptions about the writers’ place in that system. Anthologizing operates in tandem with translating in this instance, and we additionally use the notions of inference and cognitive stylistics to discuss the particular habitus of academic translators who are not poets, and the opportunities those approaches offer to produce a creative translation. Style is an appropriate lens through which to consider poems included in this anthology because it is a contested question in contemporary French poetic practice. The article therefore treats the question of présence that this special issue addresses in three ways. It discusses, on the most literal level, the new or more visible presence that French poetry can acquire in the anglophone context through translation and anthologies. Moreover, it examines the ways in which the presence of new or decontextualized voices affects poetic systems. Finally, it considers whether an approach to translation that sees it as an embodied, interpretative process may allow some access to the présence of the ‘original’ poetic work

Translating Literary Ideology from Ancient Chinese into Modern French: François Cheng’s Francophone Poetry in \u3cem\u3eDouble chant\u3c/em\u3e (2000)

François Cheng (1929- ), elected to the Académie Française in 2002, structurally introduced the lexicological, syntactic, and semiotic form of Tang poetry to the French academia via his academic works. In the late 1980s, François Cheng shifted his focus from academic writing to creative writing, both in French, winning the 1998 Prix Femina for his novel Le Dit de Tianyi (1998) and Prix Roger Caillois for his collection of poems Double chant (2000). Focusing on his less-discussed poetry, which reveals higher congruity of his understanding of Chinese literary classics with creative representation, this paper argues that, as an analyst of Tang poetry, Cheng also acts as a contemporary translator of the classical Chinese aesthetic ideology into French modern verses. His subjective creation of poetry is both transcultural and trans-temporal, ambiguously corresponding to his lingual, racial, cultural, and national belonging, and appropriating a new valid form of French literary style. This ambiguity both transcends national identification and universalizes the international flow of knowledge. Beyond Feng Lan\u27s (2017) recognition of François Cheng as a special representative of Chinese diasporic intellectuals who mediate between institutionalized French discourses and Chinese classical philosophy, a close reading of Cheng’s poems in the paper will support an investigation of his successive and transformative production of text

A neurocognitive poetics investigation of eye movements during the reading of Baudelaire’s ‘Les Chats’

Following Jakobson and Levi-Strauss famous analysis of Baudelaire’s poem ‘Les Chats’ (‘The Cats’), in the present study we investigated the reading of French poetry from a Neurocognitive Poetics perspective. Our study is exploratory and a first attempt in French, most previous work having been done in either German or English (e.g., Jacobs, 2015a, 2018a, b; Müller et al., 2017; Xue et al., 2019). We varied the presentation mode of the poem Les Chats (verse vs. prose form) and measured the eye movements of our readers to test the hypothesis of an interaction between presentation mode and reading behavior. We specifically focussed on rhyme scheme effects on standard eye movement parameters. Our results replicate those from previous English poetry studies in that there is a specific pattern in poetry reading with longer gaze durations and more rereading in the verse than in the prose format. Moreover, presentation mode also matters for making salient the rhyme scheme. This first study generates interesting hypotheses for further research applying quantitative narrative analysis to French poetry and developing the Neurocognitive Poetics Model of literary reading (NCPM; Jacobs, 2015a) into a cross-linguistic model of poetry reading

Arts & Humanities News

French professor collaborates on award-winning poetry translatio

From the boulevard to the boudoir: the prose poem's evolution from Baudelaire's scenes of French daily life to Nin Andrew's contemporary portrayal of the individual

Compared to many forms of poetry, the prose poem is one of the most experimental and understated. It is a "genre of poetry, self consciously written, and characterized by the intense use of virtually all devices of verse" (Benedikt 47). By doing away with line breaks, it "uses means of prose toward the ends of poetry" (Lehman 13). Though when speaking of this form only a few long dead French poets may come to mind, "the prose poem has achieved an unprecedented level of popularity among American poets" (Lehman 24). Over time a range of contemporary American poets utilized this French tradition

Специфіка реалізації символів часу у французькій поезії

Розглянуто реалізацію символів часу у французькій поезії ХІХ століття. Охарактеризовано основні значення символів світанок, сутінки, вечір та ніч у французьких поетичних текстах. Розкрито форми взаємодії різних типів символів та образів. Акцентовано увагу на контамінації різних мовних засобів для реалізації символів у контексті. (Some peculiarities of realization and verbalization of «time» symbols in the French poetry of XIX century are analyzed. The article gives an expanded description of symbols of dawn, twilight, evening and night in French poetic texts. It figures out some important forms of interaction between different types of symbols and images. A symbol of dawn is prevailing in the poetry of XIX century. In the poetic context it’s realized mostly by alliterations and personifications. A symbol of twilight that is verbalized by the French lexeme «Crépuscule» isn’t really widespread in the French poetry. But in most cases it symbolizes the end of an important period in the hero’s life. A symbol of evening has got such meanings as autumn, tiredness and weariness and is realized by such metaphoric epithets as «incertain», «charmant» and «triste. A symbol of night is realized in the context in the meaning of recollections and dreams by means of some stylistic techniques such as personification, comparison and metaphor. A special attention in the article is drawn on the contamination of different linguistic means in order to implement some symbols in the context. In the poetry of XIX century the «time» symbols are realized by some phonetic means (alliteration, assonance), lexical means (synonyms, antonyms), graphic means (italics) and stylistic means (metaphors, personifications and epithet)

French Poetry Contest Celebrates Student Performance and Literature

The 30th Annual Edith R. Farrell French Poetry Contest will take place on April 5th at 7p.m