Lena Hill, Visusalizing Blackness and the Creation of the African American Literary Tradition

In her ambitious rereading of important segments of the African American literary canon of works published between the eighteenth century and the beginning of the Black Arts movement in the 1960s, Lena Hill proposes to apply a methodology announced very clearly in the “Acknowledgments” to her work: “This book ponders visual images inspired by texts […]”(xiii). In a critical gesture that signifies on the well-known “trope of the Talking Book” she proposes the notion of the trope of the Picture..

Lena Hill, Visusalizing Blackness and the Creation of the African American Literary Tradition

In her ambitious rereading of important segments of the African American literary canon of works published between the eighteenth century and the beginning of the Black Arts movement in the 1960s, Lena Hill proposes to apply a methodology announced very clearly in the “Acknowledgments” to her work: “This book ponders visual images inspired by texts […]”(xiii). In a critical gesture that signifies on the well-known “trope of the Talking Book” she proposes the notion of the trope of the Picture..

Sarah Brouillette, UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary

At a time when the notions of world literature and the globalization of culture are being evoked with greater frequency, Sarah Brouillette’s UNESCO and the Fate of the Literary serves as a timely reminder of the economic and political forces that affect the production and reception of literature. Brouillette’s examination of the role of UNESCO since its creation makes it possible to understand what she calls “the realities of production” (4) in their relation to UNESCO’s ideals and discredits..

Caryl Phillips

“A desperate foolishness. The crops failed. I sold my children.” With these three short sentences, the opening lines of his fifth novel, Crossing the River, Caryl Phillips undertook an imaginative and intellectual journey that would involve an active engagement with a subject which had become a crucial and difficult one for writers on both sides of the Atlantic – the legacy of the slave trade. When he published the novel in 1993 he had already written four other novels focusing on the effects..

Vocalisation, voix

La vocalisation se réfère à la production du son par la voix. Le Dictionnaire de linguistique et des sciences du langage (Dubois et al., 1994, p. 508) spécifie que « le terme de vocalisation est parfois employé […] comme synonyme de voisement ou sonorisation pour désigner la mise en vibration des cordes vocales qui produit la voix ». Comme le suggère cette définition, la vocalisation est inséparable de la voix. Le Dictionnaire cité ci-dessus définit la voix comme « l’ensemble des ondes sonore..

Nathaniel Hawthorne et les voix du passé

Nathaniel Hawthorne ne vient pas immédiatement à l’esprit lorsqu’on évoque le rôle de l’oralité dans le développement de la littérature américaine au xixe siècle. Pourtant les légendes et histoires qu’il entendit dans son enfance, en particulier celles ayant un rapport avec le passé de sa propre famille à l’époque des puritains, jouent un rôle important dans son imaginaire. En observant de près la façon dont l’auteur représente le passé légendaire de l’Amérique, en particulier dans les premiers contes, on peut comprendre comment cette conscience d’une littérature orale a influencé sa représentation de l’Amérique à une époque où le pays était en train d’élaborer une mythologie nationale.Nathaniel Hawthorne is not often perceived as a writer concerned with the use of orality as a means of developing the specificity of American literature. However oral traditions, particularly those that related him to the past of his Puritan ancestors, constitute an important part of his literary background. By observing Hawthorne’s description of American life in his notebooks and the way in which he represented the Puritan and Revolutionary past in his early tales, one can measure his interest in oral legends and his desire to examine the conditions in which those legends contributed to the construction of a national identity in the early nineteenth century

The Art and Craft of Grafting in Jamaica Kincaid’s Work

The Art and Craft of Grafting in Jamaica Kincaid’s Work Program of the conference The International Conference devoted to Jamaica Kincaid and “the art and craft of grafting” was an occasion for scholars from both sides of the Atlantic to explore the idea of grafting as a fruitful link between Kincaid’s persistent interest in the natural world, plants and gardening and the ways in which her writing makes it possible to see “creolization,” a concept often used to theorize the integrative capac..

Reconstruction. Introduction

The theme of the 2017 SAES conference “(Re)construction(s)” is particularly pertinent in the area of colonial and postcolonial studies, for it captures one of its underlying preoccupations. It suggests that the ultimate purpose of postcolonial deconstruction – which represents a first step toward a transformation of critical thought that aims at overcoming Eurocentric approaches to space, place, people, and nations – is reconstruction. By incorporating other voices, postcolonial deconstructio..

The Dialogue of the Big and the Small: The Poetry of Ben Okri

International audienc

Caryl Phillips, Special Issue of Commonwealth Essays and Studies

International audienc