Vanessa Guignery | École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (original) (raw)

Books by Vanessa Guignery

« Renaissances. » En collaboration avec Catherine Bernard.

Études britanniques contemporaines, 2022

The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019)

Sillages critiques 32 (2022)., 2022

Contemporary novels about refugees often question the appropriateness of traditional narrative fo... more Contemporary novels about refugees often question the appropriateness of traditional narrative forms to relate stories of forced migration which involve a fragmentation of the self and of one’s sense of reality. Writers opt instead for forms which are as disjointed as the experience of refugees themselves. This paper explores the precarious balance between a poetics of rupture and an aesthetics of connectivity in two novels about refugees: Exit West (2017) by Mohsin Hamid and Travelers (2019) by Helon Habila. It first examines the strategies developed by both authors to destabilize form in order to reflect the refugees’ shattering ordeals during and after their forced displacements. The multiplicity of stories as well as the shifts in focalization and narrative modes testify to the impossibility of inscribing refugees’ experiences within a single coherent and homogeneous pattern. However, Hamid and Habila also draw from the potentialities of the novelistic genre to devise formal ways of connecting apparently disparate story lines and thereby suggest possibilities for cross-cultural solidarity between refugees who share a common condition of vulnerability.

‘Survivors all’: Affirmative Connections in Novels by Julian Barnes and Caryl Phillips.

The Ethics of Survival in Contemporary Literature and Culture. Eds. Rudolf Freiburg and Gerd Bayer. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 69-87., 2021

In an interview about Crossing the River, a novel which resonates with the voices of the victims ... more In an interview about Crossing the River, a novel which resonates with the voices of the victims of slavery, racism and marginalisation over three centuries and three continents, Caryl Phillips declared: “I wanted to make an affirmative connection, not a connection based upon exploitation or suffering or misery, but a connection based upon a kind of survival”. Rather than follow the lines of Primo Levi who insisted on the shame of survivors or of Adorno who referred to their “drastic guilt”, my aim in this essay is to explore the affirmative connections between survivors of genocides, conflicts and disasters at different times and places of history as depicted in Julian Barnes’s A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989) and in several novels by Caryl Phillips, notably Higher Ground (1989), Crossing the River (1993) and The Nature of Blood (1997). Drawing, among other sources, from Michael Rothberg’s concepts of “knots of memory” and “multidirectional memory”, I will examine how Barnes and Phillips relate histories and memories of slavery, genocide, colonialism and the Holocaust across different periods and generations and create connections between characters from various times and places, who survived – either literally or through the means of narration – thanks to unexpected resources of resilience, solidarity and interdependence in the face of vulnerability and precariousness.

Bloomsbury, 2020

Exploring the archives of the Man Booker prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes – including noteboo... more Exploring the archives of the Man Booker prize-winning novelist Julian Barnes – including notebooks, drafts, typescripts and publishing correspondence – this book examines the creative practice of a major contemporary novelist and charts the genesis and publication history of all of Barnes's major novels, from his debut with Metroland, through Flaubert's Parrot and The History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters to The Sense of an Ending.

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Jonathan Coe is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed contemporary British writers. Th... more Jonathan Coe is one of the most popular and critically acclaimed contemporary British writers. This comprehensive introduction places his work in clear historical and theoretical context, offering extensive readings of the author’s ten novels from The Accidental Woman to Expo 58, including the remarkable What a Carve Up!. The book explores Coe’s biography and his experimentations with narrative, genre and comedy, as well as his thematic preoccupations with history, memory, loss and nostalgia. Including a timeline of key dates and an interview with the author, it also offers an overview of the critical reception Coe’s work has provoked.

Seeing and Being : Ben Okri’s The Famished Road

Presses Universitaires de France, 2012

Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, winner of the Booker Prize in 1991, follows the wanderings of an ab... more Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, winner of the Booker Prize in 1991, follows the wanderings of an abiku or spirit-child, a liminal figure who hovers between the real world and the supernatural realm. Azaro is a witness to the political and social upheavals of his soon-to-be independent African country, and the relentless efforts of his parents and neighbours to survive amidst poverty and hunger; but he is also alert to the existence of a parallel world of supernatural and grotesque creatures that is at once fascinating and terrifying. This study seeks to capture the inflexions of Okri’s poetic prose as well as draw the contours of his imaginary homelands populated by impoverished ghetto dwellers, greedy politicians, mischievous spirits, but also enthralling storytellers and idealistic characters who still believe it is possible to create new routes beyond the famished road, to re-dream the world and make it real.

Ceci n’est pas une fiction. Les romans vrais de B.S. Johnson

Presses Universitaires de la Sorbonne, collection « Britannia », 2009

Romancier, poète, essayiste, dramaturge, scénariste, réalisateur et critique littéraire, Bryan St... more Romancier, poète, essayiste, dramaturge, scénariste, réalisateur et critique littéraire, Bryan Stanley Johnson (1933-1973) est l’un des acteurs les plus radicaux de la scène littéraire britannique des années 1960 et 1970. Ses expérimentations formelles et son exploitation de la matérialité du livre (pages perforées, livre non relié, texte partagé en deux colonnes, blancs typographiques…) sont mises au service d’une poétique de la vérité qui rejette les mensonges de l’imagination et invite à repenser les frontières entre autobiographie et roman. Se plaçant souvent au centre de son œuvre, l’écrivain revendique un discours vrai, sincère, authentique, et se positionne en faveur d’un engagement à la fois émotionnel et éthique. Il redéfinit les contours du genre romanesque en le dissociant de la fiction et met en œuvre des dispositifs insolites qui visent à bousculer les formes narratives traditionnelles et renouveler les modes de la mimésis.

Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Julian Barnes's work has been marked by great variety, ranging not only from conventional fiction... more Julian Barnes's work has been marked by great variety, ranging not only from conventional fiction to postmodernist experimentation in such well-known novels as Flaubert's Parrot (1984) and A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters (1989), but also from witty essays to deeply touching short stories. The responses of readers and critics have likewise varied, from enthusiasm to scepticism, as the substantial volume of critical analysis demonstrates.
This Readers' Guide provides a comprehensive and accessible overview of the essential criticism on Barnes's work, drawing from a selection of reviews, interviews, essays and books. Through the presentation and assessment of key critical interpretations, Vanessa Guignery provides the most wide-ranging examination of his fiction and non-fiction so far, considering key issues such as his use of language, his treatment of history, obsession, love, and the relationship between fact and fiction. Covering all of the novels to date, from Metroland (1981) to Arthur and George (2005), this is an invaluable introduction to the work of one of Britain's most exciting and popular contemporary writers.

Flaubert's Parrot de Julian Barnes

Armand Colin, 2001

Hommage insolite de Julian Barnes à l’ « homme-plume » français, Flaubert’s Parrot se présente co... more Hommage insolite de Julian Barnes à l’ « homme-plume » français, Flaubert’s Parrot se présente comme une célébration enthousiaste de l’écriture et de la littérature. Livre palimpseste, l’ouvrage propose une plongée vertigineuse dans l’univers flaubertien et évite les écueils de la biographie traditionnelle en entrecroisant plusieurs genres littéraires. La démarche polymorphe, hybride et audacieuse exige du lecteur une aptitude à assembler les pièces du puzzle que le narrateur, Geoffrey Braithwaite, a volontairement laissées éparses. Amateur éclairé de Gustave Flaubert et chercheur obsessionnel, Braithwaite s’interroge sur les modes et conditions de connaissance du passé mais il embrasse surtout cette entreprise passionnée afin de mettre à distance le drame personnel qui le taraude et s’immisce dans les failles et replis du discours. La présente étude entend rendre compte des chemins multiples et chaotiques tracés par un ouvrage qui, en 1984, a bousculé le paysage littéraire britannique.

Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux / collection Couleurs anglaises, 2001

L'œuvre de Julian Barnes est résolument placée sous le signe du mélange et de la variation, oscil... more L'œuvre de Julian Barnes est résolument placée sous le signe du mélange et de la variation, oscillant entre la tradition réaliste et une déconstruction insolite des codes romanesques. Essayiste, fabuliste et ventriloque, l’auteur du Perroquet de Flaubert propose au sein même de la fiction une série de réflexions sur le passé, la mémoire et les conditions de la connaissance, célèbre avec enthousiasme la France et Gustave Flaubert, trace pudiquement les multiples bifurcations de l’amour, et manie l’ironie avec brio. L’écriture hybride et changeante de Julian Barnes ouvre des perspectives riches et originales dans le paysage littéraire britannique.

Postmodernisme et effets de brouillage dans la fiction de Julian Barnes

Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2001

This book proposes to analyze the concept of blurring as one of the characteristic features of po... more This book proposes to analyze the concept of blurring as one of the characteristic features of postmodernism in Julian Barnes's fiction. The notion of blurring is considered on the one hand, for its neutral sense of mixture, and on the other hand, for its more active connotation of a deliberately provoked interference. The study begins with a consideration of the proclivity for hybridity which Julian Barnes's novels and short stories exhibit; advocating multiplicity and decompartmentalization, his books blur and challenge the borders that separate existing genres, texts, arts and languages. The subversion of generic conventions and the oscillation between a celebration and an ironization of the past in literature and art manifest themselves as modes of replenishment of the cultural legacy. Subsequently, this analysis focuses on the practice of metafiction as a transgression of fictional frames and points out the ways in which the author, narrator and reader become the victims of an ontological destabilisation. The third section investigates the problematizing of historiographic discourse and of the representation of history in Julian Barnes's fiction. The blurring is shown to be epistemological, as the modes and conditions of knowing the past are challenged, but also ontological, as the line separating fiction and history proves to be porous, and political, as the official historical discourse is rendered illegitimate and replaced by heterodox versions of history.

Books edited or co-edited by Vanessa Guignery

Gallimard, Quarto, 2021

Romancier inclassable, essayiste érudit et curieux, lecteur passionné, analyste pointilleux de la... more Romancier inclassable, essayiste érudit et curieux, lecteur passionné, analyste pointilleux de la société britannique, critique d'art attentif, formidable conteur d'histoires imaginaires, lexicographe en quête du mot juste, Julian Barnes a créé, en explorant de nouvelles formes littéraires et en renouvelant les traditions, une œuvre riche et variée, emblématique d'une génération de grands écrivains britanniques.
Ont été ici retenus cinq romans majeurs, marqués par des tonalités distinctes, publiés entre 1984 et 2018. Roman insolite, mêlant une expérimentation formelle à des jeux intertextuels, Le Perroquet de Flaubert brosse un portrait composite de l'ermite de Croisset. England, England (1998) emprunte les voies de la satire et de la dérision grinçante pour dresser un tableau dégradé de l'Angleterre et de son histoire, ou le simulacre l'emporte sur l'original, où l'ultra-libéralisme et le tourisme de masse triomphent. Le roman historique Arthur & George (2005) interroge quant à lui la notion d'identité nationale dans une Angleterre édouardienne rongée par les préjugés et un racisme latent, ou la rumeur publique parvient à construire un fantasme collectif de culpabilité. Enfin, Une fille, qui danse et La Seule Histoire, parus dans les années 2010, mettent en scène des personnages qui portent un regard rétrospectif sur leur vie, et participent d'une écriture plus intimiste, réflexive et mélancolique.
Labyrinthe à plusieurs entrées que cette édition Quarto propose d'explorer, l'œuvre de Barnes donne à voir de multiples dimensions du réel et de l'imaginaire sous des formes innovantes qui prennent acte des traditions littéraires mais qui savent aussi s'en éloigner, pour mieux ré-enchanter la littérature.

The Poetics of Fragmentation in Contemporary British and American Fiction, 2019

The last decades have seen a resurgence of fragmentation in British and American works of fiction... more The last decades have seen a resurgence of fragmentation in British and American works of fiction that deny linearity, coherence and continuity in favour of disruption, gaps and fissures. Authors such as Ali Smith, David Mitchell and David Shields have sought new ways of representing our global, media-saturated contemporary experience, which differ from modernist and postmodernist experimentations from which writers nevertheless draw inspiration. This volume aims to investigate some of the most important contributions to fragmentary literature by British and American writers since the 1990s, with a particular emphasis on texts released in the twenty-first century. Contributors theorise and classify literary fragments, examine the relationship between fragmentation and the Zeitgeist (influenced by globalisation, media saturation and social networks), analyse the mechanics of multimodal and multimedial fictions, and consider the capacity of literary fragmentation to represent personal or collective trauma and to address ethical concerns. Besides the already mentioned authors, the volume makes reference to the works of J.G. Ballard, Julian Barnes, Mark Z. Danielewski, David Markson, Jonathan Safran Foer, David Foster Wallace, Jeanette Winterson and several others.

Cycnos 34.3 , 2018

Ce recueil d’articles porte sur Jump and Other Stories, l’œuvre de Nadine Gordimer qui est au pro... more Ce recueil d’articles porte sur Jump and Other Stories, l’œuvre de Nadine Gordimer qui est au programme de l’agrégation externe, et s’adresse donc essentiellement aux étudiants et aux formateurs de ce concours même s’il intéressera également tous les amateurs du prix Nobel de littérature de 1991. Le volume est composé de trois parties qui tentent de couvrir l’essentiel des enjeux narratifs, épistémologiques et éthiques des nouvelles de Gordimer. Dans une première partie, c’est l’inextricable question des choix génériques qui est abordée avec plusieurs réflexions sur le réalisme hybride mis en œuvre dans ces récits courts, un réalisme qui fait la part belle au réel sans jamais oublier de signaler les artifices de la représentation. Du modernisme, Gordimer a hérité l’exploration des consciences tourmentées, l’importance des points de vue multiples et la mise en valeur, souvent ironique, des moments épiphaniques. C’est peut-être à cause de ce mélange de réalisme et de modernisme que l’on peut évoquer au sujet de Jump and Other Stories une veine postmoderniste – à moins que ce ne soit à cause de la dimension métatextuelle ou de l’éthique du témoignage. Le deuxième volet de ce recueil s’intéresse à l’esthétique de la fragmentation ou du kaléidoscope en mettant l’accent sur les divisions visibles dans les univers diégétiques autant que sur les ruptures dans l’organisation narrative, le système de focalisation et les modes discursifs. Enfin, la dernière section aborde le problème des codes et des divers langages qui séparent plutôt qu’ils unissent les mondes et les personnages de ce monde d’une communication enraillée ; elle propose, dans l’ordre, une analyse sémiotique des vêtements, une étude du dysfonctionnement des moyens de communication et une enquête sur la signification et le fonctionnement des traces fussent-elles sémantiques, sémiotiques et historiques.

Cycnos 32.1 , 2016

Destiné avant tout aux candidats et aux formateurs de l’Agrégation d’anglais, mais aussi à tous l... more Destiné avant tout aux candidats et aux formateurs de l’Agrégation d’anglais, mais aussi à tous les amateurs de Caryl Phillips et de littérature britannique contemporaine, ce volume se propose d’aborder Crossing the River sous différents angles critiques et analytiques afin d’en présenter des lectures plurielles et complémentaires. Du point de vue de la structure, c’est le paradoxe de l’unité par la multiplicité qui est mis en avant puisque le principe de la fragmentation, aussi actif dans l’organisation générale que dans la construction des diverses parties, finit par devenir facteur de cohésion. L’écriture fragmentée, non-linéaire, non-chronologique, est également celle du trauma et l’accent porte donc aussi sur l’esthétique de la précarité qui se dégage de ces récits de la souffrance ainsi que sur l’éthique de la vulnérabilité propre aux témoignages des acteurs mineurs de l’histoire. Si la vulnérabilité peut susciter l’empathie, elle permet en outre, quand elle est incarnée et mise sur le devant de la scène, de transformer le récit en performance, en monstration dramatique de la douleur. Enfin, ces corps en souffrance favorisent une lecture queer de ce roman hétérodoxe et, dans leur multiplicité, une lecture rhizomatique destinée à illustrer un récit aussi polymorphe que polymodal. C’est donc une traversée herméneutique, structurelle, intertextuelle, esthétique, idéologique et théorique, qu’entreprend ce volume qui met en exergue les aspects postcoloniaux autant que postmodernistes de l’œuvre de Phillips.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016

While some writers adamantly refuse to allow anyone to read, let alone comment upon, their litera... more While some writers adamantly refuse to allow anyone to read, let alone comment upon, their literary production until it is published, others are willing to submit their manuscripts and work-in-progress to their peers, in the hope of receiving critical judgment that might validate their choices, or prompt them to introduce changes. Correspondences between writers thus contain treasures of literary analysis when the recipient of a piece annotates it, criticizes it, judges it, inciting the sender to justify or defend his/her choices, to reconsider his/her method and to discuss his/her aesthetic principles. The aim of this collection of essays is to analyse the specificity of letters in which writers comment not only on the production of their correspondent, but also on their own artistic approach and their own work while it is still in progress or only just completed but not yet published. Examining epistolary exchanges from the sixteenth to the twenty-first century between English, American and French authors, contributors particularly concentrate on the points of contact between correspondences and literary criticism, on the way writers reveal themselves as their peers’ first critics. This process can help both parties delineate more clearly their trains of thoughts and accompany works in their gestation. The epistolary genre thus becomes an aesthetic laboratory and a place for literary debates.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015

From 1959 to 1973, the writers B.S. Johnson and Zulfikar Ghose regularly wrote letters to each ot... more From 1959 to 1973, the writers B.S. Johnson and Zulfikar Ghose regularly wrote letters to each other in which they discussed their own work and literary preoccupations. They exchanged early drafts of poems, short stories, plays and novels, and their correspondence contains detailed comments and extended analyses of these texts, as well as illuminating reflections on literature, criticism, poetics and aesthetics. Though much of the correspondence is an extended literary discussion, it also contains moments of personal revelation, jokes and anecdotes so that the letters, with their surprising asides, are enjoyable to read even as they inform with their biographical and intellectual content. The two authors also frequently refer to the university poetry journals and literary magazines they contributed to or edited, and they write about the poetry meetings they attended and the writers they met or read. Their involvement in literary groups as well as their dealings with publishers, editors and agents is indicative of the publishing mechanisms of the time. The correspondence thus not only provides insight into the work of B.S. Johnson and Zulfikar Ghose but it also conjures up a comprehensive picture of the London literary world of the 1960s.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015

The Canadian writer Alice Munro, recognized as one of the world’s finest short story writers, pub... more The Canadian writer Alice Munro, recognized as one of the world’s finest short story writers, published some seventeen books between 1968 and 2014, and was awarded the third Man Booker International Prize in 2009 and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. This worldwide recognition of her career calls for a look back at her very first collection of short stories, Dance of the Happy Shades, published in 1968 and composed of fifteen stories written between 1953 and 1967. Some forty-five years after the publication of this first volume, worldwide specialists of her work examine the first steps of a great writer and offer new critical perspectives on a debut collection that already foreshadows some of the patterns and themes of later stories. Contributors adopt a variety of approaches (from the fields of narratology, gender studies, psychoanalysis and genetic criticism, and others) to illuminate the main stylistic features, narrative strategies, literary traditions, modes of writing and generic traits of the stories in Dance of the Happy Shades.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011

Over the last two decades, the unstable notion of hybridity has been the focus of a number of deb... more Over the last two decades, the unstable notion of hybridity has been the focus of a number of debates in cultural and literary studies, and has been discussed in connection with such notions as métissage, creolization, syncretism, diaspora, transculturation and in-betweeness. The aim of this volume is to form a critical assessment of the scope, significance and role of the notion in literature and the visual arts from the eighteenth century to the present day. The contributors propose to examine the development and various manifestations of the concept as a principle held in contempt by the partisans of racial purity, a process enthusiastically promoted by adepts of mixing and syncretism, but also a notion viewed with suspicion by those who decry its multifarious and triumphalist dimensions and its lack of political roots. The notion of hybridity is analysed in relation to the concepts of identity, nationhood, language and culture, drawing from the theories of Mikhail Bakhtin, Homi Bhabha, Robert Young, Paul Gilroy and Edouard Glissant, among others. Contributors examine forms of hybridity in the work of such canonical writers as Daniel Defoe, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thomas De Quincey and Victor Hugo, as well as in contemporary American and British fiction, Neo-Victorian and post-colonial literature.

Chasing Butterflies. Janet Frame’s The Lagoon and Other Stories, ed.

Éditions Publibook Université, 2011

In 1951, Janet Frame published her first book The Lagoon and Other Stories, a collection which wo... more In 1951, Janet Frame published her first book The Lagoon and Other Stories, a collection which would win the most prestigious national literary award in New Zealand and launch her fascinating career. The essays collected in this volume examine the motifs at work in Frame’s short stories and unravel a unique literary world which revisits the realist tradition and grants prose a poetic dimension. As much a reflexion about language, voice, modes of writing and narrative strategies as an analysis of Frame’s recurrent concerns with identity, childhood, relationships between mothers and daughters, secrecy, marginality, community or death, Chasing Butterflies is a great tribute to one of the most famous New Zealand writers.

« Renaissances. » En collaboration avec Catherine Bernard.

Études britanniques contemporaines, 2022

The Precarious Balance of Refugees: Rupture and Connectivity in Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017) and Helon Habila’s Travelers (2019)

Sillages critiques 32 (2022)., 2022

‘Survivors all’: Affirmative Connections in Novels by Julian Barnes and Caryl Phillips.

The Ethics of Survival in Contemporary Literature and Culture. Eds. Rudolf Freiburg and Gerd Bayer. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 69-87., 2021

Bloomsbury, 2020

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Seeing and Being : Ben Okri’s The Famished Road

Presses Universitaires de France, 2012

Ceci n’est pas une fiction. Les romans vrais de B.S. Johnson

Presses Universitaires de la Sorbonne, collection « Britannia », 2009

Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Flaubert's Parrot de Julian Barnes

Armand Colin, 2001

Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux / collection Couleurs anglaises, 2001

Postmodernisme et effets de brouillage dans la fiction de Julian Barnes

Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2001

Gallimard, Quarto, 2021

The Poetics of Fragmentation in Contemporary British and American Fiction, 2019

Cycnos 34.3 , 2018

Cycnos 32.1 , 2016

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011

Chasing Butterflies. Janet Frame’s The Lagoon and Other Stories, ed.

Éditions Publibook Université, 2011

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009

This volume examines the various processes at work in expressing silence and excessive speech in ... more This volume examines the various processes at work in expressing silence and excessive speech in contemporary novels in English, covering the whole spectrum from effusiveness to muteness. Even if in the postmodern episteme language is deemed inadequate for speaking the unspeakable, contemporary authors still rely on voice as a mode of representation and a performative tool, and exploit silence not only as a sign of absence, block or withdrawal, but also as a token of presence and resistance. Logorrhoea and reticence are not necessarily antithetical as compulsive verbosity may work as a smokescreen to sidestep the real issues, while silences and gaps may reveal more than they hide. By submitting their texts to both expansion and retention, hypertrophy and aphasia, writers persistently test the limits of language and its ability to make sense of individual and collective stories. The present volume analyses the complex poetics of silence and speech in fiction from the 1960’s to the present, with special focus on Will Self, Graham Swift, John Fowles, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jenny Diski, Lionel Shriver, Michèle Roberts, Margaret Atwood, Jonathan Safran Foer, Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, Jamaica Kincaid, Ryhaan Shah and J.M. Coetzee.

(Re-)Mapping London. Visions of the Metropolis in the Contemporary Novel in English

Éditions Publibook Université, 2008

The aim of this collection is to explore representations of London in contemporary literature fro... more The aim of this collection is to explore representations of London in contemporary literature from two main perspectives : the city as observed by British-born Londoners and the new multicultural London. The British capital is sometimes presented as a labyrinthine, hostile and even occult city which is now no longer the centre of the Empire and is a place of chaos, decay, disorder, corruption and alienation. But it can also be considered in a creative and dynamic perspective as the source of endless imagination and regeneration, as the place for growth and change, for new beginnings and possibilities. This volume examines fresh ways of re-mapping the metropolis and redefining its contours in novels from the 1960’s to the present, with special focus on Graham Swift, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Zadie Smith, Peter Ackroyd, Will Self, Caryl Phillips, Doris Lessing, Jenny Diski, Tibor Fischer and Monica Ali.

Plus sur Greene, ed.

Éditions Atlande, 2007

Graham Greene. The Power and the Glory: The Sorbonne Conference and Other Papers, ed.

Cycnos, 2008

A collection of essays on Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, edited in collaboration with F... more A collection of essays on Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, edited in collaboration with François Gallix, Christian Gutleben, and Jean-Claude Souesme. Cycnos (Nice) 25.1 (2008). 164p.

Plus sur Greene, The Power and the Glory: The Sorbonne Conference, ed. (with François Gallix)

Éditions Atlande, 2007

A collection of essays on The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, co-edited with François Gallix

Pre- and Post-Publication Itineraries of the Contemporary Novel in English, ed. (with François Gallix)

Éditions Publibook Université, 2007

The articles in this volume follow the itineraries or trajectories of the contemporary novel in E... more The articles in this volume follow the itineraries or trajectories of the contemporary novel in English, looking thoroughly into the study of the creation of a book, and more particularly the various steps of its elaboration, from the writing process with its succession of drafts and rewritings, the making-of, the conception of the book itself, the relationship with publishers and agents, to the final exploitation by mass-media, the reading of the book, the phenomenon of literary awards, translations, film and television adaptations. The novels analysed range from the early twentieth century to early twenty-first century, and belong to both British and post-colonial or new literatures from South-Africa, Canada and India. The volume includes lectures by and debates with British writer David Lodge and South African author André Brink.

Récits de voyage et romans voyageurs. Aspects de la littérature contemporaine de langue anglaise, ed.

Publication de l’Université de Provence, 2006

A collection of essays, edited in collaboration with François Gallix, Jean Viviès and Matthew Gra... more A collection of essays, edited in collaboration with François Gallix, Jean Viviès and Matthew Graves.

Les articles qui composent ce recueil abordent la question de la porosité générique de la littérature de voyage et s'interrogent sur les interactions éventuelles entre récits de voyage et romans qui intègrent des voyages ou " romans-voyageurs ". Les ouvrages étudiés empruntent tant au récit qu'au roman, et mettent en évidence la multiplicité des formes du discours du voyage. Lawrence Durrell et Bruce Chatwin brouillent les normes génériques et redessinent les contours du récit-roman de voyage, tandis que des romanciers contemporains tels que Angela Carter, Joseph O'Connor V. S. Naipaul ou Ian Rankin intègrent le discours du voyage, de l'errance, de l'égarement ou de l'exil dans leurs romans et se jouent des frontières et conventions en un mouvement général de ré-enchantement de la littérature et de ses codes. L'ouvrage se conclut par un voyage vers la Tasmanie par le biais du désormais célèbre English Passengers dont l'auteur, Matthew Kneale, retrace la genèse.

Crime fictions. Subverted codes and new structures, ed (with François Gallix)

Presses Universitaires de la Sorbonne, 2004

De nos jours, les fictions policières sont considérées comme un défi stimulant à l'écriture de to... more De nos jours, les fictions policières sont considérées comme un défi stimulant à l'écriture de tout récit, quel que soit son genre. Dans les romans d'Arthur Conan Doyle, de Robert Louis Stevenson et d'Agatha Christie, les frontières génériques se révélaient déjà poreuses et le mélange des genres incitait à des lectures et à des interprétations multiples et contradictoires. Dans les romans contemporains de Thomas Pynchon, Charles Palliser, James Ellroy, John Grishman, Max Dorra et de Peter Lovesey, le genre est déstabilisé de diverses manières par l’invention de nouveaux dispositifs ou par un refus de clôture. Les adaptations filmiques offrent également de multiples innovations grâce aux structures spécifiques des récits de détection et des films noirs. L'analyse d'oeuvres canoniques du genre permet à cet ouvrage de se concentrer sur l'évolution des fictions policières, le flou de leurs contours et la subversion de leurs codes dans la littérature et dans le cinéma de langue anglaise.

« Introduction. » The Famished Road by Ben Okri.

New York: Knopf / Everyman's Library, 2021

Anita Brookner and Julian Barnes: Paths Crossing

Études Anglaises 74.2 (April-June 2021): 220-229., 2021

In 1984, Anita Brookner and Julian Barnes appeared on the shortlist for the Booker Prize, respect... more In 1984, Anita Brookner and Julian Barnes appeared on the shortlist for the Booker Prize, respectively for Hotel du Lac and Flaubert’s Parrot. Although these two novels and the two writers’ fictional works as a whole greatly differ and therefore have not been the subject of comparative studies, Brookner’s and Barnes’s paths crossed on a number of occasions, partly because of their common interests in visual arts as well as in French literature and culture. A brief presentation of these points of convergence is followed by Julian Barnes’s answers to three questions relating to Anita Brookner.

‘Ne pas la boucler avec Flaubert’ : l’obsession perpétuelle de Julian Barnes

D’après Flaubert. Éds. Eric Dayre et Florence Godeau. Paris : Éditions Kimé, 2021. 141-160., 2021

Julian Barnes

The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Literature. Ed. Richard Bradford. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2021., 2021

Le Perroquet de Flaubert de Julian Barnes : genèse d’une passion littéraire

Revue Flaubert, 2020

Based on the archives of the British writer Julian Barnes relating to Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), t... more Based on the archives of the British writer Julian Barnes relating to Flaubert’s Parrot (1984), the paper proposes to explore several elements of the genesis of this transgeneric book as well as some aspects of the creative process in order to determine the ways in which Barnes chose to approach Flaubert’s work and life. The writer’s travel notebooks, notes, plans and drafts, as well as the letter he sent his editor to defend his manuscript, shed light on the original means chosen by Barnes to celebrate Flaubert while diverging from traditional biographical and critical approaches.

Çankaya University Journal of Humanities and Social Sciences, 2020

The aim of this article is to examine the meticulous way in which Julian Barnes created his chara... more The aim of this article is to examine the meticulous way in which Julian Barnes created his characters in the diptych Talking It Over (1991) and Love, etc. (2000) through an exploration of his archives, more specifically his preliminary notes, sketches and drafts. These archival documents shed light on the protagonists' main characteristics and functions which Barnes sketched from the start. They also reveal the writer's great care in devising idiosyncratic languages for each character, which are reflective of their personalities. The paper comments in particular on the linguistic choices made by Barnes to ensure that each voice was singular. The writer was also attentive to the balance of power between the characters and the genetic dossier for the two novels reveals that he devised the female character in the trio as the "prime mover". By casting light on the living process of literary creation, this article uncovers the intricate palimpsest of Barnes's work and helps understand the writer's unique approach to characterisation. Öz Bu çalışma, Julian Barnes'ın iki kanatlı tabloyu andıran Seni Sevmiyorum (1991) ve Aşk, Vesaire (2000) adlı eserlerinde karakter yaratım sürecini yazarın kendi arşivi üzerinden ve özellikle yazarın notları, eskizleri ve karalamalarına odaklanarak inceler. Arşiv niteliği taşıyan bu türden dokümanlar, roman başkahramanlarının karakter özellikleri ve işlevlerinin yazar tarafından en başından itibaren nasıl oluşturulduğuna dair bilgi verir. Ayrıca, böylesi dokümanlar, yazarın her bir karakter için o karaktere özgü kişilik özelliklerini yansıtacak bir dil oluşturmada gösterdiği özeni de gözler önüne serer. Bu çalışma, Barnes'ın her bir karakterine ayrı bir ses verebilmek için yaptığı dilsel seçimlerin üzerinde özellikle durur. Ek olarak, Barnes, karakterler arasındaki güç dengesine de dikkat etmiştir ve çalışmanın konusunu oluşturan iki romanın genetik eleştirisinin açık ettiği üzere, romanlardaki ana kadın karakteri aşk üçgeninin oluşturulmasında başı çeken kişi olarak tasarlamıştır. Edebi yaratım süreçleri üzerine ışık tutan bu makale, Barnes'ın metinlerinin "palimpsest" vari özelliklerini ortaya çıkarmayı ve yazarın karakter inşası konusunda kendine özgü yaklaşımının anlaşılmasına yardımcı olmayı hedeflemektedir.

“My favourite sort of rain”: Drizzle and Downpour in the Fiction of Julian Barnes, Jonathan Coe and Graham Swift

Le Temps qu’il fait… Eds. Jean-Pierre Naugrette et Catherine Lanone, 2020

Cet article s’intéresse à la manière dont les romanciers britanniques contemporains Julian Barnes... more Cet article s’intéresse à la manière dont les romanciers britanniques contemporains Julian Barnes, Jonathan Coe et Graham Swift inscrivent le motif de la pluie dans leurs ouvrages. Outre les modalités comiques, les écrivains développent le topos de la pluie en tant que synecdoque de l’Angleterre ou de l’anglicité, ou bien corrélat objectif pour refléter une humeur morose ou nostalgique. Barnes, Coe et Swift dépassent toutefois ces usages conventionnels pour adopter une posture toute postmoderniste : conscients du symbolisme éculé de la pluie, ils l’exploitent de façon ironique, signalant par là-même au lecteur leur familiarité avec les clichés littéraires qu’ils déploient pour mieux les subvertir. Par ce biais, les écrivains réinvestissent le motif de la pluie pour mieux exprimer sur un mode détourné la vulnérabilité ou la peine de certains personnages.

L’esclavage oriental et africain au regard des littératures et des arts (XVIIIe-XXe siècles). Eds. Sarga Moussa et Daniel Lançon, 2019

ARIEL, 2018

In the third narrative of Crossing the River, which includes Captain Hamilton’s edited journal o... more In the third narrative of Crossing the River, which includes Captain Hamilton’s edited journal of his voyage to West Africa and correspondence to his wife, Caryl Phillips proposes both pastiche – through the imitation of the style of John Newton’s authentic logbook, Journal of a Slave Trader (1750-54), and of his letters to his wife – and a process of montage or collage through the inclusion of barely amended extracts from Newton’s original documents. Critics have disagreed about the proportion of appropriation and creation in that third section, with some of them insisting on the creative transformation and transposition of the historical documents, thus situating Phillips within a postcolonial and postmodernist tradition of reworking of past authoritative texts, while others – more specifically Marcus Wood in his detailed and incisive comparison of the various texts – have argued that Phillips excessively relies on the original text while simultaneously reducing its complexities. The aim of this paper is to compare Newton’s and Hamilton’s logbooks so as to assess the achievement of a twentieth-century Caribbean-English writer in his ventriloquism of an eighteenth-century slave captain within a historical narrative that is wedged between two fictional accounts by marginalized female characters.

Jonathan Coe: Contemporary British Satire. Ed. Philip Tew, 2018

The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of a number of comic-Gothic-horror movies and othe... more The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of a number of comic-Gothic-horror movies and other named films on both the narrative structure, aesthetics and generic configuration of Jonathan Coe’s Number 11 and its representation of the social and political context. This state-of-the-nation novel, made up of a series of five interlinked novellas is structurally inspired by the archetypal British portmanteau horror film, Dead of Night. It not only adopts a form of postmodernist fragmentation but also evokes several horror B-movies, thus confirming Coe’s attachment to popular culture and obliquely reflecting upon the terrifying and haunted times we live in. In one of the stories, a character is haunted by the memory of a lost film, generating insatiable nostalgia and a longing for a comforting past untainted by the greed and horror of 21st-century British society. This paper will draw on the filmic references interspersed in Number 11 to demonstrate how they weave together the threads of the various narratives and illuminate some of the main themes.

Flaubert dans la ville. Images et textes. Éd. Sandra Glatigny, 2017

Cet article s'intéresse à l'obsession flaubertienne de l'écrivain britannique Julian Barnes, en p... more Cet article s'intéresse à l'obsession flaubertienne de l'écrivain britannique Julian Barnes, en particulier dans Le Perroquet de Flaubert (1984). Par une analyse des formes d'intertextualité, d'hypertextualité et de pastiche, il s'agit de déterminer si l'ouvrage le plus ouvertement flaubertien de Barnes est à envisager comme un panégyrique qui rend compte d'un espace littéraire saturé et condamné à un travail de seconde main, ou si l'auteur use suffisamment des outils de la subversion, de l'ironie et de la déconstruction pour parvenir à se libérer du maître et laisser entendre une voix singulière. L'article montre également la façon dont d'autres écrivains britanniques contemporains, dans la lignée de Barnes, se sont approprié l'héritage de Madame Bovary pour en proposer des réécritures innovantes entre répétition et différence, révérence et originalité, psittacisme et émancipation.

Taiye Selasi: to be or not to be Afropolitan

Études britanniques contemporaines , 2016

Biography , 2016

This paper examines Jonathan Coe’s biography of British experimental writer B.S. Johnson (1933-19... more This paper examines Jonathan Coe’s biography of British experimental writer B.S. Johnson (1933-1973), Like a Fiery Elephant, which may be called a post-biography. It shows in which ways Coe simultaneously deconstructs some of the conventions of literary biography and echoes innovative devices developed by Johnson in his novels.

“Where Is the Voice Coming From?” A Question of Origins in Alice Munro’s Dance of the Happy Shades

“With a roar from underground”: Alice Munro’s Dance of the Happy Shades, 2015

“With a roar from underground”: Alice Munro’s Dance of the Happy Shades. Eds. Corinne Bigot and C... more “With a roar from underground”: Alice Munro’s Dance of the Happy Shades. Eds. Corinne Bigot and Catherine Lanone. Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2015. 19-33.

The Way We Live Now: Jonathan Coe’s Re-evaluation of Political Satire

Études anglaises , 2015

This paper examines Jonathan Coe’s œuvre to discuss the evolution of his modes of portraying cont... more This paper examines Jonathan Coe’s œuvre to discuss the evolution of his modes of portraying contemporary Britain. While Coe is well known for his satirical state-of-the-nation novels and for his commitment to political fiction, his recent essays reveal his misgivings about the effectiveness of political satire and Condition-of-England novels in the new millennium. This paper will navigate between Coe’s fiction and non-fiction to examine the forms political engagement may take in the contemporary British novel.

Experimentation and Tradition: Adam Thirlwell and Jonathan Coe

Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines, Nov 1, 2014

Landscapes Within, Landscapes Without: The Forest and Other Places in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road

Études britanniques contemporaines, 2014

The purpose of this paper is to bring face to face the spaces of the mind or ‘landscapes within’ ... more The purpose of this paper is to bring face to face the spaces of the mind or ‘landscapes within’ and the open spaces or ‘landscapes without’ in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, in order to question the supposed duality between the physical world and the imaginary or mythic one, which is reflected in the oscillation in Okri’s novel between the Western literary tradition of realism and the West African attachment to mythology and the supernatural. The multidimensionality of the forest will be examined firstly as the dwelling place of spirits and a space that is submitted to the ecological catastrophe of deforestation. The analysis will then move on to the open spaces the spirit-child Azaro feels inside him, landscapes that are both inscapes and means of escape. Through the poetic opening of these new ontological spaces, the narrator celebrates the power of limitless imagination, redefines the concepts of landscape, inner and outer space, and expands the dimensions of the real world.

Zadie Smith’s NW or the art of line-crossing

E-rea, 2014

The purpose of this paper is to examine NW, Zadie Smith’s fourth novel, through the notion of cro... more The purpose of this paper is to examine NW, Zadie Smith’s fourth novel, through the notion of crossings, which can be viewed as ethical connections between characters but also as geographical journeys across London, movements along the social scale, multicultural encounters, weavings of various literary traditions and lineages, as well as intertwining of high and popular culture. In each of these areas, the question that is raised in relation to Smith’s novel is whether it is possible to step across the lines that strictly divide people, districts, races, social classes and cultural objects into separate categories and come up with an invigorating mélange, or if rigid lines of separation still persist. The argument will draw from David Lodge’s metaphor of the crossroads (when he wondered which directions the novelist of the second half of the twentieth century could take), as well as from Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of lines of “segmentarity” and lines of flight, along which individual and collective lives are ordered or fractured. The aim will be to try and delineate the contours of British contemporary society and identity as depicted in NW.

Zadie Smith’s NW: the Novel at an ‘anxiety crossroads’?

Études britanniques contemporaines, 2013

This paper proposes to examine Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) in the light of her essay ‘Two Directions ... more This paper proposes to examine Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) in the light of her essay ‘Two Directions for the Novel’, in which she explores two roads for novel writing: ‘lyrical realism’ and ‘constructive deconstruction’. In NW, Smith uses a range of narrative techniques that are indebted to realist, modernist and postmodernist traditions, and by analysing some of them, this paper aims to find out where Smith situates herself on the literary map in 2012, how she deals with the legacies of the past and what new lines she may be drawing for herself. More than forty years after David Lodge’s essay ‘The Novelist at the Crossroads’, one may wonder whether Smith finds herself at an ‘anxiety crossroads’, to quote her own expression. Her mixture of stream-of-consciousness technique, straightforward narrative and metafictional devices shows that she chooses neither the highway of the well-made novel nor the side road of downright deconstruction, but embraces several directions without trying to reconcile them.

A Voice without a Name: Choruses and Storytellers in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road

Commonwealth Essays and Studies , 2013

This paper proposes to explore the poetics of voice in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, a novel in w... more This paper proposes to explore the poetics of voice in Ben Okri’s The Famished Road, a novel in which a myriad of individual and collective voices resonate without always being clearly identified. The study examines more specifically the duality of Azaro’s voice, but also the novel’s indebtedness to the indigenous tradition of oral folktales and its paradoxical celebration of orature in a text that is, by necessity, silent.

Siècle 21, 2012

La ballade du vieux marin Gravures sur le poème de Coleridge Littérature anglaise contemporaine :... more La ballade du vieux marin Gravures sur le poème de Coleridge Littérature anglaise contemporaine : 22 Auteurs : prose, poésie, théâtre « Les visages de la littérature britannique contemporaine sont si multiples et bigarrés, tant par l'identité de ses auteurs que par l'hétérogénéité des thèmes abordés, qu'on peut se demander s'il est encore possible d'en parler au singulier », écrit Vanessa Guignery, professeur de littérature britannique à l'École Normale Supérieure de Lyon,. Diversité des auteurs venus de tout le Commonwealth qui introduisent les thèmes qui travaillent la société en profondeur : intégration, exil, identité, altérité, racisme, fondamentalisme religieux. Marilyn Hacker, elle-même poète reconnue, a dirigé la partie poésie du dossier. Originale par ses thèmes et sa forme, la poésie anglaise contemporaine reste à découvrir.

Worlds within Words: Twenty-first Century Visions on the Work of Julian Barnes, ed.

American, British and Canadian Studies , 2009

The essays collected in this volume consider a large part of Julian Barnes’s production, drawing ... more The essays collected in this volume consider a large part of Julian Barnes’s production, drawing from his novels, short stories and non-fiction.

Worlds within Words: Twenty-first Century Visions on the Work of Julian Barnes. Special issue. American, British and Canadian Studies 13 (Dec. 2009). Sibiu: Lucian Blaga University Press, 2009. 169p.

"Literature and the Indian Working Class: Mridula Koshy in conversation"

Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 2023

In this interview conducted in Delhi on March 20, 2022, Indian author Mridula Koshy discusses the... more In this interview conducted in Delhi on March 20, 2022, Indian author Mridula Koshy discusses the specific circumstances of writing, publishing, and reading in contemporary India. She talks about her determination to engage in a conversation that involves all members of Indian society and explains why, a few years ago, she decided to stop writing fiction and concentrate instead on her work at the free community library she co-founded in Delhi. Referring to her short stories and her 2016 novel Bicycle Dreaming, she discusses her interest in small lives and unexceptional characters. She shares her dissatisfaction with Indian contemporary literature in English that portrays the working class in a way that satisfies the curiosity of middle-class readers but fails to engage with a larger readership. On the other hand, she praises the scope of Indian literature in other languages, especially in Malayalam and Tamil.

Conversations with Julian Barnes, ed. (with Ryan Roberts)

University of Mississippi Press, 2009

Conversations with Julian Barnes collects eighteen interviews, conducted over nearly three decade... more Conversations with Julian Barnes collects eighteen interviews, conducted over nearly three decades, by journalists and correspondents throughout the world with Julian Barnes. The interviews collectively address the entirety of Barnes’s varied works and provide readers the most vivid portrait yet of contexts and influences behind his ten novels, his short stories, and his essays. The interviews focus not only on the author’s fiction but also on his essays, translations, and pseudonymous writings. Barnes’s evolving understanding of the themes developed in his works (history, truth, love, art, and death), his views on the art of the writing process, and the role of authors in contemporary society are also discussed at length.

Palgrave Macmillan, 2013

Novelists in the New Millenium is a collection of interviews with eight writers among the most si... more Novelists in the New Millenium is a collection of interviews with eight writers among the most significant in contemporary fiction in English: Julian Barnes, Jonathan Coe, David Lodge, Kazuo Ishiguro, Hanif Kureishi, Arundhati Roy, Graham Swift and Will Self. While discussing their most celebrated works and throwing a backward glance in their career, the authors give insight into their writing processes and delineate their main concerns, themes, narratives techniques and literary strategies. Among the recurrent issues addressed here are the representation of history, the blurring of boundaries between fiction and reality, the figure of the narrator and the status of the writer in the new century. The collection will enable readers to gauge the similarities and differences in the way writers deal with a wide range of subjects, help them perceive converging preoccupations, but also be aware of the specificities of each author and of the remarkable diversity of contemporary literature in English.

In Custody and Beyond: A Conversation with Anita Desai

Etudes Anglaises, 2009

Julian Barnes at the Sorbonne: 14th November 2001

Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines, 2001

An Interview with Ben Okri

Callaloo, 2015

“LOL! Comedy, humour and satire in the literature and visual arts of the 20th and 21st centuries in Britain”, ed.

Études britanniques contemporaines, 2016

Études britanniques contemporaines 51 (2016). This issue of Études britanniques contemporaines o... more Études britanniques contemporaines 51 (2016).
This issue of Études britanniques contemporaines offers a selection of papers given in the SEAC (Société d’Études Anglaises Contemporaines) « LOL » SEAC conference organised by Vanessa Guignery at the ENS de Lyon, on October 15-16, 2015

E-Rea, 2024

In 1999, Kazuo Ishiguro, the author of The Unconsoled (1995), wondered why people participate in ... more In 1999, Kazuo Ishiguro, the author of The Unconsoled (1995), wondered why people participate in art, write or read books, and he came to the conclusion that they "are trying to address some wound, or at least something that is broken in their lives," even if they are aware that it is too late to mend whatever was fractured. When he suggested that "art is a form of consolation," he did not mean that art could heal the wound, bring comfort or make one feel better. Instead, he believed that touching the wound, examining it, having a relationship with it could help one "come to terms with it more, or live with it more," and that therein could lie some consolation (in Guignery, Novelists 57). Such a conception of the consolatory power of art shirks away from any crude sentimentalism or escapism and acknowledges the vulnerability (from vulnus, the wound) that comes with the need for consolation. Ishiguro's understanding of the term and process is one possible interpretation of a concept whose meaning and scope have evolved over the centuries and which, in contemporary times, deserves to be reexamined. 1 Consolation, defined as the act of "alleviat[ing] grief, sense of loss or trouble" (Merriam Webster), shares the same root as "solace," from the Latin verb solari, which means "to soothe" (James 8). Christophe André, who understands consolation as a "wish to ease pain" (16), sees it as a projection or a process rather than a result-not eliminating or dissipating pain but attenuating it. 1 For the psychoanalyst Dominique

« Afterword. » Hulme’s Investigations Into the Bogart Script, by Zulfikar Ghose.

Peach Publishing, 2017. Kindle Edition., 2017

« Introduction. Contemporary Nigerian Literature in English: An Orchestra of Pluralities.»

Études anglaises 75.2 (avril-juin 2022) :131-146., 2022

Ben Okri: A Man of Many Arts

Callaloo, 2015

Broqua Vincent et Guillaume Marche (éds.), L’épuisement du biographique ?

E-rea, 2013

An on-site conference to be held at the University of Wrocław in Poland on 22-23 April 2022.

The Famished Road: Ben Okri's Imaginary Homelands

Some twenty years after the publication of Ben Okri's 1991 Booker Prize winning novel, The Fa... more Some twenty years after the publication of Ben Okri's 1991 Booker Prize winning novel, The Famished Road, this volume proposes a spiralling journey into the imaginary homelands of its main protagonist, the adventurous spirit-child Azaro. Over the years, The Famished Road has been attributed a variety of mixed and sometimes contradictory labels (postcolonial, magic realist, mythopoeic, new ageist, picaresque, epic, to name just a few). Contributors to this volume have chosen to look beyond pre-conceived patterns and categories in order to embrace the otherness of the text and accept to be challenged by it. Disentangling themselves from the rationality of Western discourses, they have opened their minds to unfamiliar ground and new modes of being and seeing the world, which entailed bringing together various structures of feeling, modes of knowledge and protocols of representation, both African and Western. The purpose of this volume is therefore to offer new ways of reading The Famished Road that testify to the richness of Okri's poetic prose and his reliance on indigenous mythical and oral traditions. The volume also includes an exclusive interview with Ben Okri who gives insight into his writing processes and discusses the main themes, narrative techniques and literary strategies at work in The Famished Road.

B.S. Johnson ou l’équilibre de l’écart

DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Dec 1, 2011

Cet article propose d’interroger l’apparente contradiction dans l’œuvre romanesque de B.S. Johnso... more Cet article propose d’interroger l’apparente contradiction dans l’œuvre romanesque de B.S. Johnson entre d’une part, sa defamiliarisation des procedes visant a denoncer tout effet fictionnel et a souligner l’ecart inherent au passage du referent a son inscription graphique, et d’autre part, sa mise en place de strategies formelles innovantes censees rendre compte le plus fidelement possible du reel. Ce double mouvement (reveler l’ecart, reduire l’ecart) sera confronte a la theorie de Johnson fondee sur une poetique de la verite qui rejette les mensonges du romanesque et place le sujet autobiographique au centre de l’œuvre. Il s’agira alors de determiner quelles formes de mimesis et de rapport au reel Johnson parvient a mettre en place.

Sur la piste des perroquets

Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre eBooks, 2002

Le genre littéraire auquel ressortit Flaubert’s Parrot de Julian Barnes a suscité de nombreux déb... more Le genre littéraire auquel ressortit Flaubert’s Parrot de Julian Barnes a suscité de nombreux débats tant dans les comptes rendus journalistiques que dans les discussions universitaires. Texte rétif à toute taxinomie, cet ouvrage hybride oscille entre la biographie, l’ouvrage de critique littéraire, l’essai et le roman, et intègre des genres aussi insolites et périphériques que le bestiaire, le manifeste, l’épreuve écrite, le réquisitoire, le dictionnaire ou encore la recette de cuisine. Si l..

The British Contemporary Novel: 2008-2015

International audienc

Not another nail in the (British) novel's coffin

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Oct 21, 2013

When Horror Meets Comedy: Before She Met Me (1982)

Transfiguration des genres littéraires dans la littérature britannique contemporaine (Jeanette Winterson, Jonathan Coe, Alain de Botton)

Cet article propose de s'interesser aux processus de reconsideration des conventions generiqu... more Cet article propose de s'interesser aux processus de reconsideration des conventions generiques dans trois ouvrages britanniques contemporains et de comprendre le parcours qui mene d'une theorie normative et codifiee a une pratique transgressive, liberee des regles. L'analyse porte tout d'abord sur l'incorporation et la subversion simultanees des codes du roman a l'eau de rose dans Boating for Beginners (1985) de Jeanette Winterson, puis sur le refus de la purete generique et la mise en oeuvre d'une hybridation des genres dans What a Carve Up ! (1994) de Jonathan Coe, et enfin sur le questionnement metatextuel des conventions du genre biographique au sein meme d'une biographie fictive insolite, Kiss & Tell (1995) d'Alain de Botton. Il s'agit d'evaluer a quel point les ecrivains jouent consciemment et deliberement des regles generiques, et de souligner combien la reflexivite devient partie integrante de la creation litteraire.

A Witty Bildungsroman: Metroland (1980)

Crossing the River: A Conversation with Caryl Phillips

Etudes Anglaises, 2016

This interview took place on 27 September 2016 at Yale University and the Ecole Normale Superieur... more This interview took place on 27 September 2016 at Yale University and the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon and is for the most part devoted to Caryl Phillips’s fifth novel Crossing the River (1993).1

Introduction : L’exploration des failles et des lignes de faille

Etudes britanniques contemporaines, Mar 21, 2023

A Conversation with Ian McEwan

Etudes Anglaises, Dec 1, 2018

This is the edited transcript of an interview with Ian McEwan which was conducted on 22 May 2018 ... more This is the edited transcript of an interview with Ian McEwan which was conducted on 22 May 2018 at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon in front of an audience of students. The editor selected the parts of the conversation which concentrated on Ian McEwan’s 2001 novel Atonement and its 2007 film adaptation by Joe Wright

Excentricité et interlinguisme dans Metroland et Talking It Over de Julian Barnes

International audienc

La littérature anglaise contemporaine

Ce volume de la revue Siecle 21 propose a ses lecteurs une selection de textes inedits en France ... more Ce volume de la revue Siecle 21 propose a ses lecteurs une selection de textes inedits en France de plusieurs ecrivains britanniques contemporains, reconnus ou prometteurs. Il s'agit de rendre des visages si multiples et bigarres de la litterature britannique contemporaine, tant par l'identite de ses auteurs que par l'heterogeneite des themes abordes, qu'on peut se demander s'il est encore possible d'en parler au singulier ou s'il ne serait pas temps d'opter pour le pluriel, comme l'on parle des nouvelles litteratures. Parmi les auteurs figurent Julian Barnes, Jeannette Winterson, Romesh Gunesekera, Jane Rogers, Helen Simpson, Alison Fell et Hassan Abdulrazzak.

The Ishiguro Archive

Cambridge University Press eBooks, Mar 23, 2023

Miscelánea: A Journal of English and American Studies

Études britanniques contemporaines

This issue of Études britanniques contemporaines emanates from the contributions to a workshop of... more This issue of Études britanniques contemporaines emanates from the contributions to a workshop of the Société d'Études Anglaises Contemporaines (SEAC), organised by Catherine Bernard at the 2021 conference of the Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur. The conference revolved around the issue of 'RenaissanceS' and it gave contributors the opportunity to explore the influence of the Renaissance period on contemporary literary productions and to examine the modes of aesthetic renewal, reinvention and revival of past forms, subjects and literary genres. In addition to articles engaging with the notion of rebirth in contemporary novels and poems, this issue includes an essay on the concept of exhaustion in Samuel Beckett's Endgame. Ce numéro d'Études britanniques contemporaines est issu des travaux de l'atelier de la Société d'Études Anglaises Contemporaines (SEAC), organisé par Catherine Bernard lors du congrès de la Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur de 2021. Ce congrès avait pour thème « RenaissanceS » et il fut l'occasion pour les contributeurs d'explorer l'influence de la période de la Renaissance sur les productions littéraires contemporaines et d'examiner les modes de renouvellement esthétique, de réinvention et de reprise des formes, sujets et genres littéraires du passé. Outre les articles analysant la notion de renaissance dans des romans et poèmes contemporains, ce numéro inclut un essai portant sur le concept d'épuisement dans Endgame de

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe), Nov 1, 2018

HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific r... more HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access archive for the deposit and dissemination of scientific research documents, whether they are published or not. The documents may come from teaching and research institutions in France or abroad, or from public or private research centers. L'archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Traversée d'une oeuvre: Crossing the River de Caryl Phillips

L'Harmattan eBooks, 2016

International audienceCe volume se propose d'aborder Crossing the River sous différents angle... more International audienceCe volume se propose d'aborder Crossing the River sous différents angles critiques et analytiques afin d'en présenter des lectures plurielles et complémentaires. Cet ouvrage propose ainsi une traversée herméneutique, structurelle, intertextuelle, esthétique, idéologique et théorique, et met en exergue les aspects postcoloniaux autant que postmodernistes de l'oeuvre de Phillips

The Art of Vacillation : Photographs in Alain de Botton's Iconotexts

The Journal of English Studies, 2007

From his first novel, Essays in Love (1993), to his latest book, The Architecture of Happiness (2... more From his first novel, Essays in Love (1993), to his latest book, The Architecture of Happiness (2006), British writer Alain de Botton has increasingly demonstrated his constant and profound esteem of images. All of his work – fictional and non-fictional – might be perceived as iconotexts involving a dialogue between two semiotic codes as they are marked by the insertion of photographs, paintings, drawings, charts, tables, diagrams and graphs. The aim of this paper is to focus more particularly on photographic images and to investigate the relationship between photographs incorporated in the books, and the text and context in which they appear. I propose to examine challenging interactions of text and photographs when they more particularly problematize issues of representation, epistemology, reliability, authenticity and artifice. I first analyse some of the unexpected photographs incorporated in The Art of Travel, in order to show to what extent they confirm the author's origin...

Pre- and Post-Publication Itineraries of the Contemporary Novel in English