Department of French & Italian Student-Faculty Forum Series presents
Les fins de la prose
by
Oana Panaïté
Friday November 3, 2006
2:30-3:30 pm
Ballantine Hall 217
During the last twenty-five years, French prose-writing has overcome the radical polarity between “littérature engagée” and “littérature expérimentale”, first by replacing collective forms of artistic expression such as literary groups and their manifestos, with an atomized configuration allowing for individual poetics to emerge, secondly by inventing or rediscovering hybrid forms and genres whose ethical stance is embedded within their narrative frame.
An examination of present-day French and Francophone prose-writing must therefore address a series of methodological questions such as: What are the linguistic, geographical and esthetic boundaries of “French literature” today? Are concepts such as “national literature,” “artistic truth-value,” “minor literature,” and “writer’s responsibility” relevant in today’s literary context? What are the sources and main directions of contemporary prose-writing?
Oana Panaïté is Assistant Professor of French in the Department of French & Italian. She received a dual doctorate from Johns Hopkins University and the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne in 2004. Her articles published and forthcoming in Études littéraires, Palabres: Revue d’études africaines et antillaises, and French Forum deal with the postcolonial novel, the poetics of creolization, style and narrative hybridity in the works of writers such as Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, Édouard Glissant, Pierre Michon, and Jean Echenoz. She is currently preparing a comprehensive study of the main trends of contemporary fiction (1980-2000) focusing on the relation between esthetic creation and ethical stances in the works of French and Francophone writers.
This presentation will be in French. Discussion and refreshments to follow.
If you have a disability and need assistance, accommodations can be made to address most needs. Please call 855-5458.
