Thomas Bernhard
Imre Kertész
The Department of French & Italian
presents a lecture by
Emmanuel Bouju
Forme et responsabilité. Rhétorique et éthique de l’engagement littéraire contemporain. A lecture on Thomas Bernhard and Imre Kertész
Monday, April 14, 2008
4:00 pm
College Arts & Humanities
Institute
1211 E. Atwater Ave.
Abstract: The standard definition of « literary commitment » seems to identify a singular link between ethical and aesthetic models, based on the exercise of a complex and ambiguous textual authority. This definition of commitment, inspired both by Sartre’s « littérature engagée » and its refusal by Barthes, nowadays refers to a fictional « transcription » of history which often designates the process through which a formerly “uncommitted” writer becomes involved with reality while reconfiguring its history and overall structure. However, if one can speak today of a rhetoric of literary commitment, it may be in the form of a deixis of responsibility. Two examples provided by the works of the Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989) and the Hungarian Imre Kertész (1929-), recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, will allow us to determine the means and objectives of literary commitment today, in which form and responsibility are inseparable. The writers’ commitment is reflected through their works as an ethical model ready to be appropriated in an active and critical manner, and it is incumbent upon the reader to recognize, appreciate and accomplish the act of literary commitment by judging it against the real world.
About the Speaker: A former student of the École Normale Supérieure, Emmanuel Bouju is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université de Haute-Bretagne, Rennes-II.He is the Director of the “Groupe phi”, a group of French scholars working on historical and comparative poetics, and is also the editor, for the Presses Universitaires de Rennes, of their collective works published under the titles Littératures sous contrat (2002), L’engagement littéraire (2005), Littérature et exemplarité (2007). Prof. Bouju is the author of Réinventer la littérature : démocratisation et modèles romanesques dans l’Espagne post-franquiste (with a préface by Jorge Semprún, Toulouse, PUM, 2002) and La transcription de l’histoire. Essai sur le roman européen de la fin du vingtième siècle (Rennes, PUR “Interférences”, 2006).
Sponsored by the Mary-Margaret Barr Koon Fund of the Department of French & Italian with support from the Cultural Services Office of the French Embassy.
Lecture in French, followed by Q & A in French and English.
If you have a disability and need assistance, accommodations can be made to meet most needs. Please call 855-5458.
