Reading Communities (PDF)

This volume is the product of a long-term collaboration between French and American scholars who share a common preoccupation with reading canonical and contemporary works of literature and cinema in a theoretical and pedagogical context. It offers a multipolar approach, informed by different historical, thematic, aesthetic, philosophical and formal perspectives, that allows for a more complete and nuanced understanding of the complex relations between artists and works commonly separated by disciplinary boundaries. The chapters cover a variety of literary genres and artistic forms such as the novel (Madame de Lafayette, Gustave Flaubert, Andre Weckmann, Ahmadou Kourouma, Calixthe Beyala, and Amelie Nothomb), poetry (Charles Baudelaire), theater (Aime Cesaire, Anne Hebert), the aphorism (Blaise Pascal), the essay (Andre Breton), the manifesto (Emile Zola), and film (Francois Truffaut, Ousmane Sembene), while also drawing parallels to works in other languages such as English and German in order to highlight the translingual and intercultural dimensions of the artistic process.Cet ouvrage, fruit d'une collaboration entre universitaires francais et americains comportant aussi une dimension pedagogique, propose un nouveau cadre pour articuler, a partir de perspectives diverses, un dialogue critique, historique, thematique, philosophique et formel entre les oeuvres classiques et contemporaines, francaises et francophones. Consacre principalement a la production de langue francaise et reposant sur un corpus representatif qui rassemble roman (Madame de Lafayette, Gustave Flaubert, Andre Weckmann, Ahmadou Kourouma, Calixthe Beyala et Amelie Nothomb), poesie (Charles Baudelaire), theatre (Aime Cesaire, Anne Hebert), aphorisme (Blaise Pascal), essai (Andre Breton), manifeste (Emile Zola) et cinema (Francois Truffaut, Ousmane Sembene), le recueil inclut aussi des references aux classiques des autres litteratures afin de mieux faire ressortir les dimensions translinguistiques et interculturelles des pratiques de creation et de reception.