Papers by Nicolas Boileau
La fabrique du genre, 2008
Pourquoi un ouvrage sur le genre ? Pourquoi un de plus ? Comme le fait remarquer Philippe Lejeune... more Pourquoi un ouvrage sur le genre ? Pourquoi un de plus ? Comme le fait remarquer Philippe Lejeune dans l’interview figurant dans ce volume, les etudes sur le genre occupent une place importante dans la recherche anglo-saxonne, qui les concoit comme un enjeu politique majeur. Il en va autrement en France. Les chercheurs dans le domaine des etudes anglophones ne peuvent ignorer cette question, ils lisent leurs consœurs et confreres outre-atlantique, s’en inspirent, mais ils font montre d’une attitude plus reservee. Sans doute est-ce un fait de culture, mais c’est aussi le produit d’un deplacement : alors que les etudes de genre sont issues des travaux des feministes de la generation des annees soixante-dix, notamment Helene Cixous, Julia Kristeva et Luce Irigaray, qui se positionnerent en regard de la psychanalyse freudienne, les developpements contemporains sont plus specifiquement americains, bien que puisant leurs sources dans le poststructuralisme francais, en particulier Foucault, Derrida, Lacan, l’on pense notamment a Judith Butler, Leo Bersani ou Eve Sedgwick. C’est de ce hiatus qu’est partie la recherche qui a donne lieu a cet ouvrage, avec pour perspective, a la fois de rendre compte de l’inspiration que la critique europeenne puise dans la pensee anglo-saxonne, mais aussi de mettre en lumiere la maniere specifique dont elle se l’approprie, voire dont elle s’en distingue. Pour charpenter ce travail, les articles qui constituent ce volume ont ete places en regard d’interviews de ceux qui inspirent leurs demarches critiques. Notre choix fut subjectif, partiel. Les personnes sollicitees n’ont pas toutes souhaite ou pu repondre a nos questions. Nous remercions ceux qui ont accepte de se plier au jeu: Eve Sedgwick, Luce Irigaray, Gerard Wajcman, Philippe Lejeune, Eric Laurent. L’ouvrage resulte des travaux du laboratoire de recherche « Lectures et languages critiques » de l’equipe ACE.
E-rea, 2013
En accord avec la personnalite discrete, voire effacee d’E.M. Forster, il semble que les etudes f... more En accord avec la personnalite discrete, voire effacee d’E.M. Forster, il semble que les etudes forsteriennes soient frequemment dynamisees par un tiers mediateur. Si le debut du 21 eme siecle voit un net regain dans l’interet porte a cet auteur en raison de reecritures et reprises contemporaines qui effectuent une connexion thematique et stylistique avec Forster (on pense a Zadie Smith dans On Beauty et Alan Hollinghurst dans The Stranger’s Child ), c’est par le biais de ses adaptations cinematographiques, en particulier celles de James Ivory, que Forster reapparut sur la scene culturelle a la fin des annees 1980. Cependant, alors que cinq de ses six romans ont ete adaptes (seul The Longest Journey n’a pas ete transpose), il perdure un silence critique relatif quant a la specificite de ces adaptations hors du champ du Heritage Cinema. L’ouvrage de Laurent Mellet est donc doublement bienvenu, en ce qu’il comble un vide critique, et aborde le texte forsterien et son adaptation cinematographique dans une perspective principalement esthetique, sans toutefois negliger la dimension politique et sociale de la reception des œuvres. Le volume est organise de facon claire, abordant tout d’abord le corpus textuel, afin de poser les jalons d’une analyse qui englobera ensuite les adaptations cinematographiques des romans, en mettant tout particulierement l’accent sur les trois films realises par James Ivory ( A
E-rea, 2011
Janet Frame’s fiction has always remained on the margins of the establishment: the author was sho... more Janet Frame’s fiction has always remained on the margins of the establishment: the author was shortlisted for the Nobel Prize several times, unsuccessfully, and after critical studies flourished in the 1980s and 1990s, her works seem to have gradually sunk into oblivion, were it not for the passion of a few isolated scholars. The decision to put her first collection of short stories, The Lagoon and Other Stories, published in 1951, on the syllabus of the highly prestigious and competitive agr...
Acta Fabula, 2007
L’ouvrage de Peter Brooks Troubling Confessions :Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature, paru en 20... more L’ouvrage de Peter Brooks Troubling Confessions :Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature, paru en 2000 a semble-t-il eclaire, voire declenche, les reflexions de cet ouvrage collectif sur la place de la confession au sein de la culture des pays anglophones, auquel le chercheur americain participe sous la forme d’une conclusion generale qui pose les fondations d’une reflexion a venir. Peter Brooks est en effet une reference theorique qui traverse le recueil. Beaucoup de contributeurs utilisent sa reflexion pour eclairer les analyses pluridisciplinaires qui ont ete rassemblees. Ce parti pris theorique indique le sens de la demarche de cet ouvrage qui tente de cerner les « formes de l’aveu dans le monde anglophone ». Vaste projet s’il en est, le recueil passe avec une certaine aisance d’un domaine a l’autre, de la litterature au politique, dans une perspective culturelle au sens large et, logiquement, angliciste. D’ailleurs, la grande majorite des articles ici rassembles sont ecrits en anglais (17 sur 25), ce que le titre du recueil ne laisse pas percevoir. On pourrait dans un premier temps regretter l’ampleur du projet qui reunit des etudes sur la litterature et la civilisation britanniques, caraibes, nord-americaines et du Commonwealth, mais la lecture de l’ouvrage montre que cette reunion est tout a fait pertinente : les articles mettent a jour, sous la pluralite des formes de la confession, quelques invariants de l’exercice qui interrogent les relations de pouvoir et le langage
Http Www Theses Fr, 2008
Le Pacte autobiographique de Philippe Lejeune a marque l’etude de l’autobiographie,en proposant d... more Le Pacte autobiographique de Philippe Lejeune a marque l’etude de l’autobiographie,en proposant de sortir, grâce a l’identite de nom entre auteur, narrateur et personnage, des impasses de l’evaluation de la verite et de la sincerite de l’auteur, au point qu’il fait desormais autorite. Cependant, l’effet de verite des textes est tel que de nombreux critiques, notamment anglo-saxons, continuent d��evaluer le genre par rapport aux questions de la sincerite et du souvenir, et concluent que les textes sont en fait fictionnels. Les oeuvres de Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath et Janet Frame obligent au contraire a affronter l’impossibilite du genre dans son ideal. Ayant connu des experiences douloureuses (la folie, le deuil, la depression, l’internement asilaire), ces trois auteures font l’experience de l’impossibilite de dire ces evenements, ce qui les oblige a jouer avec les conventions de l’autobiographie et a construire leur texte autour de cette impossibilite : impossibilite de repondre a la demande supposee du lecteur sur l’expression d’une verite totale, impossibilite du langage a dire la realite, et meme de l’etre a acceder au reel. Denoncant donc les faux-semblants de la realite, ces textes construisent le sujet de l’autobiographie au lieu de le devoiler, comme on a pu le concevoir parfois. Dans ces oeuvres qui interrogent les frontieres du genre, les trois auteures temoignent de ce que l’autobiographie n’existe que parce qu’elle est impossible. Le caractere de construction du texte ne signifie pas qu’il verse dans la fiction, au sens d’eloignement de la verite, mais qu’il fait emerger la voix de l’auteure dans cette experience de l’impossible qu’est l’aventure du langage de l’autobiographie
E-rea, 2014
8 Janet Frame is best remembered as a novelist and autobiographer even though she has also publis... more 8 Janet Frame is best remembered as a novelist and autobiographer even though she has also published two collections of poems, The Pocket Mirror being the most notorious: “When compared to her uncanny novels and compelling short stories, these works are relatively flat.” (Tinkler 108) Although her poetry is frowned on by critics, her works of fiction are often interrupted by verses, sometimes nonsensical like at the end of A State of Siege, and more often than not included whimsically (Living...
E-rea, 2013
Document accessible en ligne sur : Document généré automatiquement le 19 avril 2016. E-rea est mi... more Document accessible en ligne sur : Document généré automatiquement le 19 avril 2016. E-rea est mis à disposition selon les termes de la licence Creative Commons Attribution -Pas d'Utilisation Commerciale -Pas de Modification 4.0 International.
Authorship, Jul 5, 2012
Mostly ignored during her lifetime, Sylvia Plath as an author came to life when she committed sui... more Mostly ignored during her lifetime, Sylvia Plath as an author came to life when she committed suicide. It is no wonder she should immediately come to mind when dealing with the question of authorship and its commodification: labeled as a feminist, a post-modern, a victim, a poet, a second-rate author, she has been alienated by all the images that have flourished since her death. In comparison with the relatively limited number of texts she actually wrote in such a short life, the images and pictures of Plath have proliferated indeed. These images filled in a void left by the enigma of her suicide. It is true that Sylvia Plath is "the Marilyn Monroe of the literati": a beautiful, blonde American girl of the '50s who sits in all kinds of dress and who coyly, joyfully or flirtingly looks at the camera like a supermodel. Whether it be on the covers of her books, in the biopic, or elsewhere, Sylvia Plath is associated with an ideal image. All this has undeniably helped glamorize the American author and has contributed to reinforce the myth surrounding her. This paper will focus on how the editorial practice influences our reading to such an extent that it makes us forget that Sylvia Plath's own relationship with images calls for caution. Most pictures have emphasized some aspects of Plath's writing (gender roles and femininity), but they have covered up other important issues related with self-representation.
The following paper will analyse how British writers McGregor and Cusk represent new forms of sub... more The following paper will analyse how British writers McGregor and Cusk represent new forms of subjective crisis through disconnection, by laying the emphasis on that which constantly escapes language, that which cannot be said indeed. The characters fail to bond with each other, and readers are plunged into this disruptive communication thanks to a syntax that is marked by interruption and obsessive repetition (McGregor), or saturated with uncanny conceits (Cusk). These introspective, stylistic effects are in sharp contrast with the clichés that characters resort to in dialogues. If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things and Arlington Park focus on the plight of individuals lost in the seemingly ordered space of (sub)urban life, where they can find nobody to confide in. Their characters form a loose community (expressed in the disconnected narrative) whose common ground is the city they inhabit, or towards which they gravitate. Both novels open on a moment of pause, “a suspension of disbelief”, before the narrative probes into the characters’ subjective experience that is characterised by inhibition, which this paper will analyse as a form of reserve: a young woman finding it impossible to tell her mother that she is about to become a single mother; suburban, educated women on the verge of nervous breakdowns when they realise how patriarchal society has crushed their desires. Like Woolf whose character in The Voyage Out wanted to “write a novel about Silence… the things people don’t say”[1], Cusk and McGregor’s interest in silence lies in their knowledge that it is the trace of something else that remains unsaid, whether it is held back or impossible to articulate. Thereby, they show that there is no secured place for the subject in language (Lacan): this is how the cityscape comes to be read as an ironic backdrop. The characters’ lack of appropriation of space actualises the experience they have when trying to locate their being within language, as in the following example: “In that moment Amanda knew that her kitchen was too large. She would not have thought such a thing was possible, but entering it now she knew that it was true. They had knocked through until they had created not space but emptiness.” (AP 63-64) Both authors prolong Woolf’s work into the 21st century by working on creating characters out of voices and poetry out of the quotidian. In psychoanalytical terms, reserve is one of the signs of the subject’s inhibition, which is correlated to the impossibility for him/ her to grab the object of his / her desire (the object a in Lacan’s theory). Reserve in these novels can thus be analysed as the signifying effect of the presence of something that cannot be fully articulated, i.e. the wandering nature of the subject in language and its impossible localisation. Both novels emerge out of a menacing silence that is granted great, signifying power (placed as it is in the opening pages) and yet forces the characters to devise new ways of connecting with others. The paper will thus see how stylistic effects are signs of that which lies hidden behind the character’s reserve and why it is essential that it should remain undisclosed: language both reveals and covers the characters' ontological emptiness.
Sarah Kane’s oeuvre enables us to see how the body, which was initially foregrounded in her work,... more Sarah Kane’s oeuvre enables us to see how the body, which was initially foregrounded in her work, gradually disappears. The body that was once abused, exposed, mistreated in Blasted, to the extent that it was unbearable in performance, is reduced to a voice, in 4.48 Psychosis, whose language defies the laws of grammar and which seems to circulate like a bodiless soul. This article seeks to interpret the gradual disappearance of the body on stage as a questioning of the clinical construction of the subject, and an attempt at representing it as a subject of language, against cognitive psychology. The aim is to show how madness evolves from a theoretical construction in which it is a deviation from normalcy to a discourse that construes it as a response to the real, as defined by J. Lacan.
In the very first scene of A Life's Work, Cusk describes the bodies of the women around her chang... more In the very first scene of A Life's Work, Cusk describes the bodies of the women around her changing in and out of their swimming costumes. As she sets about recounting her experience of motherhood, Cusk represents a reality that is often hidden: the body does not appear as a whole (Miller 1993), but as disjointed parts, evoking a sense of disconnectedness. The effect of the scene is that the female body -for this is the body that is being shown -becomes a meaningless jumble of grotesque parts. Cusk also seems to estrange herself from the community of mothers who take their children to the swimming pool, as if her experience of it was that of an outsider, as if it was not one she could share. This scene is emblematic of the way Cusk's writing seeks to probe into a reality that is usually unseen and un--charted. Cusk's account of this reality, which is presented as non--fictional, can be regarded, paradoxically enough, as an essay on writing rather than auto/biography. According to Cusk herself, it is her non--fiction that made her name, especially her memoir about becoming a mother, A Life's Work, whose title Kate Kellaway finds "self--important". This is a good example of the kind of criticism A Life's Work triggered off. Yet Cusk is far from satisfied with the type of notoriety it has brought upon her: "It's caused me so much grief. I think it's sort of labeled me-and I'm not someone who thinks very much, possibly not enough, about my 'readers' because I don't sell enough copies for that to be an issue." (Barber 2009) The scandal which this piece of non--fiction caused hasn't prevented Cusk from opting for the genre of the memoir 1 again, with a travelog, The Last Supper (2009), and another memoir which put 1 Although strictly speaking a 'memoir' has a definition of its own, I will use the term in its loose sense of an auto/biography, and in order to avoid falling into any specific generic catergory in this early stage of my analysis of the work.
Mostly ignored during her lifetime, Sylvia Plath as an author came to life when she committed sui... more Mostly ignored during her lifetime, Sylvia Plath as an author came to life when she committed suicide. It is no wonder she should immediately come to mind when dealing with the question of authorship and its commodification: labeled as a feminist, a post-modern, a victim, a poet, a second-rate author, she has been alienated by all the images that have flourished since her death. In comparison with the relatively limited number of texts she actually wrote in such a short life, the images and pictures of Plath have proliferated indeed. These images filled in a void left by the enigma of her suicide. It is true that Sylvia Plath is "the Marilyn Monroe of the literati": a beautiful, blonde American girl of the '50s who sits in all kinds of dress and who coyly, joyfully or flirtingly looks at the camera like a supermodel. Whether it be on the covers of her books, in the biopic, or elsewhere, Sylvia Plath is associated with an ideal image. All this has undeniably helped glamorize the American author and has contributed to reinforce the myth surrounding her. This paper will focus on how the editorial practice influences our reading to such an extent that it makes us forget that Sylvia Plath's own relationship with images calls for caution. Most pictures have emphasized some aspects of Plath's writing (gender roles and femininity), but they have covered up other important issues related with self-representation.
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Papers by Nicolas Boileau