A Note from the Editors

A Note from the Editors With this issue of L'Esprit Créateur, a milestone has been reached in the journal's history. Founded in 1961 by John Erickson, L'Esprit Créateur has consistently reflected as well as helped shape the contours of French and Francophone studies during some of the most exciting moments of the discipline's reconfigurations. Throughout that time, John Erickson served as the journal's Editor. Thanks to his unwavering commitment to intellectual rigor, innovative thought, and critical debate, L'Esprit Créateur stands among the premier scholarly journals in its field. As the new Editors, we are pleased and honored to recognize John Erickson's distinguished accomplishments. This milestone also marks a transition. With the Summer 2003 issue of L'Esprit Créateur, the journal completed its move to the University of Minnesota , where it is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and the Department of French and Italian. This move is a return of sorts, since it was at the University of Minnesota that the journal's first issue was published forty-two years ago. Since that time some 1,300 articles have appeared in the pages of L'Esprit Créateur, articles that represent the best work of scholars whose writing has defined French studies in this country and abroad. The many critics , theoreticians, and philosophers who have appeared on the journal's pages include Mary Ann Caws, Michel de Certeau, Ross Chambers, Tom Conley, Serge Doubrovsky, Felix Guattari, Jean-Joseph Goux, Fredric Jameson, JeanFran çois Lyotard, Sarah Kofman, Louis Marin, Nancy Miller, Mireille Rosello, Naomi Schor, Jean Starobinski, Susan Rubin Suleiman, Tzvetan Todorov. L'Esprit Créateur has published essays by such eminent writers as Yves Bonnefoy, Michel Butor, Aimé Césaire, Assia Djebar, Marguerite Duras, Edouard Glissant, Eugène Ionesco, Octavio Paz, Jean-Paul Sartre, Leopold Sédar Senghor, and Monique Wittig. Judging from the topics of recent special issues—intermediality, gender and cinema, memory and postcolonial narratives—one could be easily persuaded that 'doing French' means something quite different from what it meant when the first volume of L'Esprit Créateur appeared in 1961, with issues devoted to Gide, baroque poetry, Mallarmé, and Marivaux. What is striking about those early issues though, and what they have to tell us about the discipline of French studies, is that many of the articles they contain, indeed a surprising number, energetically push the limits of our understanding of literature and its relation to subjectivity, institutions, and ethics. QuesVol . XLIII, No. 3 3 L'Esprit Créateur tions such as these have the power to enliven critical debate and reshape disciplinary formations. In this sense, the history of L'Esprit Créateur is one of a constant return, to foundational questions and critical issues, the engagement with which marks the space of the literary. In assuming the editorship of L'Esprit Créateur we wish to maintain the 'spirit' of that creative return. Topics of future issues include "The Esthetics of Intimacy," "Plurilingual Writers," "Writing After the Erotic," and "Sex, Gender and Creativity in Contemporary Women's Writing in French." From a variety of perspectives, authors will explore in these pages the numerous ways in which writing provides a space of encounter and engagement with crucial esthetic, cultural, and historical issues. Topics of upcoming issues are announced in each new issue and are published on the journal's web site, which also contains information on submissions and subscription. L'Esprit Créateur is affiliated with the Centre de Recherches sur les Litt ératures Modernes et Contemporaines at the Université Blaise Pascal in Clermont -Ferrand, France. Through this arrangement, the journal has maintained its strong international profile, bringing out the work of younger and established scholars in North America and Europe. We hope that readers oÃ- L'Esprit Créateur will find these articles informative, insightful, and stimulating. Daniel Brewer and Maria Minich Brewer Fall 2003 ...