Scholarship in Languages Other Than English: French Contributions

Two book-length studies of note appeared this year, one on William Faulkner, the other on Sherwood Anderson, but the prevailing interest of French scholars has assuredly been in contemporary American literature. The attraction to the distinctive aesthetic features in contemporary American literature has increased the scope as well as the number of contributions on individual novelists, among them Alexander Theroux, Jayne Anne Phillips, Susan Daitch, Ann Pyne, Lynne Tillman, Richard Powers, and Patricia Eakins. Contributions reflect the dual influence of linguistic and cultural studies. There is increasing interest in narrative craftsmanship, with the exploration of semantic vistas drawing attention to the act of reading. What attracted my attention was the general tendency of French scholarship to look at contemporary American literature as characterized not only by its plurality and specificity, but also by its interactivity and synergy. The focus has been on a multicultural literature inevitably hybrid in its process of construction and dialogic in its nature.

a. Faulkner

The major offering in Faulkner studies this year is François Pitavy's Le bruit et la fureur de William Faulkner (Paris: Gallimard), a rich and brilliant book. Featuring a number of short essays devoted first to introducing Faulkner's historical, social, and economic background, then to explicating the linguistic and stylistic innovations of the novelist, Pitavy's book also includes a section listing general biographical and critical studies that both instructors and students will find helpful. The volume's primary strength is its commitment to various critical approaches and interpretations from traditional to poststructuralist. Pitavy recapitulates the history of criticism of The Sound and the Fury while consistently emphasizing pedagogical concerns. What strikes me as particularly interesting is that in his reading of The Sound and the Fury Pitavy offers both an excellent and instructive critical history of Faulkner's novel and a vast array of cultural choices. Pitavy's book also offers fine textual analysis of Faulkner's sense of tragedy. Examining the novel's meaning and form of modern narrative in its treatment of loss, self-consciousness, and the longing for order, he thoughtfully analyzes how Faulkner experiments with a variety of methods of thought and representation. Pitavy aptly shows how the text both invokes and denies perception rooted in stable identities.

As the special issues on Faulkner attest, the French fascination with his work persists. Marie Liénard's inspiring article "Metaphor and Desire in Faulkner's Writing," pp. 187–195 in William Faulkner in Venice (Venice: Marsillo, 2000), focuses on the discursive inscription of sexual desire in Faulkner as it encompasses cultural and racial issues. Examining how metaphor, a double-edged weapon, displaces categories, Liénard uncovers a subtext flowing beneath the surface and breaks new ground by exploring how metaphor is a "trace," in the Derridean sense, of the work of desire in writing. Metaphorization in Faulkner, claims Liénard, offers a discursive representation of racial politics.

b. Women's Studies

Feminist writing and scholarship has set itself the task of bearing witness to the silences, invisibilities, and gaps that mark the fabric of history wherever women's voices have been suppressed or excluded. In Femmes et écriture au Canada (Dijon: Editions univérsitaires de Dijon) Danièle Pitavy-Souques gathers 15 essays focusing on Canadian women's writing and insightfully analyzes Canadian polyvocalities of race, class, and gender differences. Among particulars ethnicity and race remain prominent. Several essays contributed to Femmes et écriture au Canada reinforce this point. In "Bach Mai et Ying Chen: Identité et nationalisme québeçois" (pp. 49–61) Jack A. Yeager studies the challenge faced by linguistic and ethnocultural Asian minorities in Quebec. How women come to speech in the political and cultural world of Quebec is demonstrated by Ying Chen in Les lettres chinoises, argues Yeager. Lothar Hönnighausen also makes good use of the theme of race and identity quest in "The Metaphoric Interaction of Gender, Place and Race in Ann Marie MacDonald's novel Fall on Your Knees (1996)" (pp. 143–61). As Hönnighausen puts it, Fall on Your Knees is more than merely another women's novel...