World Literature in French, littérature-monde, and the Translingual Turn

World literature in French is not a new phenomenon. It has existed in practice since the Chanson de Roland and in theory since Goethe’s Weltliteratur at least.¹ Over the last decade, however, more scholarly criticism has appeared on world literature in French than ever before. In recent times, it has become increasingly linked with translingualism, focusing on the choice of language for literary expression and its interplay with other linguistic, cultural, and stylistic influences. There are several reasons for this new wave of critical interest in world literature in French, including the publication of the manifesto ‘Pour une littérature-monde en français’ in Le Monde des livres on 16 March 2007, initiated by Michel Le Bris and Jean Rouaud, and with forty-four illustrious signatories.² The trajectory from world literature in French to littérature-monde to the translingual turn in current research unfolds across a field that is shared by postcolonial, francophone, transnational, and trans-cultural studies. Exploring the intersections and interferences in this field is fundamental to understanding how these different areas promote re-assessment and reconfiguration of world literature in French, and the subsequent turn towards the translingual. The struggle to move from unity to diversity is a dilemma that plays out for every concept within the field, determining to a large degree the applicability and longevity of each concept as constructive complements to French studies.

Antecedents

The slow yet definitive move away from an exclusive focus on the Hexagon to encompass francophone studies more explicitly represents a paradigm shift familiar to all those working in the area of French studies. It is a shift that effectively debunks a ‘unity’ in French that has never really existed, and embraces a ‘diversity’ that is perceived in the term ‘francophone’, despite the continued impact of its association with colonialism. Much work has already been accomplished on this subject: by Charles Forsdick and Jane Hiddleston in their contributions to the French Studies ‘États présents’ series, and by Alec G. Hargreaves, Françoise Lionnet and Dominic Thomas, Christie McDonald and Susan Rubin Suleiman, as well as many other francophone postcolonial studies specialists.³ Rather than re-iterating the contents of these valuable surveys and studies, it is more useful here to draw out the ways in which their research on postcolonial, francophone, transnational, and transcultural studies contributes to driving world literature in French towards the language-focused paradigm of translingualism.

Mapping out this significant and complex series of exchanges requires some interface with the development of literary studies in English, beginning with the advent of postcolonial studies as a discipline in the 1980s and 1990s. North American universities led the way in encouraging individual researchers in postcolonial studies from all over the world to develop and debate theories and processes for challenging dominant (Western) ways of thinking. Australia, New Zealand, and India, together with the United Kingdom, Africa, and the Middle East have all produced significant contributors to postcolonial theories.⁴ The evolution of this new discipline in the French studies sphere was inextricably linked to ‘Francophonie’, despite the imperialist overtones and paternalistic policies that accompany this moniker, and in the face of overt denigration of its approximation in English, ‘Commonwealth’.

The pathway from Commonwealth to postcolonial literature was traced by John McLeod, who underlined one of the fundamental differences in criticism aligned with these concepts: while studies of Commonwealth literature tended to underscore the similarities in abstract qualities — deemed universal — of the work, postcolonial critics privileged the historical, geographical, and cultural specifics of the writing and reading of a text — the difference in preoccupations and contexts.⁵ Linguistic challenges were already being examined, even in the first issue of the Journal of Commonwealth Literature with its initial statement that all writing

takes its place within the body of English literature, and becomes subject to the criteria of excellence by which literary works in English are judged, but the pressures that act upon a Canadian writing in English differ significantly from those operating upon an Indian using a language not his mother tongue.⁶

Meanwhile, postcolonial writers such as...