Politiques de la littérature: une traversée du XXe siècle français éd. par Laurence Côté-Fournier, et al (review)

dite postcoloniale et le bienfondé d’un devoir de mémoire superficiel et schématique, et non pas d’un travail de gestion symbolique de l’héritage colonial (233–51).Au final, ce projet ambitieux propose une réorganisation des savoirs des plus pertinentes pour l’analyse de la francophonie littéraire.Sa bibliographie quasi-exhaustive des publications scientifiques dans le domaine entre 2005 et 2011 ne manquera pas non plus de servir aux jeunes chercheurs.Cependant—et ceci n’enlève rien à la richesse des contributions— il faut lui reconnaître certaines limites méthodologiques.Au jour de l’enjeu idéologique sous-jacent qui était d’identifier des théories de la francophonie singulières à l’Europe et de mesurer cette nouvelle épistémologie à l’aune d’une pensée critique occidentale dominée par les États-Unis (18), la démonstration demeure peu convaincante. En l’absence d’une conclusion synthétique, les lecteurs sont en peine de “fédérer des démarches aussi divergentes” (10) et ne retiendront qu’un ensemble composite, alors que le parti pris de ne réunir que les plus grands noms rattachés aux universités européennes ne tient pas compte de la constitution transnationale des savoirs acad émiques à l’ère d’une forte mobilité universitaire. Swarthmore College (PA) Alexandra Gueydan-Turek Côté-Fournier, Laurence, Élyse Guay, et Jean-François Hamel, éd. Politiques de la littérature: une traversée du XXe siècle français. Montréal: Figura, 2014. ISBN 978-2-923907-33-8. Pp. 188. $20 Can. Now that the twentieth century, with its two world(-changing) wars can be seen as a historical whole, interesting analyses are being undertaken by a generation of young literary scholars who have come of age since the year 2000.A series of essays by a professor and his graduate students at Université du Québec, Montréal, this collective work offers an informative look at the ongoing debates over the relationship of French writers to their own historical reality, debates intensified by a sequence of military and economic disasters.A brief note at the beginning of the text testifies to the involvement of the seven student writers with the issue of engagement, relating the fact that their literary seminar scheduled for the winter term of 2012, led by Jean-François Hamel, was interrupted by their participation in the student demonstrations and subsequent university-closing strike that greeted the Quebec government’s announcement of increased tuition charges (a second round of student strikes took place in the spring of 2015). As stated in the preface to the collection, this study of attitudes toward engagement in twentieth-century French literature is close to the hearts of twentyfirst -century students in Quebec: “[I]l affiche notre volonté d’identifier ensemble les voies par lesquelles la littérature, au cours de son histoire, s’est définie et pratiquée comme un geste politique de critique, de résistance, de contestation” (8). Indeed, the thoughtful essays on competing views on writers’ engagement with their time ranges throughout the twentieth century, from the divergent views of Paul Valéry and Julien 218 FRENCH REVIEW 89.4 Reviews 219 Benda in the first half of the century through the evolution of Sartre after the war, perhaps influenced by his reading of the journals of André Gide. A study of the role played by Jean Paulhan in the postwar period precedes chapters on Georges Perec, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Guyotat, whose thought shapes the second half of the century. The collection is lucidly presented in a preface by Hamel, who, as announced by his title, sets various theories of literary engagement in the broader context of twentieth-century cultural history. Dartmouth College Mary Jean Green Esposito,Claudia. Mediterranean Narrative: Beyond France and the Maghreb.Lanham: Lexington, 2014. ISBN 978-0-7391-6821-9. Pp. 183. $80. This thought-provoking essay belongs to a growing but still under-represented trend within (and on the margins of) postcolonial studies.With persuasive efficiency, Esposito elaborates her reflections through a tripartite critical stance. One of those dimensions asks to reassess the concept of postcoloniality by using...