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Revue: Romanica Silesiana

A Floating Homeland: (De)Constructing Canadianness from the Insider‑Outsider Perspective of Japanese‑Canadians

Rafał Madeja

Langue: EN | Date de publication: | Résumé

On the basis of Joy Kogawa’s Obasan, the main objective of this paper is to take under the scrutinizing eye how the central protagonist retrieves a selective portion of her childhood memories during the Second World War in an effort to reshape her fragmented identity as a Japanese‑Canadian and to deal with the feeling of displacement. Analyzing essential memories, conversations, and stories within the plotline, the aim is to demonstrate that Naomi, in order to fight her identity crisis and feeling of displacement — due to the Japanese community’s sense of belonging in Canada being shuttered by the Canadian government — recasts her personal experiences to her own needs for the identity refashioning in‑between cultures, therefore, in Homi Bhabha’s terms, giving life to a sort of “Third Space.” This paper will therefore demonstrate numerous ways in terms of which the protagonist intrudes upon iconic wilderness and rural landscapes in Canada — hitherto emptied of the indigenous and minorities and thus functioning as a sort of privileged sites of national identity — so as to transform them into heterogeneous and more inclusive spaces, breaking the binary opposition between away and home, a newcomer and native. Significantly, the protagonist’s storytelling may be distinguished by great attention to nature, botanical imagery, and landscapes shaped by experiences of displacement, and it may be argued that the novel is targeted at re‑visiting traditional sites of identity construction as well as bringing into tensions historicizing and idealizing visions of the natural environment to challenge the myths of Japanese‑Canadians’ identity that these sites were hitherto created to support. It brings into life a “Third Space” in the form of a personal island which will neither float to the Japanese Archipelago nor towards Canada, but it will be a separate entity including both. Hence, the dialogic relation between identity and rural and wilderness landscapes provides alternative forms of meaningful emplacement for the self — a personal “floating homeland” anchored in‑between the two cultures.


Key words: Japanese‑Canadian, diasporic self, feeling of displacement, sense of belonging, Third Space, nature, landscape



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

La traduction littéraire qui n’est pas que la traduction. Sur les enjeux traductologiques au Canada

Joanna Warmuzińska-Rogóż

Langue: FR | Date de publication: 28-12-2020 | Résumé | p. 73-85

The article aims to take a close look at the literary relations between English- and French-speaking Canada. Among different possibilities, the author analyzes specific cases concerning literary prizes, in particular winners of the Governor General’s Prize in the category of translation. As it is one of the most prestigious awards in Canada, it undoubtedly conditions the reception of a literary work, being a symbol of prestige. The choice of the jury can sometimes seem surprising or even confusing, as it was the case of Nancy Huston or Jacques Brault who won the prize in the category of translation. Without a doubt, the specificity of the translation à la canadienne goes beyond any distinctions and descriptions and – being also a political issue – revolts against all control and all interference.

2020-12-28



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

La possession par les « pouvoirs de l’horreur » de la Grande Guerre

Anna Branach-Kallas , Piotr Sadkowski

Langue: FR | Date de publication: | Résumé

In this article, we aim to analyse the representations of the First World War as a cultural trauma in three works of fiction classified as belonging to the “néofantastique” convention, which, according to Jean-Pierre Andrevon, summarises “our fears and uncertainties”. We intend to demonstrate that in La scie patriotique (1997), by Nicole Caligaris, La vigie (1998) and by Thierry Jonquet, Cris (2001) by Laurent Gaudé, the Great War is approached either explicitly or metaphorically, yet at the same time indicative of the phenomena of spectre and abjection.


Key words : Great War, spectre, abjection, fantastic fiction




Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Deconstructing Colonial Misconceptions Potlatch Ceremonies of Kwakwaka’wakws First Nations in Life Writing and Fictional Discourses

Hanna Mrozek-Granieczny

Langue: EN | Date de publication: | Résumé

For centuries, Western culture (mis)represented and appropriated the First Nations. Aboriginal peoples were regarded either as primitive, animal-like savages, or they were romanticised and eroticised in order to justify the Canadian policy of civilisation and assimilation of the natives into the monolithic “Britain of the North.” Even though since the time of the signing of the Multiculturalism Act, the concept of Canadian identity has been undergoing major changes embracing racial and cultural minorities, native people still have to fight for recognition and their rightful place in the Canadian discourses. The problem of misrepresentation of indigenous cultures has not been eradicated. This article focuses on the analysis of the potlatch ceremonies of the Kwakwaka’wakws. Using the postcolonial perspective and methodology, it explores both the past and the contemporary culture of potlatches. It also examines the colonial misconceptions of potlatch ceremonies and the current revival of the Kwakiutl potlatching. This postcolonial analysis shows the subversion of the colonial “truths” and looks at the revival of Kwakiutl culture as the aboriginal way of re-reading and re-writing of Canadian history, deconstructing conservative national mythologies and fighting for recognition by the Canadian discourse. The following analysis also reveals changing attitudes toward Kwakwaka’wakws’ potlatches and the evolution of opinions regarding this ceremony. The discussion is based mainly on selected published official government documents, books, life writing and information obtained from a personal interview gathered by the author during her research trip to British Columbia in March 2010 (Student Mobility grant obtained by the Canadian Studies Centre, University of Silesia).


Key words: the potlatch, Kwakwaka’wakws, Kwakiutls, First Nations.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

L’Atlantide ou la quête de l’absence. D’un pays sans amour de Gilles Rozier

Anna Żurawska

Langue: FR | Date de publication: | Résumé

The novel D’un pays sans amour (2011) by Gilles Rozier features two narrators who try to recapture the past and to reconstruct with letters the Yiddishland annihilated after World War II. This vanished state, with its cultural capital situated in Warsaw, is called Atlantis in the novel and presented as a paradise in the yiddish literature and language. The choice of this metaphor encourages the reflection on the ambivalence between reality and fiction, as well as on the oppositions between presence and absence or memory and oblivion. What is more, this metaphor refers to the categories of time and space.

The aim of this article is to examine the function of the Atlantis metaphor on which the novel is based and to analyze the mechanisms of narrative as memorial (on the basis of Paul Ricœur’s concept) which allow the narrator to rebuild the annihilated world of the mythical island and to bring the non‑existent back into existence.


Key words: Atlantis, mythical island, the yiddish literature and language, presence / absence, memory / oblivion, time and space



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Les oiseaux de Bataille

Michał Krzykawski

Langue: FR | Date de publication: | Résumé

Unlike Hitchcock, in Bataille there are no seagulls whose unusual behaviour would epitomize the inexplicable. And yet one may find countless birds in his texts. The aim of this article is to investigate what I call the “avian metaphor” in order to show that bird images are meant to convey fear originating from Bataille’s fantasized world and refer to the primal scene (Urszene) which represents his father with “huge, ever-gaping eyes that flanked an eagle nose.” I also endeavour to reveal the autobiographical background of what Bataille defines, in a more philosophical language, as angoisse (anguish/anxiety).


Key words: autobiography, fantasy, trauma, horror, death




Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Le purgatoire moderne ou la transgression revisitée : la valeur d’usage de Georges Bataille

Michał Krzykawski

Langue: FR | Date de publication: | Résumé

The incentive for this essay was “Le retour de Sade” (“The Return of de Sade”), a play by Bernard Noël put on in Paris and Nancy in 2005. The play shows Marquis resurrected by Madame d’Avilla, in the orders of a woman pope who ascends St. Peter’s Throne. De Sade is highly convinced that his descent on the Earth results from his perfectibility in evil and is the proof of his post-mortem triumph. The pope, however, wants to engage him as a court jester because his books are no longer believed to be monstrosities that de Sade thinks they still are. The analysis of De Sade’s resurrection leads to a discussion of Bataille’s concept of eroticism seen as a transgressive act which dispels prohibitions without suppressing them. Referring to Bataille’s essay “The Use of Value of D.A.F de Sade” from 1930, this paper also tries to determine the position of Bataille — a classic French writer whose œuvre was published in the Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, which is considered to be a major sign of recognition for an author in France — in contemporary western culture. The questions that this study attempts to answer are whether Bataille still plays the role of a transgressor and to what extent the transgressive value of Bataille’s eroticism is still attainable in the light of the Foucauldian concept of Power/Knowledge which is inherent in the discourse of sexuality.


Key words: Pornography, eroticism, sexuality, transgression.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Quand l’exil à l’intérieur du pays engendre la Peur

Mara Magda Maftei

Langue: FR | Date de publication: | Résumé

In this short paper, we propose to analyze the Fear experienced by the Romanian intellectual when Secret Police could knock at his door at any time of night or day to imprison and torture him.

Inoculate Fear represented the main instrument of torture practiced by the communist Secret Police. Examples extracted from writings of two intellectuals subjected to communist terror (N. Steinhardt and C. Noica) will show us the states of mind man experiences from the moment the idea of Fear seeps into his head to different “strategies” imagined in order to live with it.


Keywords : exile, communism, prison, Fear, Nicolae Steinhardt, Constantin Noica




Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Literature and Other Arts in Canada: Some Current Practices

Marylea MacDonald

Langue: PL | Date de publication: | Résumé

Even a cursory examination of some current practices in literature and other arts in Canada reveals that we live in a time of cross-pollination between the arts. It is not an accident that we have reached this moment. The cultural shift has been brought about by the influence of pop culture, technology in the arts and media, and computers. The practices also translate a desire to collaborate, to pool creative energy, to break out of the mold of the solitary suffering artist. Art experienced as a collective creative process has different goals from individual artistic pursuits. Communication and exchange constitute a journey towards becoming whole. I will briefly discuss modes of inspiration that generate interaction, Margaret Atwood’s exemplary history of film and stage adaptation, with a focus on The Penelopiad, some other examples of collaboration between writers and other artists, and multi-disciplinary artists.


Key words: Literature, inspiration, adaptation, collaboration, multi-disciplinary artists.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Réticences françaises à l’égard des Postcolonial Studies : entre le soubresaut républicain et le hoquet francophone

Michał Krzykawski

Langue: FR | Date de publication: | Résumé

The aim of this article is to analyze Francophony as a myth which is, according to Roland Barthes, “depoliticized speech” turning “the complexity of human acts” into “the simplicity of essences.” In Barthes’ way of approaching myth, I will try to demystify (demythologize) deep ideological structures of the Francophone discourse of universal and humanist values which seem to have never been reexamined in the francophone world so far. Now, if these values are similar to those preached by La République, which keeps believing that it has a monopoly on them, one can say that Francophony, whether we like it or not, is a political act. And that is not only in the sense of polis, as a community speaking the same language and recognizing the same values, but also in the sense of realpolitik, which needs to be understood as the continuation of an imperialistic gesture overshadowed by the neo-republican discourse of equality.


Key words:  Francophony, Myth, Mythologies, French Republic, Multiculturalism, French Theory.



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Insular Arcadias: Islands in the Great War Fiction of J.‑M. G. Le Clézio and Pat Barker

Anna Branach-Kallas

Langue: EN | Date de publication: | Résumé

The aim of my article is to explore the representation of the islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues in The Prospector (1985) by French writer Jean‑Marie Gustave Le Clézio and of the Solomon Islands in the Regeneration trilogy (1991—1995) by a British writer Pat Barker. Both Le Clézio and Barker use and challenge the pastoral recourses belonging to the tradition of Great War writing and the convention of idealising remote Arcadian lands. Several insular myths are thus undermined by the two writers, who thus resituate remote islands in the Pacific and Indian Oceans as integral parts of European modernity.

Key words:  island, Mauritius, Rodrigues, Solomon Islands, Eddystone Island, Great War, pastoral, modernity



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

L’amour et la révolte dans Le couteau sur la table, roman de Jacques Godbout

Natalie Mojžíšová

Langue: FR | Date de publication: 28-12-2020 | Résumé | p. 61-72

The novel depicts the relationship of a young couple living in Montreal. The poetics of the text not only provides the reader with an unusual aesthetic experience but also reveals interesting details about life in Canada in the 1960s. We will introduce the main characters of the novel and focus on some of its aspects, especially those moments where the political situation, whether historically distant or recent, is reflected in the life of modern society. The sixties of the twentieth century were imbued with a desire to resist authority which was lived collectively and also as an individual issue. In the novel, the theme of revolt is portrayed on both these levels, but it shows that it is not always easy to realize one’s ideas in practice.
The structure of the novel which refers to the influence of nouveau roman is composed of fragmentary narrative, repetitive allusions and unfinished sentences. Using all these techniques Jacques Godbout has created a captivating text, fascinating especially by its disquieting dynamics.

2020-12-28



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Madeleine Blais-Dahlem et sa vision de l’autotraduction

Małgorzata Czubińska

Langue: FR | Date de publication: 28-12-2020 | Résumé | p. 46-60

Nowadays self-translation remains a frequent practice in the literary field in Canada. A close reading of the self-translations done by Canadian writers such as Nancy Houston, Marco Micone or Patrice Desbiens allows to discover each author’s own vision of self-translation as a creative process. The aim of the paper is to determine, through a comparative analysis of excerpts from the two language versions of the play La Maculée/sTain (2012) and the latest bilingual novel La voix de mon père / My Father’s Voice (2015) by Fransaskois playwright Madeleine Blais-Dahlem, to what extent her self-translating practice guides the reading of the text. Examining
the back and forth between the two versions of the same work will allow to delve deeper into the subject of the identity and privileged status of the translator (Tanqueiro 2009: 109, Saint 2018: 120), but also into the role and skills of the receiver of Madeleine Blais-Dahlem’s bilingual writings.

2020-12-28



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

La mort à l’haïtienne et la parole rituelle Hadriana dans tous mes rêves de René Depestre

Anna Żurawska

Langue: FR | Date de publication: | Résumé

The aim of the article is to explore the role of selected rituals in the novel Hadriana dans tous mes rêves by René Depestre. The narration is focused on the zombification of the eponymous character on her wedding day and the sudden disappearance of her tomb after the funeral ceremony. Both rituals not only illustrate the social system of Haiti, but also reflect the particular relation between the narrator living in exile (like the author of the book) and his native island personified by Hadriana. First, the novel is analyzed from the anthropological perspective; then, the metaphorical dimension of the rituals described in the book is stressed. Finally, the ritual, possessing some degree of inherent agency, is presented as a symbolic act of performative utterance.


Key words: ritual, voodoo and Christian anthropology, marvelous realism (réalisme merveilleux), performative utterance



Revue: Romanica Silesiana

Kamouraska d’Anne Hébert et Une si longue lettre de Mariama Bâ Un même « discours » féministe ?

Mbaye Diouf

Langue: FR | Date de publication: | Résumé

Kamouraska by Anne Hébert and Une si longue lettre by Mariama Bâ. A Shared Feminist “Discourse”?

Exploring a research angle never yet investigated by literary critics, this text proposes a comparative analysis of novels by writers Anne Hébert, of Québec, and Mariama Bâ, of Senegal. The study joins a new research domain by integrating literatures of the “North” and those of the “South”. Relations between men and women constitute a major focus in the novels, suggesting a social interrogation shared by both authors, as well as a common preoccupation for the feminine condition. Novels such as Kamouraska and Une si longue lettre seem to rewrite Augustinian libidos only through a systematic denunciation of religious and patriarchal discourse that declasses feminine subjects in the two societies. Their narrative and enunciative dispositions therefore organise literary subjects who, although particular in the works of each author, express, in a solidary manner, another way of being, as well as a “gendered” point of view.


Key words: Anne Hébert, Mariama Bâ, novel, discourse, feminism, enunciation, Québec, Sénégal.

Kamouraska by Anne Hébert and Une si longue lettre by Mariama Bâ. A Shared Feminist “Discourse”?

Exploring a research angle never yet investigated by literary critics, this text proposes a comparative analysis of novels by writers Anne Hébert, of Québec, and Mariama Bâ, of Senegal. The study joins a new research domain by integrating literatures of the “North” and those of the “South”. Relations between men and women constitute a major focus in the novels, suggesting a social interrogation shared by both authors, as well as a common preoccupation for the feminine condition. Novels such as Kamouraska and Une si longue lettre seem to rewrite Augustinian libidos only through a systematic denunciation of religious and patriarchal discourse that declasses feminine subjects in the two societies. Their narrative and enunciative dispositions therefore organise literary subjects who, although particular in the works of each author, express, in a solidary manner, another way of being, as well as a “gendered” point of view.


Key words: Anne Hébert, Mariama Bâ, novel, discourse, feminism, enunciation, Québec, Sénégal.

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