Literary writing from the 20th to the 21st century has brought to light an affinity between fiction and fact. Whilst the shifts in this dichotomy are currently a focus of critical attention and are enabling substantial advances in the analysis of literary output from recent decades, those within the field of Swiss literature have been little explored to date.

The authors of this volume seek to demonstrate the relationship between the fictional and the factual in Swiss literature, their boundaries, but also their interplay, between play and seduction, compromise and hybridisation, by examining the various strategies devised by Swiss writers to shed light on the complexities of their reality.

From leading figures in Swiss literature (Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Max Frisch) to authors of crime novels (Joël Dicker, Joseph Incardona, Sébastien Meier), autobiographical narratives (Urs Widmer, Yves Laplace and Benoît Damon) and texts on otherness (Gertrud Leutenegger, Anna Felder, Ilma Rakusa, Fabiano Alborghetti, Lukas Bärfuss,…) or communicative subversion (Catherine Safonoff, Matthias Zschokke): the range of writers examined here reflects the richness of contemporary Swiss literature.

Contributions by:

Daniel Annen, Régine Battiston, Jacqueline Bel, Tania Collani, Martina Della Casa, Sylviane Dupuis, Emily Eder, Sylvie Jeanneret, Stéphane Maffli, Daniel Maggetti, Daniel Rothenbühler, Hubert Thüring

Publisher’s website:  http://pus.unistra.fr/fr/livre/?GCOI=28682100233110

Actes du colloque de Mulhouse (Université Haute-Alsace),

14–16 November 2018

Texts compiled by Dominique Massonnaud

Published online with the support of the University of Lausanne.

At the dawn of the 21st century, attention is once again turning insistently to Goethe’s thought: a remarkable exhibition at the Martin Bodmer Foundation in Geneva recently highlighted the place of France in Goethe’s work (Goethe et la France, ed. J. Berchtold, Neuchâtel, La Baconnière, 2016), whilst an edition of Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew presented Diderot’s original text and the back-translation of Goethe’s version, with, on the ground floor, Goethe’s German translation (Diderot, Goethe, De Saur & Saint Genies, Rameau’s Nephew, Rameaus Neffe, Second Satire, J. Berchtold and M. Delon (eds.), Fayard, bilingual ‘Ouvertures’ series, 2017). A Colloque de Cerisy, chaired by C. König, D. Thouard and H. Wismann in 2018, focused on Goethe: The Relevance of the Out-of-Date.

The aim is therefore to reassess what this great European figure, who developed the concept of Weltliteratur, has to offer us today. (J. David, Spectres de Goethe. Les Métamorphoses de la « littérature mondiale », Paris, Les belles Lettres, “les prairies ordinaires”, 2012).

Held in Mulhouse in November 2018, the conference Goethe, Myth & Science: Cross-Perspectives in European Literatures sought to capture the ‘Goethe effect’ within the contexts of its emergence and across historical periods, from the 18th century to the present day.

https://www.fabula.org/colloques/sommaire6098.php

Frédéric Chopin in Literature. Texts compiled by Peter Schnyder and Augustin Voegele.

This volume focuses on how literature has portrayed the personality of Frédéric Chopin and his music. From the Chopin of George Sand and Eugène Delacroix to that of contemporary popular writers (including Frédéric Dard), via, amongst others, the Chopin of the librettist Angiolo Orvieto, that of the Russian poets of the Silver Age, and that of musicologists such as Alfred James Hipkins and Thérèse Marix-Spire, this volume seeks to demonstrate how the world of literature sheds light on the world of sound, and how writing engages in dialogue with Chopin’s music, each enriching the other.

Peter Schnyder is Professor Emeritus at the University of Haute-Alsace and a member of the Institute for Research in European Languages and Literatures (ILLE). He is the author of numerous works on French and Francophone poetry, as well as on André Gide.

Augustin Voegele holds a PhD in French literature and is the winner of the 2017 Prize from the Catherine Gide Foundation and the Fondation des Treilles. His research focuses on the relationship between literature and music, particularly in relation to André Gide.

Publisher’s website : https://www.honorechampion.com/fr/champion/11273-book-08535334-9782745353344.html

Description:

In the wake of a pandemic that has disrupted established practices of crossing borders in Europe and around the world, this volume proposes a rethinking of the uses and representations of the cross-border phenomenon in light of the following question: who creates the cross-border phenomenon, who shapes it, who makes it viable? Citizens, governments, local elected representatives?
Moreover, there is no such thing as an archetypal cross-border space: there are as many ways of engaging with cross-border issues as there are cross-border situations. And it is not enough to say that the cross-border reality of the Upper Rhine is not the same as that of the Saar-Lor-Lux Greater Region, or that the ways in which the cross-border is used in French-speaking Canada bear little resemblance to the cross-border practices implemented by the Chinese state: we must also take into account the fact that every cross-border space is constantly shaped and transformed by countless political, economic, commercial, logistical and cultural tensions. This is why, in order to theorise the cross-border phenomenon, we have decided to draw on a series of case studies conducted by researchers from a variety of disciplines, ranging from literature and sociology to information and communication sciences, educational sciences and archaeology.

Publisher’s website: https://www.lcdpu.fr/livre/?GCOI=27000100741480

Henrik Ibsen, one of the most famous Scandinavian writers, nevertheless spent twenty-seven years living outside Norway and channelled his bitterness towards his native country into scathing portrayals of small-town folk devoid of ideals. Admired throughout Europe during his lifetime, he was regarded by the Symbolists as the author of ‘art theatre’—a space for thought and dreams devoted to the ghostly apparitions of evanescent characters—whilst the Naturalists saw him as the ‘Zola of the North’ and celebrated his bourgeois dramas, which gave pride of place to the defence of women’s emancipation and the denunciation of corrupt politicians.
It is all these facets and contradictions that this book seeks to capture: a multifaceted Ibsen, who continues to surprise us. A feminist yet a conservative, a patriot yet critical of Norway, the inventor of modern drama yet faithful to the model of the ‘well-made play’ of Scribe and Augier. More relevant than ever, he continues to inspire theatre directors around the world.

The publisher’s website : http://www.idesetcalendes.com/booksDetail.php?i=273

Summary: One of the most recurring devices in Marcel Proust’s writing, the ‘comme’ comparison is examined in this book from a linguistic and stylistic perspective, with the aim of clarifying its aesthetic function – a bridge between technique and vision – in *In Search of Lost Time* and throughout Proust’s entire body of work.

Number of pages: 896

Publication date: 02/09/2020

Series: Bibliothèque proustienne, no. 28

Editor’s website

Nordic children’s literature is undoubtedly one of the most significant in the world in terms of its history, scope and originality. Through this literature, this issue (No. 38) explores the figures of the Scandinavian ‘little hero’, drawing on the proceedings of a conference organised on this theme in 2019 at the University of Haute-Alsace in Mulhouse by Alessandra Ballotti and Frédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre. Seven articles analyse different facets of this rich heritage, the place it occupies in Northern literature, and the ways in which a whole gallery of childlike characters is portrayed, from the Swedish Pippi to the Danish Bibi, via Finland. They show how these heroes and heroines of youth subvert the codes and norms, not only of the literary genre to which they are assigned, but also, very often, of the societies they are supposed to best represent. From this perspective, we are dealing with much more than simply children’s literature, even though that is its core audience, and its considerable success relative to the size of the countries of origin is a further indication of its universal appeal.

Publisher’s website : http://revue-nordiques.com/fr/71-n38le-petit-heros-scandinave

Description:

Jules Romains is known as a writer of ‘good will’, a reasonable and rationalist figure. There is, however, a dark and little-known side to Jules Romains: a Jules Romains who creates characters of ill will – even criminals; a Jules Romains who does not hesitate to pepper his work with long erotic chapters – even pornographic ones; a Jules Romains, finally and above all, fascinated by everything related to the parapsychological and the extraordinary.

But where does this attraction to the abnormal and the paranormal come from? It is by placing Romains’s work within the context of an era confronted with the death of God and scarred by two World Wars that we can explain the shift taking place, from *La Vie unanime* (1908) to his post-war works, from an optimistic and humanist unanimism to a fantastical world which, whilst scientifically and politically militant, is nonetheless despairing.

Publisher’s website : https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/68296

Description

The emergence of poetics of deformity among African and Caribbean writers has significantly transformed the Francophone literary landscape. This has given rise to literatures of excess, diasporic political cultures, and the assertion of transgressive writing. These have been described in various ways: oral literatures, minor literatures, colonial/postcolonial literatures, peripheral literatures, and so on. Thanks to *Les Armes miraculeuses* (Aimé Césaire), Francophone rebellions have developed and liberated a number of Caribbean and African authors from the traps set by traditional literatures. This book proposes to read and re-read the cultures, histories and discourses of so-called Francophone literatures, primarily from an African and Caribbean perspective. Frédérique Toudoire and Ethmane Sall have brought together contributions from researchers in Africa, North America and Europe. Frédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre has published essays in the ‘Paradoxe’ collection with Éditions de Minuit. Other texts have appeared with various publishers. Since 2012, she has co-edited the ‘Comparaisons’ collection with Florence Fix at Éditions Orizons. Ethmane Sall is a specialist in Édouard Glissant. He works on African and Caribbean literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. He co-edited Francophonies “noires” (Lit Verlag, 2018) with Frédérique Toudoire. He has published several collections of poetry.

Publisher’s website : http://editionsorizons.fr/index.php/les-rebellions-francophones.html

Description

Happy people have a story to tell, recounted here with humour and tenderness. Paul Hillig, a young Parisian of foreign origin, arrives in the Beauce region with his quirky family, settling in Cloyes, where Zola once found the inspiration for his novel *La Terre*. He succeeds in business, wins the trust of the locals, and soon heads the football club and the town band. This assimilated Jew, though by no means a renegade, is affected by anti-Semitic legislation as early as December 1940. The respect he commands in influential economic, sporting and cultural circles will not save him from deportation.

This biography is also a reconstruction of daily life in the Beauce region during the first half of the 20th century, and a gallery of portraits featuring people of all ages and walks of life from Cloys.

An English scholar and historian, Laurent Berec is a senior lecturer at the University of Haute-Alsace. He has written articles and a biography entitled Claude de Sainliens: a Huguenot from the Bourbonnais in Shakespeare’s time, Orizons, 2012.

Publisher’s website : http://editionsorizons.fr/index.php/paul-hillig-de-cloyes-a-auschwitz.html