En d'autres mots. L'écriture translingue de soi

Thesis

For several reasons, translingual writers, defined here as authors who write in a language that is not their native one, have gained increased visibility in recent years. This is particularly true in the context of French literature where, more frequently than before, and with a more explicit recognition of their particular status, translingual writers have received important literary prizes and have been welcomed into the French Academy. Central to this recognition is their rich and diverse mobilisation of life writing, a corpus curiously neglected in the study of the phenomenon of literary translingualism. This thesis focuses on the writers Andreï Makine, Hector Bianciotti, Vassilis Alexakis, Nancy Huston, Agota Kristof and Katalin Molnár. It demonstrates that the translingual experience, in its capacity to question one's sense of self and provide novel tools for the exploration of one's personal history and subjectivity (conceived as an experience in language), appears eminently suited to the genre of life writing and that, in the current configuration of the French literary space, life writing is demanded from translingual authors. It proposes an original cartography of contemporary translingual literature in French, suggesting that more than any similarities in the conditions of their literary adoption of French, what creates family resemblance between translingual writers is the types of relation with their adopted language that are constructed in their autobiographical texts.

Authors: Ausoni, A

• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: French
• Keywords: translingual; Literature; Alexakis; Huston; Molnár; French; Kristof; life writing; Makine; Bianciotti
• Subjects: francophone; translingualism; life writing; Napoleon I, Emperor of the French, 1769-1821