Atelier 15 : Société d’Etude de la Littérature de Voyage du Monde Anglophone (SELVA)

Responsables de l’atelier

Jeremy Filet
Manchester Metropolitan University
j.filet@mmu.ac.uk

Claire McKeown
Université de Lorraine
claire.mc-keown@univ-lorraine.fr

Anne Rouhette
Université Clermont Auvergne
anne.rouhette@gmail.com

Souad Baghli Berbar
University of Tlemcen, Algeria
souad.baghli@univ-tlemcen.dz

Border Crossing and Genre Blurring in Edith Wharton’s In Morocco

Travel writing about the Orient has generally been wrapped with imaginaries of exoticism and eroticism under the surface of an authentic account of the actual journey. Images of the desert with caravans of camels and the fantastic universe of The Arabian Nights tales loom behind prosaic descriptions of the places visited and the people met. The present paper purports to examine Edith Wharton’s travel book In Morocco (1920) published after her one-month trip to the North African French colony during the first world war and unravel the intertwined elements of fact and fancy, outward voyage and inner journey, as she readily crosses the borders of life-writing towards fantastic evocation of Medieval caliphates, supernatural creatures and magic carpets. The realistic painting of tableaux vivant of New England society found in her novels and the “connoisseur” (Wright 1997) recording of her trips through France and Italy are blurred in her travel book In Morocco, giving way to fantasy and imagination in oriental settings.

Biographie

A member of the SELVA, Dr Souad Baghli Berbar is assistant professor at the University of Tlemcen in Algeria where she teaches Anglo-American literature. Her interests include travel literature, Orientalism and computer-assisted literary criticism.

Roxana Sicoe-Tirea Bauduin
Université Paris 12
roxanabauduin@yahoo.fr

“You ran away. Not to Nigeria, but in Nigeria”: Travelling as Crossing Borders in Olúmìdé Pópóọlá’s When We Speak of Nothing

Karl is a transgender teenager living in London with his British White mother; his Nigerian father is but a vague presence “looming on the horizon”. This is the setting imagined by the German-Nigerian writer Olúmìdé Pópóọlá in When We Speak of Nothing, a coming-of-age novel exploring themes such as friendship, belonging and the complexity of diasporic experiences. Karl’s journey to Nigeria to meet his father is a pivotal moment in the narrative, marking a literal crossing of geographical borders that leads to a series of personal and cultural revelations. This transition from London to Nigeria brings to light a stark contrast between two distinct worlds, each with its own set of social norms, cultural expectations, and historical backgrounds. The narrative highlights the transformative power of translocality, carving out a space where gender, ethnicity, and youth culture converge and diverge in contemporary society.

Drawing upon Judith Butler’s concept of « gender performativity » and on Kimberlé Crenshaw’s notion of « intersectionality », my analysis delves into how this physical relocation challenges and reshapes Karl’s understanding of his own identity, particularly in relation to his heritage, race, and sexuality. My intention is to examine how Karl’s travel to Nigeria serves as a critical framework for understanding the multifaceted nature of borders – geographical, cultural, and personal- not as rigid dividers, but as dynamic liminal spaces of negotiation, conflict, and potential growth.

Biographie

Roxana Sicoe-Tirea Bauduin is a lecturer at the University of Paris 12. She holds a PhD in comparative literature from the Sorbonne Nouvelle and is the author of the study Du pouvoir dictatorial au mal moral: une lecture du roman africain depuis 1968 (L’Harmattan, 2013), of the monographic study Exercices de liberté (Școala Ardeleana, 2014) and of several collections of poems in Romanian. She is also a translator, a cultural project manager and the developer of a Bachelor’s in International and European Studies at the University of Versailles. She is currently writing a PhD dissertation in Anglophone studies entitled La poétique du déplacement dans la littérature nigériane contemporaine under the supervision of Professor Vanessa Guignery (ENS Lyon).

Clémentine Garcenot
University of York
cemg501@york.ac.uk

Crossing gender barriers to share her story of exile: the memoirs of a Franco-Irish aristocratic woman (1794-1799)

The marquise de la Tour du Pin (1770-1853), born Lucy Dillon, comes from both a long line of Irish exiles and an aristocratic French family. To escape the French Revolution, she masterminded her family’s emigration, first to North America, then to England, from 1795 to 1799. This paper will consider the tension in the memoirist’s contradictory identity; she was an impoverished aristocrat, a woman displaying what was considered male agency, and a Franco-Irish exiled to a foreign country. Through a literary analysis of her memoirs, titled Journal of a Fifty Year-Old Woman (1770-1815), written between 1820 and 1843, I will address how her memoirs showcase a repeated crossing of literal and figurative borders, taking place both in the 1790s and at the time of writing.

This paper will first analyse Tour du Pin’s representation of her two emigrations. She links the crossing of the Atlantic and of the Channel, which accompanies a change in her status for the worse, to a positive, symbolic inner evolution. Moreover, she foregrounds the extent to which organising her two emigrations allowed her to grown into an agency which, as an aristocratic woman, had hitherto been submitted to gender-restrictive conventions. Finally, once she had crossed the border into America and, later, England, Tour du Pin faced the Other in the form of a people and culture she, as a Franco-Irish aristocrat, was unfamiliar with.

This paper will conclude with the assertion that, by writing her memoirs and sharing her thoughts, Tour du Pin actively eschewed social restrictions. Indeed, in the mid-18^th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau shared ideas concerning the separation of the public and domestic spheres which were picked up by the revolutionaries at the end of the century and endured throughout the 19^th century. Thus, I argue that Tour du Pin’s literature of exile illustrates women’s forced exile from the literary public sphere and their strategies to make their stories heard nonetheless.

Biographie

Clémentine Garcenot is in the fourth and final year of her PhD with the department of English and Related Literature and Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies at the University of York. She has a Bachelors Degree in History as well as a Bachelors and a Masters degrees in English literature from Aix-Marseille University. She is also agrégée d’anglais. Her thesis is entitled “Depictions of the French Revolution in the memoirs of French aristocratic women.” Her research focuses on life-writing, especially the memoir genre, women’s voices and the counter-revolution.

Talal Hochard
Université de Lorraine
talal.hochard@univ-lorraine.fr

Gary Snyder’s Eastern Journeys: Shaping Mid-Century American Subcultures and Literature

The subcultures that emerged in postwar America, particularly around Columbia University, Greenwich Village, San Francisco, and the Pacific Northwest, shared a collective disdain for the trajectory of postwar Western culture. This sentiment was rooted in the perceived artificialities and futilities of consumerist, technocratic American society. Moreover, they resisted governmental surveillance tactics and challenged repressive attitudes towards sexuality. These subcultures found themselves in a critical need for materials to fuel artistic, spiritual, and social experimentation, especially during the transitional and anthropologically liminal period following World War II.

Gary Snyder, often hailed as the « poet laureate of Deep Ecology, » played a pivotal but understated role in the cultural landscape of mid-century America. His influence on the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance is overshadowed by his environmental activism. However, Snyder’s sojourns in Japan and India during the 1950s had a profound impact, not only shaping the poetics and mindset of various subcultures but also influencing the topographic frontiers explored in his nature poems.

Snyder’s portrayal as the character Japhy Ryder in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums serves as a unique window into understanding his true influence on the Beat aesthetic. This influence goes beyond poetry, primarily seen in his role as the catalyst for Kerouac’s introduction to Buddhism, contributing significantly to the development of the neo-romantic and neo-tribal proclivities of the time. These proclivities found expression in the counterculture and the hippie movement, shaping their ideologies. Kerouac’s account of a climb atop Matterhorn Peak in California vividly illustrates Snyder’s unwavering belief in his ability to bridge the gap between the East and the West. During his stays in Japan and India, Snyder not only mastered Zen Buddhism but also received the dharma name Chofu (“Listen to the Wind”) and was initiated into Shugendō, a religion that profoundly influenced the syncretic spiritual practices of the Beat Generation. Snyder’s body of work stands as a repository of oriental perspectives, ideals, and philosophies collected during his travels, serving as the foundation upon which the revolt against postwar America was initiated.

Recognizing Snyder’s influence is of immense importance in comprehending the transformative dynamics of mid-century American subcultures and shedding light on the intricate threads connecting his Eastern travels to the rebellious spirit of an era in flux.

Biographie

Talal Hochard is an adjunct lecturer of English at the Université de Lorraine in Metz, France. He holds a Ph.D. in American literature and specializes in postwar American literature, the Beat Generation, autobiographical novels, and narrative nonfiction. Talal has presented papers on various topics, including Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, U.S. Alternative media, and literary journalism. His writings include a book chapter in the Routledge Companion to World Literary Journalism, and his doctoral thesis, titled Jack Kerouac’s Quest for Authenticity: Alterity, Transcendence, Intersubjectivity, is currently being prepared for publication by Peter Lang.

Isabelle Loréal
Université Paris X Nanterre
isabelleloreal@gmail.com

Conrad’s representation of exile: the liminal flat land of « mud and shells » in « Amy Foster »

With « Amy Foster » Conrad turned the British reader into the travellee of Yanko’s tragic voyage to the Kentish coast. The short-story’s serialization in the London Illustrated News, a paper celebrating explorers’ travels within the Empire, was counter-intuitive. In the liminal coastal space where Yanko miraculously lands and seeks to make a life for himself, Conrad portrayed the dire experience of exile. The anti-pastoral depiction of Brenzett in Yanko’s island adventure brought foreignness home.

Focusing on Conrad’s spatial consciousness, my study will center on his depiction of Brenzett as an ancient place, with a palatable history of defending itself against invasions from the sea. And indeed, Yanko, who seems to have fallen from the sky cannot cross the border and become part of the community. Yanko’s verticality and the flateness of the land and its inhabitants are systematically opposed. The castaway is unable to leave an imprint in the muddy soil of Brenzett. The closed-in topography and the powerful mystical winds constrain his progress, and his tragic fate is contingent upon the life-giving and death-dealing sea. Yanko’s fleeting passage is contrasted with an ancient land that keeps no record of the tresspasser.

I will seek to highlight Conrad’s unique sense of time as encapsulated in the land and the way he systematically contrasts the land’s enduring history with Yanko’s fleeting presence. I will try to demonstrate how Conrad’s handling of space structurally defines the form of the short-story, with liminality being an attribute not only of the landscape but also of the text that incorporates and subverts various literary genres as varied as the island tale and the Ukrainian folktale, blurs the frontier between narrator and protagonist, and refuses to choose between a determinist and a mystic outlook.

Biographie

Isabelle Loréal is a doctoral student at the Université Paris-Nanterre, affiliated with the Centre de Recherches Anglophones (CREA). Her current research focuses on the representation of space in Conrad’s novels. She has received a Master’s Degree in English studies from the Université Paris-Nanterre.

Juliette Pochelu
Université Bordeaux Montaigne
juliette.pochelu@etu.u-bordeaux-montaigne.fr

Imaginer l’Arctique dans la littérature britannique du XIXe siècle : exploration de la frontière entre fiction et réalité

Dans cette communication, je propose d’étudier en quoi les terres lointaines de l’Arctique deviennent un lieu privilégié d’expérimentations littéraires dans les récits fictionnels d’aventures polaires du 19ème siècle, et plus particulièrement en quoi ces dernières floutent la frontière entre réalité et fiction, faisant de cette liminalité un topos majeur de ce type particulier de littérature d’aventure. Cette étude prendra pour exemples certains auteurs canoniques de la fiction polaire britannique, notamment R.M. Ballantyne, Wilkie Collins, et Arthur Conan Doyle. Deux points majeurs y seront évoqués.

Au premier abord, l’effacement de la fiction en faveur d’un ancrage ostensible dans la réalité géographique et historique de l’exploration de l’Arctique par la Grande-Bretagne apparaît comme une modalité de récit inhérente à la fiction polaire. Alors que les descriptions de paysages, catalogues scientifiques et extraits de journaux ponctuent les récits, ces derniers reflètent les nombreux témoignages à succès des vétérans de l’exploration polaire ayant nourri l’imaginaire collectif britannique, comme ceux de John Franklin, William Edward Parry ou Leopold McClintock. Certains auteurs, eux-mêmes aventuriers polaires tels que R.M. Ballantyne (au sein de la Compagnie de la Baie d’Hudson) ou encore Arthur Conan Doyle (à bord du baleinier Hope), s’inspirent même de leurs expériences personnelles. Ainsi, les personnages-explorateurs de ces récits deviennent des palimpsestes de réels explorateurs polaires alors qu’ils suivent le tracé des cartes de l’époque au fil des pages, naviguant à travers les points topographiques emblématiques de l’Arctique tels que le Détroit de Davis ou la Baie de Baffin. La prééminence de cette imitation du réel amorce donc un questionnement quant à la frontière entre réalité et fiction dans ces récits.

Cependant, alors que les personnages-explorateurs dépassent les frontières connues de l’Arctique, les lieux réels et cartographiés se mêlent aux paysages imaginaires explorés et nommés par les personnages. Ainsi, la mise en récit des histoires d’exploration polaire dessine en filigrane une carte littéraire et imaginée de l’Arctique, au croisement entre fiction et réalité. Cette brèche spatio-temporelle fait la part belle au fantasme, et renverse l’impératif du réel dans ces histoires : les personnages-explorateurs britanniques s’y imposent comme conquérants coloniaux de l’Arctique, atteignant par exemple le pôle Nord et découvrant le sort de réelles expéditions perdues. L’invention d’une exploration de l’Arctique parallèle, esthétisée et liminaire bien distincte des réalités du lieu physique, à la frontière entre réalité et fiction, devient ainsi un motif récurrent et indissociable de la littérature d’aventures polaires.

Biographie

Juliette Pochelu est doctorante contractuelle agrégée d’anglais, en première année de doctorat en études anglophones à l’Université Bordeaux Montaigne au sein de l’unité de recherche CLIMAS, et chargée de travaux dirigés de littérature britannique et de version. Sa thèse, dirigée par Madame Nathalie Jaëck, porte sur l’exploration polaire et les représentations des régions polaires dans les romans et les nouvelles britanniques du 19ème siècle.