Axe 6 - Thinking about and translating literature

Responsible: Marie Vrinat-Nikolov

Axis 6 "Thinking and translating literatures" is a disciplinary and trans-area axis, which problematizes the literary fact by considering it from several approaches - over the long term or in its contemporaneity, in a transnational or regional perspective :

  1. a transnational comparative approach through translation (in its theoretical, critical, historical and practical aims), which is at the heart of the phenomena of literary transfers and circulations (project 6.1, which extends the work carried out in 2014-2018);
  2. the questioning of literary historiography and the challenges of renewal that arise particularly when studying "minor" or "peripheral" literatures (project 6.2, which also extends the work carried out in 2014-2018): issues of periodization, desacralization/deconstruction of national canons in a decentralized, regional or transnational perspective, interrogation of Western categories plastered over other literary histories, interest in the margins of the canons (ignored languages, women writers, etc.).
  3. regional/national approaches (project 6.3) focusing on modernity and contemporaneity, particular genres (theater, detective fiction).

The axis relies on the PALM group (Penser Autrement les Littératures du Monde), which for several years has federated Inalco's teacher-researchers in literature, and has forged numerous contacts with researchers from other Inalco research centers (CERLOM, CERMOM, LACNAD) or from outside, nationally and internationally.

Synergies may arise with axe 1 "Patrimoines et héritages" (projects 1.1 and 1.3), axe 4 "Identités en mouvement" (project 4.3).

Projects:

  • 6.1. Translating literatures: theory, criticism, history and practice (Pauline Fournier, Marie Vrinat-Nikolov)
  • 6.2. Thinking differently about literary history: national myths, canons and minores revisited in the 21st century (Piotr Bilos, Catherine Géry, Marie Vrinat-Nikolov)
  • 6.3. Contemporary developments in crime fiction after 1989 (Piotr Bilos)

6.1. Translating literatures: theory, criticism, history and practice

Responsible for: Pauline Fournier, Marie Vrinat-Nikolov

Thinking about the theory, criticism, history and practice of translation is fundamental for an institution like INALCO, rich in its 101 languages and literatures of the world, most of which are still little-known or ignored by researchers. It goes hand in hand with student training and actions aimed at the general public (participation in readings, meetings, round tables, festivals, etc.). We therefore intend to continue it in 2019-2024 in two parts:

6.1.1 How to found and think a critique of translation?

Responsible persons: Marie Vrinat-Nikolov (CREE), and Alexis Nouss (AMU/ Chaire Exil et migration de la FMSH)

Our project aims to establish not only a critical device applicable to translational activity, but also a theory of knowledge grounded in translation: a "translational reason" (Alexis Nouss) that can be a critical "model". It is based on:

A paraxoxal observation: while France is the Western country that publishes the largest number of translations, despite the multiplication of broadcasts, books, colloquia and training initiatives on translation, there is currently no real critique of translation. And yet, without critical thinking, there is no theoretical thinking, and without theoretical thinking, there is no practice that is worthwhile.

One conviction: there is an urgent need for our societies to consider identity and otherness differently today, in our globalized societies that have to deal with radicalization and identitarian withdrawals; there is therefore a need and urgency to renew critical thinking on translation in a dialogical direction and work on otherness. We will therefore focus on the philosophical and political implications of translation.

Researchers associated with the project: Arnaud Bikard (CREE, CERMOM), Mourad Yelles (LACNAD), Tiphaine Samoyault (Paris-III, Sorbonne-nouvelle), Arno Renken (Bern University of the Arts, Switzerland), Claire Placial (Université de Lorraine), Lambert Barthélémy (Université de Poitiers).

Principal collaborations: Aix-Marseille Université

Research and development operations envisaged:
An INALCO/Aix/Paris-III doctoral seminar (5 sessions per year) combining "reflective workshop" and research training. Renowned researchers (Barbarin Cassin, Martin Tueff, Camille de Tolédo and others) will be invited to this seminar.
Collective publications and video recordings of sessions published on the notebook critiquetrad.hypotheses.org

Conferences, participation in seminars, colloquia, study days, book fairs and literary festivals

Key words: criticism, translation criticism, philosophy of translation, politics of translation, otherness.

6.1.2. Circulation et métissages des genres et des formes par la traduction

Responsables: Marie Vrinat-Nikolov (CREE), Timour Muhidine (CERMOM), Mourad Yelles (LACNAD), Etienne Naveau (CERLOM).

One of the major contributions of cultural history and the study of Cultural Transfers to reflection on literary circulations is to invite us no longer to think in terms of "influences" exerted by cultures deemed "central" (Western) on cultures considered "peripheral", nor in terms of more or less stable and closed "national identities", but to consider cultural areas as places of passage open to transnational dynamics and contacts. If the notions of "center" and "periphery" work when it comes to observing struggles to acquire legitimacy and consecration within the global literary field, it is to be relativized when we are interested in the dynamics of circulations and exchanges between actors, ideas and texts, which take place in multiple directions.

The aim of the research involved in this axis is therefore threefold:

  1. An attempt will be made at a spatial and temporal "mapping" of the texts that have circulated through translation around the world, particularly the "great travelling texts" which are often, too, the "great founding texts" summoned in the construction of nations or called upon to play a leading role in the emergence or enrichment of the corpora of "national" literatures.
  2. We'll be looking at the phenomena of transformation/reappropriation/emancipation/miscegenation through translation, since, as we know, "to transfer is not to transport, but rather to metamorphose (M. Espagne)".
  3. We won't forget the importance of cultural mediators: translators or writer-translators, publishers, teachers, patrons, and so on.

Whether we think of the translation of the Thousand and One Nights, Kalila and Dimna, the Maqamât, The Life of Alexander, in the Medieval Age, but also, later, to those of the Adventures of Telemachus, Paul and Virginia, L'Avare, Le Petit Prince, L'Odyssée, etc., each time, we're dealing with examples of formal (literary) and imaginary configurations (linked to collective representations) that have exerted a quite remarkable effect of attraction, even mimicry.

Responding to intellectual and artistic proposals involving postures pertaining to phenomena of cultural métissage, at different times and in different places, "national" (or rather "local", as we'll often address the case of pre-national times) elites often inscribed in "transnational" circuits and networks were thus able to sensitize very different audiences to hitherto unknown issues, genres and forms.

Researchers associated with the project: Arnaud Bikard (CREE, CERMOM), Antoine Chalvin (CREE, Estonian and Finnish literature), James Theeraphong (CERLOM, Siamese literature), Etienne Naveau (CERLOM, Indonesian literature), Jovanka Šotolova (Charles University, Prague), Marzena Chrobak (Jagiellonian University, Krakow), Ildiko Jozan (ELTE, Budapest), Sherry Simon (Concordia University, Montreal), Katarina Bednarova (University of Bratislava), Nike Pokorn (University of Ljubljana), Eriona Tartari (National Research Institute, Tirana).

Planned research operations:

  • A master's seminar
  • A colloquium
  • A study day

Key words: cultural transfers through translation, history of translation, mediation through translation, cultural métissage, mapping of traveling texts

6.2. Thinking differently about literary history: national myths, canons and minores revisited in the 21st century

Responsibles: Piotr Bilos (CREE), Catherine Géry (CREE), Marie Vrinat-Nikolov (CREE).

This project brings together researchers wishing to participate in the renewal of literary historiography initiated in the last decades of the twentieth century in a transnational and transdisciplinary perspective, in order to elaborate the methodology of a history of literatures based on another periodization than historical chronology, a history of literatures that practices neither hagiography (great authors), nor anthology (great works), a history of literatures that positions itself against the determinism of the Grand Narrative (national or otherwise), a history of literatures likely to question the works, events and actors rejected from the canon, minoritized and forgotten or, conversely, sanctified and mythologized by the various literary institutions. A history of literature that analyzes the processes of commemoration, periodization and hierarchization of literary phenomena, and assesses the place and function of mediators (publishers, critics, academics, teachers... but also bookshops and libraries) in the transmission of texts. A history of literatures attentive not only to historicity, but also to sociality, institutionalization and circulation. A history of literatures that is horizontal (transfers and the dialogue between works) rather than vertical ("influences" or the desire for renewal of forms theorized by the Russian formalists, for example).

In several of the so-called "Eastern" cultures studied at Inalco, researchers and academics are already questioning certain aspects of the literary canon and national myths in their courses, seminars or scientific work, They are attempting to give women writers their rightful place in the national canon, to define the place of "migrant" literature (diaspora, exile) within the national canon, to propose a different relationship between the thematic and the chronological, and to demonstrate the importance of context and co-text. Last but not least, they subject the concept of "national literature" to constant evaluation using different parameters (métissage and hybridization, individual/collective, identity/alterity tensions, dominant/dominated or major/minor relationships). Since 2013, a cross-disciplinary Master's seminar entitled "Ecrire/réécrire les histoires littéraires "nationales"" has brought together some of these Inalco literature researchers, complemented, since 2017, by a doctoral seminar.

Associate researchers: Antoine Chalvin (CREE, Finnish and Baltic literature), Françoise Robin (ASIES, Tibetan literature), Pauline Fournier (CREE, Slovenian literature), Cécile Folschweiller (CREE, Romanian literature), Etienne Naveau (CERLOM, Indonesian literature), Timour Muhidine (CERMOM, Turkish literature), Mourad Yelles (LACNAD, Maghrebian literatures), Alexandre Prstojevic (CERLOM, Serbian and Croatian literatures), Julie Duvigneau (CERLOM, Persian literature), Iryna Dmytrychyn(CREE, Ukrainian literature), Catherine Servant (CREE, Czech literature), Philippe Benoît (CERLOM, literatures of India), Eun-Jin Jeong (CERLOM, Korean literature), Galin Tihanov (Queen Mary's University of London), Dessislava Lilova (St. Clement of Ohrid University, Sofia), Eriona Tartari (National Research Institutes of Linguistics and Literature, Tirana), Gun-Britt Kohler, Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Oldenburg), Pavel Navumenka (University of Minsk), Elena Gueorguieva (CREE doctoral student), Thibault Deleixhe (doctoral student CREE).

Proposed research operations:

Key words: literary historiography, oriental literatures, national literatures, transfers, literary canon, migrant literatures, minor literatures, world literature

6.3. L'évolution contemporaine du roman policier après 1989

Responsible: Piotr Bilos (CREE)

Roman policier, polars, roman noir, d'espionnage, thriller, but also "Detective story" and "crime story", genre literature dedicated to criminal cases gives rise to terminological complexities (as evidenced by the typology elaborated by T. Todorov). What defines "detective fiction", then, is its "object", criminal activity in all its forms, which leads to a reaction on the part of the forces of law and order (the police): murder, but also organized or unorganized crime, theft, fraud, embezzlement, kidnapping, poisoning... But as Todorov has shown, the object (the fable) is inseparable from the "subject" (according to the formalists), from the way it is told. Yet today, the "subject" is increasingly diverse, a fact reinforced by the multiplication of media, starting with cinema and TV series.

Another crucial aspect is the register: does the detective novel belong only to popular literature? What about the undeniable literary value of certain works? Conversely, works belonging to what we call "great" literature - the Greek tragics, Shakespeare, Dostoyevsky, Racine, Mickiewicz, but also the tale of "Red Riding Hood" or the Bible - make use of the crime motif. Julian Symons asserts that readers will have no trouble distinguishing between those where crime is the major element and those where it is secondary. But is this really true? Porter and Caillois use the categories of "myth" and "the sacred" to contrast them with the pure, cognitive pleasure of solving detective puzzles. That said, many crime novels explore the psychological and moral dimensions of human existence.

What about the relationship of crime fiction to the question of realism? Increasingly, we hear that crime fiction aims to depict the workings of a society, its "dark sides", in short - that crime writers are the best contemporary "painters of modern life". Barzun, Taylor and John Caweltie, however, have shown that the plot of detective novels draws on cross-cultural narrative patterns, while the characters are related to the "types" that populate our imaginations.

In Poland, Stanisław Baczyński's pioneering 1932 work Powieść kryminalna, or "The Criminal Novel", established the use of the term. Since the country's exit from the Soviet zone of influence, crime fiction and detective novels have become an expansive phenomenon here. Its promoters also include poets (Jarosław Klejnocki, Marcin Świetlicki) and literary researchers (Marek Krajewski, Mariusz Czubaj, Zbigniew Białas).

More and more women are "practicing this genre", and this applies just as much to female writers who have made it their specialty (thus Katarzyna Bonda, Marta Guzowska, Magdalena Parys, Joanna Jodełka, Marta Mizuro, Gaja Grzegorzewska, Nadia Szagdaj, Anna Fryczkowska) as to writers already recognized as writers "tout court" such as Olga Tokarczuk or Joanna Bator. What do these "black Polish women" have to offer us?

These recent developments in the genre invite us to rethink its defining features and place them in an overall perspective that allows us to situate them in relation to traditional models.

Researchers associated with the project: Bernadetta Darska, University of Varmie-Mazurie in Olsztyn, Barbara Łagiewska, Jan Długosz Academy in Częstochowa, Anna Wróblewska, University of Silesia, Rafał Szczerbakiewicz, UMS University of Lublin, Maria Berkan-Jabłońska, University of Łódź, Małgorzata Domagalska, University of Łódź, Marta Tomczok, University of Silesia, Marion François, Grenoble, Michela Toppano (Aix Marseille Univ, CAER, Aix-en-Provence, Alessio Berré (Université d'Avignon/CRIX Paris Ouest), Dror Mishani (Tel Aviv University)

Main collaborations: Polish Cultural Institute in Paris and Central European (Czech, Hungarian, Austrian), Paris-PAN

Planned research operations:

  • An international colloquium
  • Organization of roundtables in collaboration with cultural institutes in Central European countries
  • Creation of a website

Key words: Interdisciplinary and transnational theme, "detective fiction", contemporaneity, popular culture and elite culture, paradigm shift, women-writers, multiculturalism, métissage, minorities, realism, society, literary genres.