Alienation and Alterity: Otherness in Modern and Contemporary Francophone Contexts - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 3039115472 ISBN 13: 9783039115471

Publisher: Verlag Peter Lang, 2009

Synopsis

Discussions of French ‘identity’ have frequently emphasised the importance of a highly centralised Republican model inherited from the Revolution. In reality, however, France also has a rich heritage of diversity that has often found expression in contingent sub-cultures marked by marginalisation and otherness – whether social, religious, gendered, sexual, linguistic or ethnic. This range of sub-cultures and variety of ways of thinking the ‘other’ underlines the fact that ‘norms’ can only exist by the concomitant existence of difference(s). The essays in this collection, which derive from the conference ‘Alienation and Alterity: Otherness in Modern and Contemporary Francophone Contexts’, held at the University of Exeter in September 2007, explore various aspects of this diversity in French and Francophone literature, culture, and cinema from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The contributions demonstrate that while alienation (from a cultural ‘norm’ and also from oneself) can certainly be painful and problematic, it is also a privileged position which allows the ‘étranger’ to consider the world and his/her relationship to it in an ‘other’ way.

About this title

About the Author

The Editors: Helen Vassallo has a B.A. in French and Hispanic Studies from the University of Liverpool. She went on to obtain an M.A. in Literary Translation and a Ph.D. in Contemporary French Literature from the University of Exeter. She is currently Lecturer in French at the University of Exeter.
Paul Cooke has a B.A. from the University of Oxford and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. He has held lecturing posts at LSU College (Southampton) and De Montfort University (Leicester). He is currently Associate Professor in French at the University of Exeter.

Edition details

• Publisher: Verlag Peter Lang
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3039115472
• ISBN 13: 9783039115471
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 338
• Editor: Cooke Paul, Vassallo Helen