Marie de l’Incarnation d’après Jean-Daniel Lafond : l’amour d’une sainte contre la barbarie actuelle

The contribution examines the documentary Folle de Dieu (2008) and the play Marie de l'Incarnation ou La déraison d'amour (2009), Jean-Daniel Lafond’s adaptations of Marie de l’Incarnation’s (1599-1672) autobiographical texts. The study demonstrates that the two works, the last in a long biographical tradition, construe the nun’s life as a humanitarian model through the theme of love. In this manner, the film-maker encourages the current society not to give way to the bellicose violence of the last century and to rethink the future as a possible happiness.

De la violence à l’écriture : destruction et reconstruction dans la littérature judéo-méditerranéenne et orientale francophone

Violence is a central element in the Judeo-Mediterranean and oriental literature written in the French language because it is not only a source of trauma but also originates in an exile without return. Various narratives show us the evolution of verbal abuse which, eventually, turns into murderous acts. In the face of this destructive madness, some writers make use of non-violent writing as a means of reconstruction and restoration. Their objective is to show the concrete consequences of violence and urge readers to become aware of the suffering it causes.

Simone Schwarz-Bart et l’écriture de la violence (post)coloniale dans le roman Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle

This text is dedicated to studying the fictionalization of traumas of (post)colonialism in the novel Pluie et vent sur Télumée Miracle by the Guadeloupean writer Simone Schwarz-Bart. Published in 1972, the book is built on the premise of novel writing as a therapeutic expression of trauma to be overcome. This implies bringing out the pain of slavery and of a miserable life in the sugar cane plantations through the resistance saga of four generations of valiant women. From a bottom-up perspective of history (Jim Sharpe) and the possibility of the subaltern’s testimony (Gayatri Spivak), emphasis is placed on the oppressed colonized (Frantz Fanon) as main characters, who break the silence for a long time imposed by their masters (Albert Memmi) in order to tell their story.

Écrire la guerre sans fin : le roman Syngué Sabour. Pierre de patience d’Atiq Rahimi

Atiq Rahimi’s Syngué Sabour is not a classical war novel, in spite of the fact that war is the organizing theme of the novel. The plot of the novel may be set in Afghanistan, a country where war has been a permanent and integral part of the people’s everyday life for generations. How is it possible to describe a never ending, dreadful war without making the writing sensationalist or pathetic? What kinds of language tools and stylistic devices are used by Rahimi to describe the violence of war? When words are not adequate for the depiction of the violence of war, what extralinguistic strategies can the writer employ? These are the research questions the article explores.

Quelques aspects de l’écriture de la violence dans le roman L’Attentat de Yasmina Khadra

Violence and its devastating effects challenge writers more than ever. Based on the novel L’Attentat [The Attack] (Julliard, 2005), by the Algerian writer Yasmina Khadra, this paper aims to demonstrate that the writing of violence is both the consequence and the mirror of today’s world convulsions. The analytical approach is focused on the functions of this type of writing, the various forms of violence and their problematic aspects, as well as on the relation of a discourse explaining terrorism with a humanist pacifist discourse, as it appears in the novel.

Le récit de survivance de Serge Amisi : modalités d’adaptation textuelle et stratégies d’ajustement

In the narrative of survival, Souvenez-vous de moi, l’enfant de demain (2011), Serge Amisi, former child soldier in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1997 to 2011, recounts his story of forced recruitment in Kabila’s rebel troops. A hybrid text that pushes the boundaries between fiction as well as historical and personal truth, this testimony turns out to be a privileged writing space where the social and psychic reconstruction of the narrator can be achieved. In the first part, the article explores Amisi’s singular and powerful writing which blurs the lines between reality and fiction. In the second part, the paper demonstrates how Amisi summons his memory to restore the coping mechanisms which allowed him to adapt to the living conditions around him or to face the barbaric punishments while taking a childlike look at a dehumanizing historical reality.

Écrire la guerre civile algérienne : la mise en place d’un nouveau pacte de lecture dans Le Serment des barbares de Boualem Sansal

During the Black Decade, Algerian French speaking writers were confronted with several issues in the way their novels were received. The meaning of these novels has often been misrepresented. Boualem Sansal, whose first novel was published in 1999, develops original generic and enunciative strategies to bypass the obstacles that he noticed during these troubled years. He lays the foundations for a new deal with his readers, based on ethics and responsibility. The author aims to show that the denunciation of violence and its root causes can only make a significant impact if the reader is involved as an active partner.

Tireur olympique/embusqué : récit sportif et fiction de la guerre dans Robert Mitchum ne revient pas de Jean Hatzfeld

We would like to focus on the relationship between sport and war in literature by interrogating military engagement as an accepted form of violence. To address this issue, we analyse a narrative fiction by Jean Hatzfeld, entitled Robert Mitchum ne revient pas [Robert Mitchum is not coming back], which is based on the Bosnian War. By mixing sport, war and journalism, the author discusses the challenges of war testimony, between fascination with violence and pacifism.

De la fictionnalisation du génocide rwandais à la stylisation de l’éthique de la non-violence : Souveraine Magnifique d’Eugène Ébodé

Can we assume that the rewriting of the Rwandan genocide from April to July 1994 may alternatively have a moralizing role in the sense of educating readers about the atrocities suffered by the warring parties ? Based on sociocriticism as the framework theorized by Edmond Cros and Pierre Barbéris, this study identifies the literary and ethical issues crystallized in Eugene Ébodé’s writing frame for the purposes of filling the gap left in memory by a reductive historical discourse. In particular, it unravels the relationship between historical characters and their literary double, with a view to postulating that the fictionalization of historical events sometimes proves to be an artistic alteration that reveals the nonviolent nature of interhuman contacts.