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Face à l’homme, face à l’animal

Author(s): Mirosław Loba / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The author seeks to relate the ideas of Élisabeth de Fontenay to what is now called an ecological turn in the humanities − particularly in literary studies − to see how the work and thought of the philosopher can accompany us in the exercise of ecocritical discourse on literature. Particular attention is paid to the reading of her book "Gaspard de la nuit. Autobiographie de mon frère", which reveals human and animal fragility and invites the questioning of contemporary ecologically sensitive discourses.

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Georges Didi-Huberman

Author(s): Tomasz Swoboda / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

If the author of The Eye of History has accustomed us to his way of finding passages between the human and the non-human, between the animate and the inanimate, between words and images, by highlighting these small flying insects in his three collections of essays, he not only imitates their way of being and applies it to the volatility of his own attempts but also, as he often does, he accounts for a certain possibility, namely that of thinking by insects, instead of thinking for oneself. Indeed, far from reducing them to a simple figure of speech, Didi-Huberman allows stick insects, moths but especially fireflies, to metamorphose thought itself to open it up to other possibilities, in particular those of the nocturnal and of the invisible. This article verifies these possibilities and sketches this “phasmatic” poetics, which goes beyond the border of poetics proper to lead to questions such as the approach of traces or the ephemeral.

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Francis Ponge

Author(s): Laurent Demoulin / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

By seeking to mimic by their rhetoric the animals they describe, the poems of Francis Ponge’s Parti pris des choses or Pièces give them a formal existence. After evoking a vigorous exchange between Francis Ponge and the American critic Bruce Morrissette, who reproached the poet for indulging in anthropomorphism, we will read a passage in which Ponge clearly claims this mimetic poetics with the formula “A rhetoric by object”. Then, we will illustrate it by analyzing a poem that Jean-Paul Sartre had commented in an article of 1944: “The butterfly”. Thus, we will show that Ponge gives a formal existence to the animals he describes and takes into account their being in the world – which is a way to defend them.

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Secouer le lecteur

Author(s): Anna Maziarczyk / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

To highlight ecological issues, the contemporary novel seeks new ways of telling a story and, for example, turns to exploitation of an unusual narrative perspective. This is the case of Vincent Message’s "Défaite des maîtres et possesseurs", where the narration is provided by an alien, representing a society that colonizes our planet and reduces humans to the role of beasts. Drawing on theories of unnatural storytelling and reflections on ecological questions, this article explores how this logically impossible storytelling works in favor of nature.

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La réduction de l’humanité à l’animalité dans quelques récits d’Henri Michaux

Author(s): Agnieszka Kukuryk / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The purpose of this paper is to show how Henri Michaux, a poet of Belgian origin, with the eye of a zoologist, or rather of a naturalist, restores man to nature, and thus to a certain animalism that includes Asian and European populations. The paper will analyze stories in which the narrator refers to human animality, establishing liminal zones that allude to or mistakenly recall phases of anthropogenesis and in which unusual forms of cooperation between humans and animals are established. In turn, the discovery of animality in its strangeness allows the author to radicalize and generalize the experience of otherness.

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Doggerland d’Élisabeth Filhol – une terre (im)possible?

Author(s): Judyta Zbierska-Mościcka / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The title of Elisabeth Filhol’s novel, Doggerland, a piece of the European continent submerged by a gigantic tsunami, becomes a pretext to reflect on the relationship between man and nature, on the condition of the planet and on the responsibility for the current climate crisis. The writer subtly combines a description of the condition of the Earth with the emotional state of the characters.

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Les marines des écrivains belges

Author(s): Christophe Meurée / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

Is nowadays every narrative an ecofiction? From now on, the ecological concern seems to have become a true stereotype in Western contemporary literature, reflecting global emergency and its inherent feeling of imminent catastrophe. This paper aims at showing how this concern emerges in what appears to be anecdotal descriptions of the sea in Belgian literature, through three different literary works: André-Marcel Adamek, François Emmanuel and Jean-Philippe Toussaint. The paper will thus try to analyse why seascapes carry such a strong ecological concern and why they seem to be essential to the narrative structure of each one of those authors’ works.

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Se définir face au monde

Author(s): Karolina Czerska / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The author of the article analyzes both the novel "Les Cerfs" (2014) and the story in verse "Peau de louve" (2019) by Belgian French-speaking writer Veronika Mabardi from an ecopoetic perspective. The main character of each text is a very young girl who has to confront herself with the rules of the adult world. The research of one’s deep and true nature, which is necessary in such exploration, takes place thanks to the strong connection with wild animals and forest. A turning point in the process of self-definition occurs when the protagonists listen to the nature and follow their owns instincts. The analysis is completed with Mabardi’s statements about her attitude to wildlife.

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«Je suis comme collé à la bête, faisant partie de la bête…»

Author(s): Małgorzata Sokołowicz / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The present paper focuses on the travel notes by Michel Vieuchange (1904-1930), a young Frenchman who decided to explore Smara, a holy Muslim city, forbidden to foreigners and situated in the middle of the desert. The aim of the paper is to analyse the travelogue from an ecopoetic perspective, that is to show how this difficult, lonely and exhausting travel (Vieuchange reaches Smara, but dies on his way back home) affects the way the traveler describes his contacts with non-humans. The paper is divided into three parts. The first one shows how Vieuchange depicts in his notes animals, and particularly flies and camels. The second reveals his attitude towards the desert and the last one focuses on the way he describes Smara.

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La symbolique des vipères dans "Étoile errante" et "L’Enfant et la guerre" de J.M.G. Le Clézio

Author(s): Natalia Nielipowicz / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The article is an ecopoetic reading that leads to a reflection on the symbolic meaning of vipers that appear in "Wandering Star" and in "L’Enfant et la guerre". These snakes living on a riverbank are linked to, on one hand, an impression of freedom and happiness experienced by children venturing into the viper territory and, on the other hand, a memory or announcement of the death of the protagonists. This bipolar symbolic dimension is embodied in the figure of the resistance fighter, who first shows the nests of the vipers and the large fields of grass to children and then loses his life during the war. His struggle, added to the recollection of the aquatic element, the river and the vipers, refers to the tragedy of the Jews fleeing Nice during the summer of 1943. The presence of the reptiles evokes feelings linking the protagonists of the two texts with the world of their childhood memories.

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Les chasseurs et leurs victimes: pour une écologie des relations humaines

Author(s): Katarzyna Thiel-Jańczuk / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The article presents an analysis of Belgian author Adeline Dieudonné’s bestselling novel "True Life" in relation to contemporary humanistic reflection on the relationship between humans and animals, in particular by such philosophers as Jacques Derrida or Elisabeth de Fonteney. The novel is also analysed in the context of the emergence of a new sensitivity, which Jean-Marie Apostolidès labels as the “culture of victimization”. The purpose of the hunting images appearing in the novel is to criticize traditional cultural codes related to the “culture of heroism” (Apostolidès), responsible for shaping interpersonal relationships on the basis of the predator-victim relation. Dieudonné postulates the need to redefine traditional social roles, and also treats her work as a form of literary “intervention” aimed at creating conditions for non-aggressive coexistence of all living beings.

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«La vie qui se cache dans l’inconnu…»

Author(s): Anita Staroń / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

Mirbeau’s writings constantly show his deep and surprisingly modern interest in the world of nature, his respect for its often brutal force and his desire to preserve it from dangers of civilization. His pessimistic view of mankind as stupid, cruel and ignorant results in him portraying animals as embodiment of wisdom, tenderness and love. After a brief classification of roles animals play in Mirbeau’s works, the rhetorical figures he uses to influence the reader’s point of view will be succinctly analyzed. However, by using hyperbolization, anthropomorphization, or mystification for his animal portraits, is Mirbeau sacrificing his understanding of nature for the sake of argumentation? The relations between human beings and animals, as it results from his writings, will thus form the final part of the present study.

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Le défi de l’humanité

Author(s): Magdalena Wojciechowska / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

This article provides insight into the works of a French writer, Louis Pergaud (1882-1915), seen through an ecocritical lens. The study of Pergaud’s animal texts: De Goupil à "Margot" (1910), "La Revanche du corbeau: nouvelles histoires de bêtes" (1911) and "Dernières histoiresde bêtes" (posthumous edition, 2020) reveals that the author can be seen as a precursor of “environmental writings”. The way in which Pergaud sensitizes us to the animal suffering and to the fact that the boundary between the human and the animal species is hard to break will be examined. The said boundary impedes the redefinition of our relationship with the non-human actors, which is yet necessary. Also the language used by the author in order to bring closer the two realities – the animal and the human one – and his willingness to ensure them a more peaceful coexistence will be analysed.

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La nature et l’art chez Giono de 1940 à 1944

Author(s): Krzysztof Jarosz / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

In the inter-war period Jean Giono was famous for his novels about humans struggling against the forces of Nature (this is why he referred to the state of panic caused by the fear of the powerful elements); thus he created the myth of returning to the earth. From our perspective he was on the one hand a precursor of ecocritical writing and, on the other, he was mainly interested in creation of the pre-industrial harmonious community of farmers, shepherds, and artisans, who were to inhabit villages where all people would know one another. The article analyzes three short texts that were created in the period in question: Fragments d’un paradis, Pour saluer Melville, and Virgile. Giono creates there an aesthetics that will be dominant in his post-war texts. This aesthetics is based on the personal, metaphorical vision of the world; the vision places the artist in the centre as a transformer and a poet, as Giono claims. The metaphor that summarizes the new vision is a “Spanish tavern”, hence a place where travelers could eat only what they brough twith them. This article is a survey of the transfer from the vision of Nature seen through the lens of panic to the vision of Nature as the subject matter of Art.

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Sensibilités animales

Author(s): Aleksandra Komandera / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The aim of the present article is to verify if ecopoetic approach is possible to be applied to Maurice Genevoix’s book Bestiaire enchanté. Firstly, we will provide theoretical context, based on the waves visible in the development of ecocriticism, then we will try to interpret Genevoix’s text in their perspective. We will discuss techniques the author uses to depict rural environment and relations between humans and nature, built apparently on admiration and respect. We will also study methods by which Genevoix expresses complexity and sumptuousness of nature, and examine how he deals with the silence of animals. We will conclude by answering the questions whether Genevoix manages, or not, to escape anthropological point of view while writing about nature.

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Puissances de la fiction: comment renouer avec les vivants?

Author(s): Colette Camelin / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

These fictions show the lack of contact with living creatures and try to re-establish these links. "Le Grand Vertige" is an ecological spy novel: Adam Thobias, professor of biology at Oxford, tries to organize scientific attempts to overcome the climate change. They all fail but a young woman learns how to reconnect with living creatures and human actions. The furtifs are fictitious animals, which live constant metamorphosis while they incorporate bits of their environment. The army hunts them but rebels protect them. In 2040 a connected ring enforced by the company (Orange) always controls citizens. The rebels and the furtifs succeed in overthrowing the oppressing order and free lively energies. This “ecological thriller” empowers its reader…

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L’animalité et l’humanité dans "Règne animal" de Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

Author(s): Magdalena Zdrada-Cok / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The article’s subject matter is the relationship between a human and an animal in "Animalia" – Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s novel that brings up the issues of violence against animals. The “human bestiality” is illustrated in two ways: through the History of the 20th century (The Great War is in the foreground) and through the transformation of a traditional farm into a pork industry. The theme of the fall of humanity is analysed in the context of the philosophy of Jacques Derrida (deconstruction of Cartesianism, carnophallogocentrism, animal sacrifice). The following article studies how this committed and philosophical novel is inspired by naturalist, expressionist, and symbolist aesthetics.

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De la colonisation à la globalisation

Author(s): Renata Bizek-Tatara / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

The article focuses on the novel "Congo Inc. Le testament de Bismarck" (2014) by In Koli Jean Bofane (born in 1954), where the issue of protecting the natural environment and its fusional link to man takes centre stage. I study the environmental ills that the Congo (DRC) has suffered, as well as various misdeeds of globalisation, carried out, in most cases, through violence. I also reflect on the committed posture of the novelist who openly denounces the bad governance and global imperialism of the financial institutions and the UN whose globalisation of Congo is massacring its ecosystems. For him, this is just another, more modern, form of colonisation of the native country, leading to its ecological degradation, which in turn leads to a demographic, economic and identity-based degradation. According to this proponent of ecocentrism, man is a part of nature, one species among others, a component of a mixed community. This is why protecting nature means, in this Congolese fiction, protecting man, his present and future.

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La nature caribéenne postcoloniale

Author(s): Michał Obszyński / Language(s): French Publication Year: 0

As a component of identity, as a receptacle of history, as a witness of the past or as a companion in the anti-colonial struggle, Caribbean nature is charged with the most diverse meanings and feeds a particularly rich and multidimensional Caribbean imaginary. This article proposes to trace some aspects of this multitude of meanings and values, as it manifests itself in the French-speaking Caribbean prose, notably through the prism of the concept of semiotics of nature. Through the analysis of natural motifs in the novel "Les Arbres musiciens" (1957) by Jacques Stephen Alexis and with reference to the poetics of Édouard Glissant, we will attempt to show the narrative and discursive strategies of these two writers who give voice to nature in a logic of colonial emancipation. For, if colonization rests, on the ideological and symbolic level, on the reduction of the colonial territory and its inhabitants to silence, the anti-colonial revolt and the overcoming of the after-effects of domination also pass by the restitution to the colonized universe of the right to say and to say itself.

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THE POETICS OF RECONCILIATION IN FRENCH LITERARY WORK OF THE 20TH CENTURY. FROM MARIE NOËL TO SYLVIE GERMAIN

Author(s): Václava Bakešová / Language(s): English Publication Year: 0

Because of the Holocaust, World War II is the focal point for capturing spiritual experience in the 20th-century literature. How did the transformation of French spiritual literature from the poet Marie Noël in the 1st half of the century to the novelist Sylvie Germain at its end come about? Using examples from their work, this paper shows both authors’ sources of inspiration and highlights the means of expressing spirituality of a person going through an inner struggle. Although the authors describe a dark night, both of them they have a desire to overcome it, to reconcile with God, with the world and with themselves.

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