Writing and the experience of ordinary life in contemporary French-language literature

Adina Balint-Babos is Full Professor of 20th- and 21st-century French literature at the University of Winnipeg, Canada, and Research Associate at the Center for Research in Cultural Studies (University of Winnipeg, Canada). She received her doctorate from the University of Toronto and was recently Scholar in Residence at the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, University of London (England). She is scientific director of the J.-M. G. Le Clézio online dictionary, Éditions Passage(s).

Patrick Imbert is a distinguished professor at the University of Ottawa and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was Director of the "Canada: Social and Cultural Issues in a Knowledge Society" Chair (2003-2018). He has published six books of fiction, over 300 articles and 38 scholarly books on multiculturalism, exclusion/inclusion, comparisons between the Americas, Canadian and Quebec literatures, Canadian francophone literatures and semiotics, dont Comparing Canada and the Americas: From Roots to Transcultural Networks (Peter Lang, 2019)

Presentation

"One of the hallmarks of contemporary literature is its investment in reality, conceived as a space to be surveyed and documented, a terrain for investigation and a matrix for writing. Whether it's taking the train or wandering through the neighborhoods of a city (Annie Ernaux, Régine Robin), observing passers-by in the street (Georges Perec, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio), meet artists in their studios or community members (Martine Delvaux, Monica Sabolo), the forms and uses of everyday life are at stake. These writers set out to record them, or to elaborate self-narratives, whether discreet or overt, often inspired by the methods of the human sciences (fieldwork, notes, archives) or contemporary art practices (montage, fragment/fragmentation). In this lecture-seminar, we will show how the notion of the “everyday”, activated in texts published since 1980 in France and French-speaking Canada, allows us to question our complex relationship with reality and the way “the contemporary” is defined in literature (Heck 2023, Viart 2013)."

Speakers

• Adina Balint-Babos: professor of modern and contemporary literature at the University of Winnipeg, Canada
• Discussant : Patrick Imbert: Distinguished Professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada