French-speaking culture in Belarus in 18th–19th centuries

Belarus (or White Russia as the country was called in the 18th–19th centuries) is often neglected in French-speaking culture studies which confuse it with Poland or Lithuania. However, this part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, then of Russian Empire, had its own role in the French-speaking dialogue in early modern Europe. This study conducts a literary analysis of texts written in French by inhabitants or natives of Belarus as well as a historical analysis of the country’s cultural context since the Enlightenment to the First World War.

The author

Born in 1980 in Belarus, Denis Kondakov studied at the Polotsk State University (Belarus) at the Faculty of History and Literature (1997-2002). In 2005, he supported his doctoral thesis The work of Eugène Ionesco in the artistic and ideological context of European literature of the twentieth century (published under this title in Novopolotsk in 2008). Since 2008, he has been a senior lecturer and research director at the Department of World Literature at the University of Polotsk. Member of the French Society of Study of the eighteenth century since January 2013.

Le texte

Ce texte a été écrit en mai 2013 dans le cadre de la bourse Fernand Braudel-IFER incoming dont le séjour a été effectué à l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3.

Reference

Denis Kondakov. Francophonie en Bi ́elorussie aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles. FMSH-WP-2014-76.2014.