Research and Innovation

This article considers the literary self-representations produced by the so-called Jeunes-Frances around 1830, interrogating the simultaneous presence of two contradictory imaginaries: that of a Romantic youth and that of a century prematurely aged by commercialism. Several critics have noted the place of youth in the articulation of a generational self-consciousness, but the motif of youth, as taken up in the works of writers such as Borel, Gautier, Nerval, or O’Neddy also offers a means of questioning their marginalization within the literary marketplace and revealing the latter's corruption. The self-portraits these writers produce for their contemporaries thus not only underscore their collective identity, but constitute a novel discourse about youth itself.

Cet article se propose de revenir sur les portraits que les dénommés Jeunes-France donnent d’eux-mêmes autour de 1830 afin d’y étudier la coexistence de deux imaginaires contradictoires : celui d’une jeunesse romantique et d’un jeune siècle, prématurément vieilli par l’avènement des logiques marchandes. Au-delà de l’élaboration, déjà abondamment commentée, d’une conscience générationnelle, l’adhésion au motif de la jeunesse dans la production d’écrivains tels que Borel, Gautier, Nerval ou O’Neddy constitue un moyen inédit de remettre en question leur marginalisation dans les systèmes de légitimation en vigueur afin de mieux en exposer les failles. Les représentations qu’ils renvoient à leurs contemporains contribuent ainsi à façonner, par-delà l’identité collective, un nouveau discours sur la jeunesse.

La présence fantomatique, chez Paul Bénichou, d’un Balzac théoricien du désenchantement invite à étudier la place qu’occupe la crise historique et politique de 1830 dans la critique balzacienne. C’est ce que cet article entreprend en proposant une rétrospective de quelques avatars mémorables de ce Balzac marqué de la « griffe de 1830 »: de l’idéologue déçu décelé par Pierre Barbéris entre les lignes d’un Balzac commentateur social, au prolifique homme de presse analysé par Roland Chollet, en passant par le conteur fantastique étudié par Pierre-Georges Castex, et enfin au Balzac, génial inventeur de lui-même, que révèlent les travaux de José-Luis Diaz. Au vu de ce panorama, c’est autant de perspectives distinctes mais complémentaires sur Balzac 1830 que la critique balzacienne invite à découvrir.

The ghostly presence of a Balzac, theoretician of disenchantment, in the work of Paul Bénichou invites us to examine the legacies of the historical and political crisis of 1830 in Balzac criticism. This article undertakes such an examination through a review of a number of Balzacs marked by the “stamp of 1830”: from the disillusioned ideologue lurking between the lines of his social commentaries, recognized by Pierre Barbéris, to the hyperproductive journalist analysed by Roland Chollet, to the narrator of the fantastic studied by Pierre-Georges Castex, and finally to Balzac, self-mythologizer, as revealed by the works of José-Luis Diaz. This overview invites wider critical consideration of the distinct yet complementary perspectives through which we can understand Balzac as a figure of 1830. 

Cet article envisage Georges, le seul roman dumasien à s’intéresser au statut contesté des personnes de couleur en situation coloniale esclavagiste, à la lumière des discours émancipateurs circulant à l’époque de sa rédaction, notamment dans la presse antiesclavagiste française. Il se propose d’interroger, ce faisant, les enjeux du roman de Dumas et le rapport de celui-ci à la pensée et à l’écriture abolitionniste. 

This article considers Georges, the only novel by Dumas to address the contested status of people of color in the context of colonial slavery, in light of the emancipatory discourses circulating at the time of its writing, especially in the French antislavery press. In doing so, it aims to examine the stakes of Dumas's novel and its relationship to abolitionist thought and writing.

Con un acercamiento transatlántico y relacional, este artículo reconsidera una producción poética del siglo XIX en torno a la figura romantizada de Cristóbal Colón en el Caribe hispano y en las Islas Canarias. La producción poética se lee como parte del meta-archipiélago formulado por Antonio Benítez Rojo, que parte de figuras fundacionales como Bartolomé de las Casas. El objetivo es reconsiderar las negociaciones de la condición colonial en tiempos decoloniales.

The Shared Language of Poetry: Mexico and the United States began as a symposium funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and has now become an anthology of essays and poetry that makes a passionate case for the essential value of the humanities. The assemblage of different languages—Spanish, English and Indigenous, as well as in-between inflections—shows the complexity of linguistic and cultural connections between and within the two nations. Here, fourteen scholars and poets from Mexico and the United States attest to the power of contemporary poetry through essays on topics ranging from "Poetic Breadth in the 21st Century" to "Translation in a Global World," from "Representing and Defying Affect through the Body Poetic" to the "Linguistic and Geographic Remappings of Indigenous Poetics." These invigorating texts are complemented by an anthology of verse, published in the original languages, as well as in English or Spanish translation. The volume's intellectual and linguistic diversity offers a vibrant picture of the power of poetry today and for all time.

By examining the dynamic interplay between discourses of fiction and medicine, Novel Medicine demonstrates how fiction incorporated, created, and disseminated medical knowledge in China, beginning in the sixteenth century. Critical readings of fictional and medical texts provide a counterpoint to prevailing narratives that focus only on the “literati” aspects of the novel, showing that these texts were not merely read, but were used by a wide variety of readers for a range of purposes. The intersection of knowledge—fictional and real, elite and vernacular—illuminates the history of reading and daily life and challenges us to rethink the nature of Chinese literature.

The Plum in the Golden Vase (also known as The Golden Lotus) was published in the early seventeenth century and may be the first long work of Chinese fiction written by a single (though anonymous) author. Featuring both complex structural elements and psychological and emotional realism, the novel centers on the rich merchant Ximen Qing and his household and describes the physical surroundings and material objects of a Ming dynasty city. In part a social, political, and moral critique, the novel reflects on hierarchical power relations of family and state and the materialism of life at the time.

The essays in this volume provide ideas for teaching the novel using a variety of approaches, from questions of genre, intertextuality, and the novel’s reception to material culture, family and social dynamics, and power structures in sexual relations. Insights into the novel’s representation of Buddhism, Chinese folk religion, legal culture, class, slavery, and obscenity are offered throughout the volume.

Classifying the Unseen examines “epistemic” literature, including medical texts, encyclopedias, almanacs, and guidebooks that describe or hint at early scientific inquiry; local and court histories, gazetteers, and newspapers that recorded natural disasters, omens and unexplained phenomena; and “entertainment” literature – novels, anecdotes, and jottings created primarily to amuse and beguile but which also conveyed information. Existing histories of Chinese science concern themselves primarily with officials at court and their response to western science. Classifying the Unseen expands on these histories by examining debates on the margins of that elite discourse, often found in commentary, appendices, sequels, and supplements. By drawing previously unexplored connections between epistemic and entertainment texts, elite and more marginal literature including newspapers, medical manuscripts, coroner’s manuals and family instructions, this work advances a more robust understanding of how an increasingly literate early modern China perceived and experienced the natural world. Classifying the Unseen examines the curious in context – revealing fears of people and practices (magical poison, secret medical practices) along the borders of an expanding empire, and foreign curiosities that penetrated its urban centers. It also seeks to understand how things were investigated and envisioned when they lacked visual context – either because they were everywhere (water, wind, life) or nowhere (dragons, the future).