Framing narratives of the Second World War and Occupation in France, 19392009

New readings

Edited by Margaret Atack, Christopher Lloyd

Publication date:

31 August 2012

Length of book:

264 pages

Publisher

Manchester University Press

Dimensions:

216x138mm

ISBN-13: 9780719087554

The Second World War and the German Occupation remain a major focal point in French culture and society, with new and sometimes controversial titles published every year – Irène Némirovsky’s Suite française and Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes, both rapidly translated into English, offer just two examples of this significant phenomenon.

Gathering within one volume studies of genres, visual cultures, chronology, narrative theory, and a wealth of narratives in fiction and film, Framing narratives of the Second World War and occupation in France 1939-2009 brings together an internationally distinguished group of contributors and offers an authoritative overview of criticism on war and occupation narratives in French, a redefinition of the canon of texts and films to be studied and a vibrant demonstration of the richness of the work in this area.

Edited by two leading specialists, the book includes contributions by William Cloonan, Richard J Golsan, Leah Hewitt, Colin Nettelbeck and Gisèle Sapiro.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
INTRODUCTION Margaret Atack & Christopher Lloyd
PART I: CONSTRUCTING THE WAR IN NARRATIVE
INTRODUCTION
1. Gisèle Sapiro: The role of literature in framing perceptions of reality: the example of the Second World War
2. William Cloonan: Representing the war: contemporary narratives of World War Two
3. Colin Nettelbeck: Getting at the truth: some issues of sources in the construction of an understanding of the Second World War and Occupation in France
4. Nathalie Aubert: La Main à plume: poetry under the Occupation
5. Thomas Newman: A reading of Genet’s adaptations from the Russian novel in his Occupation narratives
6. Peter Tame: Private and public spaces and places in Jonathan Littell’s Les Bienveillantes
7. Béatrice Damamme-Gilbert: Henry Bauchau’s Le Boulevard périphérique: The war story as clarification and investigation of the present

PART II: REPRESENTATION AND RECEPTION
INTRODUCTION
8. Richard J Golsan: Corruptions of memory: some reflections on history, representation and le devoir de mémoire in France today
9. Debra Kelly: Lived experience past/reading experience present: figures of memory in French life-writing narratives of the Occupation

10. Angela Kershaw: Fictions of testimony: Irène Némirovsky and Suite française
11. Virginie Sansico: Hoaxes and the memory of the Second World War: from Un Héros très discret to Misha Defonseca
12. Penny Brown: Framing the past: illustrating the Second World War in French children’s fiction
13. Angela O’Flaherty: The traumatised national community in Anna Langfus’s Les Bagages de sable
14. Luc Rasson: When the SS-man says I: on Robert Merle, Michel Rachline and Jonathan Littell

PART III: TRAJECTORIES
INTRODUCTION
15. Leah Hewitt: Distorted mirrors: Jewish identity in French post-war films on the Occupation
16. Hilary Footitt: The liberal way of war? French representations of the Allies 1944-2008
17. Danièle Sabbah: ‘Avoir vingt ans dans cette effroyable tourmente’ : Second World War Diaries in the Light of Hélène Berr’s Journal
18. David Uhrig: Maurice Blanchot’s Aminadab: a novel about collective memory under Vichy
19. Katherine Cardin: Life as an ‘enfant de collabo’: Marie Chaix’s evolution 1974-2005

20. Alan Morris: ‘Un Passé qui ne passe pas’: Patrick Modiano’s Accident nocturne and Dans le café de la jeunesse perdue

CONCLUSION
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
INDEX

...excellent volume

...does not disappoint.