Frères ennemis : the French in American literature, Americans in French literature / William Cloonan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Cloonan, William J., author.

Series:

Liverpool scholarship online.

Liverpool scholarship online

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

French fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

French fiction.

French fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

United States--In literature.

United States.

France--In literature.

France.

United States--Foreign public opinion, French.

France--Foreign public opinion, American.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 299 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Liverpool : Liverpool University Press, 2018.

Summary:

Frères Ennemis focuses on Franco-American tensions as portrayed in works of literature from approximately the mid-nineteenth-century to the present. An Introduction is followed by nine chapters, each focused on a French or American literary text which shows the evolution/devolution of the relations between the two nations at a particular point in time. While the heart of the analysis consists of close textual readings, social, cultural and political contexts are introduced to provide a better understanding of the historical reality influencing the individual novels, a reality to which these novels are also responding. Chapters One through Five, covering a period from the mid-1870s to the end of the Cold War, discuss significant aspects of the often fraught relationship from the theoretical perspective of Roland Barthes' theory of modern myth, described in his Mythologies. Barthes' theory helps situate Franco-American tensions in a paradigmatic structure, while at the same time it is supple enough to allow for shifts and reversals within the paradigm. Subsequent chapters explore new French attitudes toward the powerful, potentially dominant influence of American culture on French life. In these sections I argue that recent French fiction displays more openness to the American experience than has existed in the past, and as such contrasts with the more static American approach to French culture.

Contents:

The creation of the American in Paris: the American

The splendor and misery of the American scientist: L'Ève future

The American woman and the invention of Paris: The Custom of the Country

The expatriate idyll: The Sun Also Rises

Truths and delusions: the Cold War in Les Mandarins

Embracing American culture: Cherokee

An American Excursion into French fiction: The Book of Illusions

Rerouting: Ça n'existe pas l'Amérique

L'Américaine in Paris: Le Divorce.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 15 Jan 2020).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

CC BY-NC-ND

ISBN:

9781789629101

1789629101

9781786949356

1786949350

OCLC:

1059414954

Access Restriction:

Open Access Unrestricted online access