This volume collects papers presented at the annual French Literature Conference, sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of the University of South Carolina.

This volume is of particular relevance to literary and filmic translators, to translation theorists and to anyone with an interest in translation as an art. Throughout the majority of essays in the volume, translation is projected as a complex creative task and not as an exercise in simply re-encoding the meaning of a source text. The received superiority of the original is ultimately questioned here. The customary binary divide between original and translation or copy, and between author and translator is forcefully challenged as cinematic and literary translation is presented as an essentially creative process. Whether highlighting specific author-related problems or whether focusing on the broader issues of the ethics of translation, of cultural transmissibility or of obsolescence, the general thrust of these essays seeks to demonstrate the authorial credentials of the translator. Despite the cogent counter-arguments advanced by a minority of the contributors, the dominant discourse here is one which replaces the stereotypical, virtually anonymous translator with a high-profile, creative figure.

This volume collects papers presented at the annual French Literature Conference, sponsored by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures of the University of South Carolina.

Stories of violence — such as the account in Genesis of Cain’s jealousy and murder of Abel — have been with us since the time of the earliest recorded texts. Undeniably, the scourge of violence fascinates, confounds, and saddens. What are its uses in literature — its appeal, forms, and consequences? Anchored by Alice Kaplan’s substantial contribution, the thirteen articles in this volume cover diverse epochs, lands, and motives. One scholar ponders whether accounts of Huguenot martyrdom in the sixteenth-century might suggest more pride than piety. Another assesses the real versus the true with respect to a rape scene in The Heptameron. Female violence in fairy tales by Madame d’Aulnoy points to gender politics and the fragility of female solidarity, while another article examines similar issues in the context of Ananda Devi’s works in present-day Mauritius. Other studies address the question of sadism in Flaubert, the unstable point of view of Emmanuel Carrère’s L’Adversaire, the ambivalence toward violence in Chamoiseau’s Texaco, the notions of “terror” and “tabula rasa” in the writings of Blanchot, the undoing of traditions of narrative continuity and authority in the 1998 film, À vendre, and consequences of the power differential in a repressive Haiti as depicted in the film Vers le Sud (2005). Paradoxes emerge in several studies of works where victims may become perpetrators, or vice versa.

What unites this volume is its focus on translation as interlinguistic practice and metaphor for intercultural communication and transcultural relations. The contributions draw on literature, film, historical documents, highlighting the significance of translation for African, Caribbean and migrant francophone discourse.

The 2007 manifesto in favour of a "Litterature-monde en francais" has generated new debates in both "francophone" and "postcolonial" studies. Praised by some for breaking down the hierarchical division between "French" and "Francophone" literatures, the manifesto has been criticized by othersfor recreating that division through an exoticizing vision that continues to privilege the publishing industry of the former colonial metropole. Does the manifesto signal the advent of a new critical paradigm destined to render obsolescent those of "francophone" and/or "postcolonial" studies? Or isit simply a passing fad, a glitzy but ephemeral publicity stunt generated and promoted by writers and publishing executives vis-a-vis whom scholars and critics should maintain a skeptical distance? Does it offer an all-embracing transnational vista leading beyond the confines of postcolonialism orreintroduce an incipient form of neocolonialism even while proclaiming the end of the centre/periphery divide? In addressing these questions, leading scholars of "French", "Francophone" and "postcolonial" studies from around the globe help to assess the wider question of the evolving status ofFrench Studies as a transnational field of study amid the challenges of globalization.