In this seminar we will examine the essay, and more particularly the personal essay, as a form. What makes an essay an essay? What distinguishes it from related forms such as the letter, the article, the sermon, or the academic essay? The essay has often been characterized by its spontaneity, its lack of system—characteristics which make it difficult to define. According to one of its great American practitioners, Joseph Epstein, it is “a form of discovery,” and so entirely unpredictable.

One way to approach the essay is to look at its history. The modern prose essay was born just outside Bordeaux at the end of the sixteenth century with the publication of Michel de Montaigne’s Essais (1580). After 1603, when these were translated by John Florio, a wave of imitations appeared in English. Montaigne's title, and the word essay itself, alerted readers to the fact that they were about to read something new, that they were aproaching a new point of view, a renewal in perspective. Later, the essay proliferated with the rise of the periodical which created a market for essay writing.

Right from the beginning, the essay had an anti-authoritarian bent. Montaigne managed to avoid being accused of impiety by claiming his essays were merely sketches, and so of little importance. His strategy served to circumvent authority. Apparent humility has remained an attribute of the essay, which often begins with the particular—personal—experience of the essayist and connects it to universal questions. Other important characteristics of the essay are its questioning stance, its skepticim, its openness, and thus its anti-dogmatism. The essay is not a means of conveying the whole (or even a whole) truth. It is the expression one observer’s vision.

In the United States, a large body of work has been produced since colonial times. We will work chronologically, from Benjamin Franklin to Joan Didion.

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“Otherness” is a concept we handle with relatively fluidity – in our XXIst century language at least.  The umbrella term denotes the foreign, in gender, in nationality, in culture, in body and mind, it embraces what we do not understand, struggle to recognize, or cringe to self-appropriate. Introspectively, it refers to that part of ourselves we do not care to show, or have not come to terms with, indeed, have not yet discovered, and therefore have no control over.  Otherness comes to designate “us”. By contrast, the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries do not yet talk of otherness in this way. Not with this term, at any rate. That is not to say that the notion is not in circulation.  So how does early modern England think and express “otherness”? How does this notion receive expression and representation? This seminar explores the early modern stage, from Everyman and Faustus, to plays by Shakespeare, Webster and Dekker, with the aim of identifying what the pre and post-reformation theatres consider as to be “otherness” –from spitting images within to spitting diseases without – how they word it, perform it, and explore it.

Students will spend six weeks reading extracts from plays and critical theory (Lupton, Kottman), in particular, French critical theory (Levinas, Derrida). They will choose one topic among a set of topics put to them before 1^st November. They will write a paper of 700-800 words on the topic of their choice. The paper will be given in at the latest for the 1^st January.

Students are particularly invited, during the course, to take part in conversations and rehearsal in writing in weekly forums devised to the effect. This is a space where they ask questions in methodology and share ideas they are working around.

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Ce séminaire propose d’étudier l’écriture de la souffrance — qu’elle soit physique, mentale ou morale, consécutive à une maladie ou à une expérience traumatique — dans la littérature américaine, et le rôle que joue l’écriture face à la maladie ou au trauma. Il sera divisé en deux parties.

La première partie s’intéressera au récit de maladie (« illness narrative ») et tentera de répondre à la question : comment se disent les maux, physiques ou psychiques, avec les mots du récit ? L’étude portera sur deux œuvres :

• un récit de fiction : The Story of Forgetting (2008) de Stefan Merrill Block,
• une nouvelle : « The Yellow Wallpaper » (1892) de Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Il s’agira d’étudier les modes d’énonciation de la maladie (et de la douleur), ainsi que les modes de représentation du corps ou de l’esprit malades dans deux types de récit (fiction, nouvelle) à la première et à la troisième personne. On s’intéressera aussi aux formes de résistance que peut fournir l’écriture (humour, ironie, parodie, discours métaphorique ou fragmentation pour ne citer que quelques exemples) avant de tenter une évaluation de l’approche dite « vitaliste » des philosophes Georges Canguilhem, Gilles Deleuze ou, plus récemment, Philippe Godin.

Dans le prolongement de ce premier volet, la seconde partie du séminaire permettra d’aborder des textes d’écrivaines américaines dans lesquels la question du trauma tient une place centrale. Ce volet s’articulera dans un premier temps autour des modes de représentation du corps en souffrance, corps qu’il s’agit de concevoir autant dans sa dimension individuelle (un corps de femme ici) que collective (le corps social). Nous nous pencherons ensuite sur des textes qui tentent de mettre en mots l’indicible d’une expérience traumatique, qu’il s’agisse de l’holocauste (Ozick) ou de l’odyssée des « picture brides », confrontées à la réalité du « Rêve » américain et condamnées à l’oubli dans les camps d’internement pour Japonais lors de la Seconde Guerre mondiale. Les œuvres au programme sont les suivantes :

• les deux nouvelles rassemblées dans le recueil The Shawl (1989) de Cynthia Ozick,
• un roman contemporain : The Buddha in the Attic (2011) de Julie Otsuka.

N.B. Il est vivement recommandé aux étudiants s’inscrivant à ce séminaire d’avoir lu Beloved de Toni Morrison (édition recommandée : New York, Vintage, 2004 [1987]). Il y sera fait référence au début du cours pour poser les jalons de la réflexion. L’essai de Morrison intitulé « The Site of Memory » (cf. bibliographie ci-dessous) fait partie des textes fondateurs dont la lecture est aussi conseillée en priorité.

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