Revue du Département de littérature, théâtre et cinéma de l’Université Laval, Études littéraires est à l’avant-scène de la recherche universitaire nationale et internationale depuis sa fondation en 1968. La revue, qui se distingue par sa vocation généraliste et multidisciplinaire, publie des dossiers thématiques, des articles libres et des débats. Elle peut compter sur la contribution de chercheurs de grande renommée et valorise pleinement la publication d’articles d’étudiants aux cycles supérieurs. Publiée trois fois l'an, elle rejoint un imposant lectorat et bénéficie d’une grande visibilité. Études littéraires est indexée dans les banques de données bibliographiques de renommée mondiale, en plus d’être largement diffusée par la Société de développement des périodiques culturels québécois (SODEP), par le réseau des SUP (Sorbonne Université Presses) et par la plateforme Érudit où 98% de ses numéros sont en libre accès.
Département de littérature, théâtre et cinéma de l’Université Laval
(avant-propos) Mutants, mondes possibles et promesses de l’aube posthumaniste
Ce texte est l'avant-propos du double numéro que j'ai piloté (n°54.2-3), intitulé "Les Nouveaux mutants de la culture populaire (XXe-XXIe siècles) : sémiologie du désastre et (contre)utopie posthumaniste".
Les nouveaux mutants de la culture populaire
Mutations furtives : esthétique biopunk et polytique du vivant dans Les Furtifs d’Alain Damasio
In Les Furtifs (2019), Alain Damasio reimagines the figure of the mutant - not through technological enhancement or spectacular rupture, but through a diffuse transformation, attentive to the living and porous to its environments. The furtive mutant does not impose itself: it eludes, circulates, evolves. Through a biopunk poetics shaped by listening, narrative variation, and resistance to capture, the novel sketches out alternative ways of inhabiting the world. This article explores the political and aesthetic stakes of this poetics of flight, tracing its lines of force and points of inflection.
Du modèle postmoderne vers une narration posthumaniste : l’utopie d’un collectif queer dans Westworld (Joy, Nolan, 2016-2022, quatre saisons)
Cet article explore comment la narration fragmentée et l’hybridité dialogique de Westworld (HBO, 2016-2022) déconstruisent les catégories identitaires fixes en inscrivant ses figures posthumaines dans une dynamique queer et collective. À travers l’entrelacement des récits et la multiplicité des points de vue, la série met en scène des identités fluides et mutantes, transcendant le genre et l’individualité. Cette analyse interroge si Westworld témoigne d’une sémiologie du désastre, où toute subjectivité stable devient impossible face aux transformations technologiques et culturelles du XXIe siècle, ou si elle propose finalement une utopie posthumaniste où l’identité devient interconnectée. This article examines how the fragmented narration and dialogic hybridity of Westworld (HBO, 2016-2022) deconstructs fixed identity categories by situating its posthuman figures within a queer, collective dynamic. Through its interwoven storylines and multiplicity of perspectives, the series portrays fluid and mutable identities that transcend both gender and individuality. The analysis investigates whether Westworld articulates a semiology of disaster – in which stable subjectivity becomes impossible in the face of 21st century technological and cultural transformations – or whether it ultimately gestures toward a posthumanist utopia grounded in interconnected identity.
Introduction. Silences of Gender, Truths of Sex in the Nineteenth Century
The Translations of Newton’s Works in Eighteenth-Century France
All eighteenth-century scholars fell under Newton’s spell. While Madame du Châtelet is best remembered as the translator of the Principia into French, Diderot also inserted into his Mémoires a Latin text by Newton – preceded by his own French translation – together with footnotes. This article first examines the cultural and scientific context in which these revolutionary discoveries were received in France, before turning to the selected translations and their accompanying paratexts. Although not exhaustive, this investigation reveals the permeability between disciplines and points to further possible connections for future research.
The Promises of Finitude: Iron Man's Transhumanism Versus the embodied Worry by Thanos
This article examines the importance of the subject's relationship to his own finitude, in a connection to the world (Lebenswelt) that can be extended in and through transhumanism in order to respond to the threat of an adversary embodying in his will the limiting conditions of consciousness. Thus we draw on the recurring encounter between the character of Iron Man and his antagonist, Thanos in the MCU over eleven years of production (2008-2019) and fifteen years of narrative framework. The cinematographic medium therefore allows us to examine how humanism is at the center of the polarization of what it means to exist, between finitude and the temptation of infinity.
Devenir-(post)humain : sublimations corporelles et identitaires dans la production littéraire de Karoline Georges
This article examines the transformations of body and identity in Karoline Georges’ novels. Through her characters, Georges explores the pursuit of transcendence beyond societal constraints, particularly those tied to femininity and aesthetic standards. Using technology, such as artificial intelligence and virtual reality, she offers a vision of transhumanism and posthumanism that goes beyond physical enhancement to include the reshaping of consciousness and identity. These bodily transformations, often driven by trauma and hardship, serve as ways for the characters to reinvent themselves and break free from societal constraints. The article demonstrates how these changes open new possibilities for the fusion of mind and matter, while questioning the boundaries between the human, the non-human, and the more-than-human.
Saltations 1999. Greg Bear, Greg Egan, David Cronenberg et le mutant « évolutif »
L’année 1999 marque le retour en grâce du mutant dans la science-fiction « sérieuse ». Avec les romans Darwin’s Radio de Greg Bear et Teranesia de Greg Egan, ce sont deux maîtres de la hard science fiction qui revisitent coup sur coup le thème de l’épidémie mutagène à l’aune des transformations récentes de la biologie et notamment de la théorie de l’évolution. Pour Gérard Klein, ces deux écrivains auraient acté la mise en cause du « gradualisme » darwinien, et le retour du mutant de SF accompagnerait logiquement celui des hypothèses « saltationnistes ». Or une comparaison s’impose avec le film Crimes of the Future (2022) de David Cronenberg, une histoire d’« évolution accélérée » dont l’écriture remonte précisément à la toute fin des années 1990. Il y a bien eu une discussion entre science-fiction et darwinisme au tournant du millénaire, mais elle a dépassé les limites et les limitations du biotech thriller. The year 1999 marked the return of mutants to “serious” science fiction. With Darwin’s Radio, by Greg Bear, and Teranesia, by Greg Egan, two masters of hard science fiction revisited the theme of mutagenic epidemics in light of recent changes in biology, and in particular, in the theory of evolution. In Gérard Klein’s view, these novelists acknowledged the questioning of Darwinian “gradualism”, and the return of the sci-fi mutant followed logically on from that of “saltationist” assumptions. One could draw parallels with David Cronenberg’s film Crimes of the Future (2022), a story of “accelerated evolution” and which was written at the very end of the 1990s. There was a discussion between science fiction and Darwinism at the turn of the millennium, but it exceeded the limits and limitations of the biotech thriller genre.
Dernier entretien à intégrer dans la partie "Débats" du volume que je coordonne sur "les nouveaux mutants de la culture populaire". Carlos Tello y parle de cinéma post- et antihumaniste.
Cet entretien avec Ariel Kyrou a été réalisé en janvier dernier pour la partie "Débats" du dossier que je coordonne sur les nouveaux mutants de la culture populaire.
Mutants, cyborgs, chimeras or post-animals. Characteristics of a new literary genre
This article analyzes a category of contemporary literature that focuses on mutants, cyborgs, chimeras or post-animals according to a critical approach, with its two political and poetic axes, entitled here technopoetics, namely the poetics of life forms conceived in fluidity and impacted by technoscientific and ecological issues. The article suggests a reflection on a new literary genre. In addition to the obvious thematic dimension, this intellectual fiction is distinguished by its narratological references, but also by the different strategies studied in the article. The comparative corpus shows that these works contribute to modulating a new genre in dialogue with different social sciences.
Morphology of posthuman literature in the contemporary extreme French-speaking world
This paper is dedicated to theorizing the distinctive morphological characteristics of posthuman literature, which is thus proposed as a new categorical concept. The study focuses primarily on two fundamental features in this context that outline the boundaries of the literary posthuman: the phylogenetic character of the posthuman narrative and its anti-thanatographic dimension. The corpus covered is essentially limited to contemporary extreme Francophone literature.
Verts [Green] (2024), a graphic novel by Patrick Lacan and Marion Besançon, and “Nine Last Days on Planet Earth” (2020), a short story by Daryl Gregory, feature the transformation of the world in contact with a plant epidemic. Comparing them enables me to interrogate science fiction topoi from the queer perspective of their characters. In these works, the mutant is less important than the mutation, and kinships open up to Other-than-humans, in defense of a queer futurity. In the face of crises, popular culture thus seems to be developing a posthuman aesthetic based on a renewed apprehension of the pandemic.
Entretien avec Norbert Merjagnan (dossier "Nouveaux mutants", partie "Débats")
Réalisé en janvier 2025 pour intégrer la partie "Débats" du dossier que je coordonne, cet entretien met à l'honneur la pensée et le travail d'écriture du romancier et scénariste français Norbert Merjagnan, proche d'Alain Damasio.
Le misérable mutant : « The Golden Man » de P. K. Dick, de l’intertextualité à la métafiction
À première vue, « The Golden Man » de P. K. Dick (1954) reprend les stéréotypes du mutant ressassés dans les magazines de science-fiction et annonce les enjeux qui caractérisent les écrits plus tardifs de l’écrivain. La novella relate la découverte du mutant Cris Johnson, doté d’une peau dorée, d’une dextérité et d’une vitesse éblouissantes, et de la capacité à connaître les événements trente minutes avant qu’ils ne se produisent. Cris montre cependant des limitations intellectuelles importantes. Les indices narratifs, les topoï des récits de mutants ainsi que le premier support de publication invitent les lecteurs à adopter un point de vue similaire à celui de Cris : connaître l’avenir et imaginer des scénarios cohérents. Or, cette capacité mentale ressemble aussi au travail de l’écrivain. L’intertextualité et la métafictionnalité de la novella favorisent l’implication des lecteurs. Le récit renégocie les dichotomies afin de mettre en place une dynamique d’invention : les tensions engagent une herméneutique stimulant les réflexions sur les conventions d’écriture et aussi les frontières de l’humain. Les interrogations sur l’identité, l’avenir de l’humanité et le pouvoir de la fiction anticipatoire se cristallisent autour du misérable mutant dickien qui oblige les lecteurs à remettre en question les hiérarchies. En ce sens, la science-fiction peut être un outil d’élaboration d’une démarche prospective et d’encapacitation de l’individu. L’anticipation peut alors être considérée tant comme un sous-genre littéraire que comme une compétence induite par ce dernier. At first glance, Philip K. Dick’s “The Golden Man” (1954) reprises the familiar mutant stereotypes circulating in science-fiction magazines and anticipates the concerns that would come to define the author’s later writings. The novella recounts the discovery of the mutant Cris Johnson, whose golden skin, dazzling dexterity and speed, and ability to foresee events thirty minutes before they occur set him apart. Cris nevertheless displays significant intellectual limitations. Narrative cues, the topoi of mutant fiction, and the text’s initial publication context encourage readers to adopt a perspective similar to Cris’s own : to know the future and to imagine coherent scenarios. Yet this mental capacity also mirrors the work of the writer. The novella’s intertextuality and metafictional dimensions foster active reader involvement. The narrative renegotiates dichotomies in order to establish a dynamic of invention : its tensions prompt an interpretive process that invites reflection on both literary conventions and the boundaries of the human. Questions surrounding identity, the future of humanity, and the power of anticipatory fiction crystallize around Dick’s wretched mutant figure, who compels readers to interrogate entrenched hierarchies. In this sense, science fiction can serve as a tool for developing a prospective mode of thought and for individual empowerment. Anticipation may thus be understood both as a literary subgenre and as a competency fostered by it.
Mutant Languages: Linguistic Hybridity and Posthuman Identities in Popular Culture
Language mutates. It no longer merely accompanies shifts in identity—it inscribes them, shapes them, makes them possible. In a body of narratives where the human becomes unstable and the boundaries between the organic and the technological begin to blur, speech is never a given. It is reprogrammed, bypassed, or redirected through alternative forms of exchange, and alters not just communication but perception, thought, and the world itself. This article explores three lines of linguistic mutation—codification, erasure, and cognitive reconfiguration—and asks what remains of our ways of existing when language, too, begins to waver.
Entretien avec Jean-Gabriel Ganascia (dossier "Nouveaux mutants", partie "Débats")
Entretien avec l'un des plus grands spécialistes français de l'IA, Jean-Gabriel Ganascia.
Ways of being mutant: metamorphosis and hybridization as empowerment of the 'weak' in Game of Thrones
This article analyzes the series Game of Thrones through the notion of mutation, conceived as a dynamic of power acquisition. We examine two transformation tropes to show how the series contrasts Daenerys’s spectacular metamorphosis with Bran’s shamanic hybridization, the latter emerging as an alternative to traditional power structures. Through a philosophical and anthropological approach, we explore how Game of Thrones reshapes the boundaries between the human and the non-human, thereby opening a reflection on contemporary forms of power.
Entretien avec Marc Atallah (dossier "Mutants", coordinatrice : Nathalie Dufayet)
Cet entretien est à verser dans la partie "Débats" du dossier que je coordonne sur le thème "Les Nouveaux Mutants : sémiologie du désastre et (contre)utopie posthumaniste". Marc Atallah est Maître d’enseignement et de recherche à la Section de français de l’Université de Lausanne. Après avoir dirigé "la Maison d’Ailleurs" pendant treize ans, il a fondé "nARTative SA", une société de créateurs culturels, notamment en charge du Digital Dreams Festival, dont la première édition s’est tenue en 2024. À l’UNIL, ses recherches portent sur les littératures conjecturales – l’utopie, la dystopie et la science-fiction – et sur les théories de la fiction.
Entretien avec Eric Fourneret (dossier "Mutants", coordinatrice : Nathalie DUFAYET)
Cet entretien est à verser dans la partie "Débats" du dossier que je coordonne sur le thème "Les Nouveaux mutants de la culture populaire : sémiologie du désastre et (contre)utopie posthumaniste". Eric Fourneret est Maître de conférences en philosophie, spécialisé sur les questions éthiques en matière de philosophie de la technique. Il est membre de l'équipe ETH+ ("Éthique, Technologies et Humanités") au sein de l'unité de recherche ETHICS de l'Université catholique de Lille.
Entretien avec Alexandre Moatti (Nathalie Dufayet, coordinatrice dossier "Mutants")
Cet entretien est à verser dans la partie "Débats" du dossier que je coordonne sur le thème "Les Nouveaux mutants de la culture populaire : sémiologie du désastre et (contre)utopie posthumaniste". Alexandre Moatti est polytechnicien, ingénieur des Mines et historien des sciences, aujourd’hui chercheur associé HDR à l'Université Paris-Cité. Il a reçu en 2016 le Prix Diderot-Curien de l'AMCSTI [réseau professionnel des cultures scientifique, technique et industrielle]. Ses principaux ouvrages sont : Alterscience : postures, dogmes, idéologies (2013), Aux Racines du transhumanisme en France : 1930-1980 (2020) et Technocratisme : les grands corps à la dérive (2023).
From the Already Said to the Unspoken: Repetitions and Inversions in Les Demi-sexes by Jane de la Vaudère (1897)
According to the norms of the sapphic novel – which, from the libertine novels of the late eighteenth century to fin de siècle writings, developed its own set of stylistic, aesthetic, and narrative conventions – Les Demi-sexes, published in 1897 by Jane de la Vaudère, does not, at first glance, appear to depart. Yet this register of the “over-said” cannot be considered apart from what it conceals: a set of dissonances within the tightly woven narrative fabric shaped by the Decadent tradition and, above all, a complex play around plagiarism. This depth of the said and this work of reiteration-with-a-difference open a breach toward what the discourse itself denies.
Poetics of Suggestion and Sexual Subtexts of Gendered Violence in Monsieur Vénus by Rachilde (1884) and Bruges-la-Morte by Rodenbach (1892)
This article examines the sexist and sexual subtexts in two fin de siècle novels depicting femicide: Rachilde’s Monsieur Vénus (1884) and Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte (1892). Returning to the genetic development of the works, it outlines the key features of the poetics of suggestion and the suggestive at play in both novels, highlighting the hybridization of Decadent and Symbolist aesthetics. The textual analysis, in turn, reveals the paradoxical inversion of the semantic field of eroticism within the discourse of violence as a means of subverting established codes.
Failures of the Sexual Order : “Male Brutality” and Female Dissatisfaction in Selected Sandian Texts from 1832
This article examines, in the novel Indiana and the short story “La Marquise” – both written and published in 1832 by George Sand – the disruptions in the sociocultural construction of sexuality in relation to the expectations of conjugal duty in the early nineteenth century. By studying certain sexual scripts that shape identities, it identifies the ways in which Sand’s texts (un)veil sexual taboos (incontinence and male violence) and articulate female desire (and its dissatisfaction).
This Unnameable Desire: Incest as Apocalypse in the Decadent Novel (1884–1897)
The end of the nineteenth century left its mark on literary history through its taste for excess, emphasis, and transgression. In their portrayals of consensual incestuous relationships within the same family, Élémir Bourges, Rachilde, and Catulle Mendès draw on the taboo to sharpen the boundary between the licit and the illicit. While Decadence was preoccupied with staging its own demise, its literary treatment of incest shows it on the brink – aware of its self-destruction, yet equally conscious of an imminent return to order.
Metamorphosis of Genres : Misgendering the Reading in Novembre (1842) and Madame Bovary (1857)
In his 1857 interpretation, Baudelaire is the first to misgender Emma Bovary, opening the way for a reading of the play of gender inversions rarely taken seriously by literary criticism. This article therefore seeks to demonstrate, question, and unsettle the ambiguities of gender in Flaubert’s writing, positing that there is a major unspoken element in his poetics : from Novembre (1842) to Madame Bovary (1857), one can discern an ambivalent weaving of desire and identification. Postmodern in spirit and inspired by queering, this reading aims to reveal the family resemblance between the two works.
Seeing Male Homosexuality Differently: L’Autre vue by Georges Eekhoud (1904)
Although male homosexuality is never explicitly named in L’Autre vue (1904) by Belgian author Georges Eekhoud, numerous clues suggest that it is the novel’s central subject and that it can be reread from a queer perspective. Theories of the unreliable narrator reveal the presence of not one but two homosexual characters : Paridael and Bergmans. Once unmasked, the latter provides access to a militant discourse in favor of legitimizing homosexuality in the novel’s central section – Paridael’s diary – by merging two levels of reading : an explicit social and political discourse that conceals an implicit homosexual one.
When the “White Flight of Lesbians” Passes By: Writing Without Saying, or the Suggestion of Lesbianism in La Curée (1871)
While the association between naturalism and pornography predominates in the nineteenth century, addressing sexuality is a real balancing act for Zola. He even stated that he did not wish to devote a novel to homosexuality. Yet in La Curée, allusions to sapphism abound. To understand the construction of lesbianism in the work, as well as the implications of such a portrayal, this article analyzes Zola’s language, his place within the social discourse of his time, and – through a genetic study – his hesitations regarding the sexuality of his characters.
Félicité de Choiseul-Meuse’s “La chasse aux papillons”, or the Ambiguities of the Unspoken in the Female Erotic Novel (1807–1809)
Although Félicité de Choiseul-Meuse’s work – still largely overlooked by literary historians – openly explores the sexual lives of female characters, the author’s erotic novels devote considerable attention to the unspoken dimensions of female sexuality. This article examines the narrative and poetic functions of these silences, notably in Julie, ou j’ai sauvé ma rose (1807). The aim is to interrogate their literary and ideological implications to better understand the specificities of women’s erotic fiction emerging at the turn of the Enlightenment.
“So, You Are Never Ailing ?” : The Silences Surrounding Oophorectomy in Les Demi-sexes by Jane de la Vaudère (1897) and Les Florifères by Camille Pert (1898)
This article examines the unspoken dimensions surrounding oophorectomy in the novels Les Demi-sexes and Les Florifères. The female characters in these works seek, through the operation, to free themselves from purely reproductive sexuality. Drawing on discursive and narrative analysis, we show that these characters ultimately find themselves at the mercy of men who threaten to expose their secret. Even when the unspoken becomes temporarily half-spoken, then spoken within the closed circle of those who have undergone the operation, these women still suffer from this silence, reproduce it, and are themselves its product.