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
A private heritage as a legacy : notes on the Joseph-Édouard Perrault's collection
This text is a presentation text in order to introduce the new section of the review, the "Inédits" that could be translated by "Originals".
George Sand's letters to her daughter Solange Dudevant
Three original signed letters from George Sand to her daughter Solange (the 8th of January 1860, the 6th of February 1861 and 24th of April 1863). Transcription and edition of the letters preceded by an edition protocole and followed by the facsimile from the Perreault collection
Patrick Thériault, Le tout dernier Baudelaire, Paris, Hermann, 2025
I answer to the comparative analysis made by Alain Vaillant about my recent work on Baudelaire.
Captives or Fugitives? In Search of Lost Time Between Models and Counter-Models of Femininity
This introductory essay reads In Search of Lost Time as a large-scale experiment in modelling, with the feminine at its centre. Bringing together the episode of Gilberte’s “cliché raté” and the legend of the painter Zeuxis, it argues that Proust shifts the notion of the model away from a simple mirror of reality or a fixed type. In the novel, models function instead as heuristic tools that only make sense when they are strained, contradicted and destabilised by counter-models. By weaving together aesthetic, epistemological and ethical questions, A la Recherche invents a form of “simulation” that echoes scientific practices while simultaneously undermining any desire for certainty. Female characters – from Albertine and Françoise to Odette and the narrator’s mother – are the main agents of this testing process: at once captives and fugitives, they force the protagonist to rethink his frameworks of knowledge, his moral assumptions, and his generic expectations. The dossier brings together essays that combine literary history, media theory, gender and queer studies, and reception studies to explore these models and counter-models of the feminine. Taken together, they suggest that Proust does not offer ready-made “models of woman”, but uses women to model how we move from the singular to the general, from closeness to distance, from image to concept.
(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.
A “Model” Love : Shifting Albertine from the Heart to the Mind
Albertine’s captivity, made real in La Prisonnière, makes her accessible to the narrator. She is available both in his pursuit of pleasure and in his search for truth. This article seeks to show that the narrator constitutes Albertine as an object of knowledge. By living alongside her, he is able not only to call into question forms of knowledge current in his time, but also to develop an analytical model capable of accounting for the conflicts tearing apart French society at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The Retreat of Royal Mistresses : A Key to La Princesse de clèves ?
Working within the dual framework of the roman à clef and a comparative reading of Mme de Lafayette’s fictional and historical writing – approaches so insightfully developed by Alain Niderst and Patrick Dandrey –, we advance the hypothesis that the figure of Louise de La Vallière, both a historical character and an imaginary heroine, may constitute one of the novel’s keys. Her love affair with the king and her spiritual journey were well known to her contemporaries, among them Mme de Sévigné, a close friend of the presumed author of La Princesse de Clèves, and her conversion was exalted by Bossuet in the sermon delivered when she took the veil. Mme de Clèves would thus appear as a transfigured Louise de La Vallière : refined, idealized, and shaped by that process of “transposition, metamorphosis, and disguise” (Patrick Dandrey) through which the novel transforms its historical sources.
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 Spell of Knowledge and Queer Disorientation in À la recherche du temps perdu
This article explores the question of knowledge in relation to art and experience through the prism of a spell whose powerful effects are difficult to assess : to what extent are what we live and think the effects of an enchantment ? In my view, Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu can shed light on the fear of disenchantment and its consequences. I draw on the work of Leo Bersani to analyze the spells cast over the novel by certain philosophical and literary models. Jealousy emerges here as a specific form of fear of disenchantment, one that leads to dynamics of possession and violence. Drawing on Sara Ahmed, I examine moments of disorientation to explore their queer potential, especially their capacity to allow Albertine to slip away. As Ahmed emphasizes in Queer Phenomenology, disorientation arises when a familiar object suddenly escapes us : it is not radical in itself, but depends on how we respond to that rupture and to the new directions it makes possible. The article focuses on the figure of Albertine, asking how sexual orientation traces lines and trajectories that may also veer off course. Rather than approaching Albertine’s lesbianism from a historical or biographical perspective, I consider it here as a device of disorientation, with particular attention to readings and forms that preserve its ambiguity. Anne Carson’s The Albertine Workout allows me to reflect on the work of interpreting Proust’s text, as well as on lesbianism as an elusive element that escapes the narrator’s logic of possession.
Albertine on screen: a comparative study of female perspectives
Proust's novel cycle has inspired numerous adaptations in a wide variety of genres. This study examines the perspectives of two film adapters, Chantal Akerman (La Captive, 2000) and Nina Companeez (À la recherche du temps perdu, 2011), to trace a model of the feminine through the character of Albertine. The comparison combines a quantitative approach to cinematic elements and an analysis of the image of the feminine through its relationship to art. Each filmmaker develops an amplification of motifs, relevant concerning Proustian aesthetics. Both portray a young woman acting within a patriarchal order. While Akerman shows a static, ambivalent Ariadne, Companeez depicts a dynamic character's evolution.
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.
An Ambivalent Female Model : The Proustian Scheherazade
This article examines the powerful links between figures of captivity and flight in Proust, especially Albertine, and the character of Scheherazade in The Thousand and One Nights, a major intertext of the Recherche. It successively considers three paradigms embodied by the sultana of the Indies, who is both a double of Proust’s Narrator and a possible “model” for Albertine : that of the captive wife, at her husband’s mercy ; that of the seductress, skilled in the art of captivating tales ; and finally that of the artist of flight.
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.
Resisting Her Masters : Françoise Against All During the Great War
In Le Temps retrouvé, Françoise, who has long resisted both her employers and certain characters from her own social class, is confronted with new forms of discursive subjection as the Great War breaks out. As always, her resistance unfolds on an intersectional level, shaped by conflicts tied to her gender, her social position, and the particularities of her use of language. Her verbal struggles with the protagonist-narrator begin with her first appearance in Combray, but during the war they take on an intensity that invites rereading through the lens of a genuine socio-politics of dispute between speaking subjects. Some critics have already drawn attention to this aspect of Françoise’s character. It is nevertheless striking that no study has been devoted to her in Le Temps retrouvé, even though she is the only woman with whom the protagonist shares his home. During the war, Françoise is an older working-class woman whose position as a servant in an upper-bourgeois household gives her access to men in positions of power. Faced both with the terror threatening her family and loved ones and with nationalist propaganda, which she interprets in her own way, she draws on her experience in espionage and in decoding the discourse of her employers. She is in fact steadfastly committed to rescuing the young men she cares about from anonymity and slaughter. At the same time, she must defend herself against the sadistic traps set by the concierge of the Guermantes residence, who exemplifies the pleasure a certain kind of masculinity takes in placing female subjects in a position of epistemic deficit. The narrator, too, takes pleasure in humiliating a woman who keeps an attentive and intelligent eye on him, mocking her mistakes in French and her limited grasp of international politics. And yet he also admires her resistance to the absurdities of indoctrination. As an older woman, socially subordinate and speaking a minority language, the “old servant” thus constructs a genuine counter-discourse that enables her to preserve her epistemic and pragmatic agency.
On the "Ideological Function" in Proust: Counter-Hegemonic Ethical Models in In Search of Lost Time
Drawing on the analysis of ethical positions and stances adopted by secondary characters in the fictional world of In Search of Lost Time — which often stand in contrast to those of the narrator-hero — this article explores the possibility of reading Proust’s novel against its own narrator. Beyond the vexata quaestio of the relationship between Marcel Proust and the narrator of his novel, the aim is to highlight another, equally fundamental but less frequently emphasized distinction in Proustian criticism: the one between the voice of the narrator, as a character within the fiction, and the fictional universe of In Search of Lost Time as a whole.
Yan Bin’s “L’appel d’Albertine” : The Moral Recasting of a “Fugitive Being” in the Chinese Context
Yan Bin’s short story “L’Appel d’Albertine” (A’erbeidina de huhuan, Beijing, Zuojia, 2024 [2021]) rewrites Albertine’s fate. In Proust’s novel, the narrator keeps the young woman captive and, suspecting her of homosexuality, sees her disappear without ever hearing from her again. In response, the Chinese short story gives Albertine a brother, who brings a defamation suit against the “Mémoires de Marcel”. In his plea, his innocent sister is shown fleeing the perverse Marcel and the corrupt capital in search of redemption. This “transfiction” offers a literary counter-model in the context of debates on women’s emancipation in modern China.
Capital, Inheritance, and Solidarity : Economy and Female Figures in the Recherche
In light of the elements of continuity and rupture between the French realist tradition and Proust’s work, this article examines the economic patterns associated with several women in the Recherche, in relation to their social background and trajectory. By distinguishing, on the one hand, the modes and models of wealth management and, on the other, the different strata that make up Proustian society, our aim is to show how female figures are exemplary in economic matters, exemplary here in the sense of representative.
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.