French Literature Reviews - 2026
B. Marshall, The French Atlantic: Travels in Culture and History
History, Politics and Society
Bill MARSHALL, The French Atlantic: Travels in Culture and History
Liverpool, Liverpool University Press (Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures), 2008, 256 p.
EAN : 9781846310515
ABSTRACT
Recent history, notably the diplomatic fracas surrounding the Iraq war in 2003 and continued cultural nationalism on the part of French elites faced with the English language and American mass culture, has tended to put forth notions of ‘France’ and ‘America’ as antithetical. This book seeks to break these paradigms, and to speak of entwined cultures and histories, promoting diasporic notions of Frenchness.
The French Atlantic: Travels in Culture and History is an attempt to intervene in these debates and paradigms in the French and American public spheres, and in university disciplines, particularly in French studies, but also has relevance for American studies, comparative literature, film and cultural studies, history, Iberian and Latin-American Studies, and postcolonial studies. After a theoretical introduction, it explores the cultural history of seven different French Atlantic spaces, all the time attentive to the material determinants of their existence in the Atlantic world. Two are in metropolitan France, one is a French North Atlantic territory, one is in Quebec, one in the United States/northern Caribbean, one in the southern Caribbean/South America, and one in Latin America.
BIOGRAPHY
Bill Marshall is Professor of Modern French Literature at the University of Glasgow.
The study addresses contemporary debates surrounding diplomatic tensions and cultural nationalism that often position France and America as opposing entities. By focusing on diasporic notions of Frenchness and the material conditions of specific regions, the work engages with longstanding paradigms in public discourse and academic fields such as French and American studies, comparative literature, film studies, history, and postcolonial studies. Its structural approach moves from a theoretical introduction to the examination of distinct geographical spaces.
Readers interested in cultural history, postcolonial studies, and transatlantic relations may find this volume relevant to their inquiries. Transatlantic relations and maritime history have long been subjects of significant academic inquiry, exploring how local cultures and identity formations develop across multiple linguistic and national boundaries through various historical processes.