French Literature Reviews - 2026
A. Ausoni, Mémoires d'outre-langue. Translingual Self-Writing
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics
MÉMOIRES D'OUTRE-LANGUE
Translingual Self-Writing
ALAIN AUSONI
Slatkine Editions
Number of pages: 200
ISBN 9782051028240
Publication date: 15/05/2018
Place of publication: GENEVA
Today, many writers could say: my French has no childhood. Exploring contemporary autobiographical texts of key significance, this essay maps out translingual poetics and demonstrates how the practice of a foreign language shapes self-writing. Is it because our era, shaped by stories of exile and language shift, is searching for its bards that some of these authors have been thrust into the literary spotlight? At a time when literature is envisioned on a global scale and we question the place that French and the concept of the nation will hold within it, let us examine what is unfolding in the central yet unexplored corpus of their Mémoires d'outre-langue.
Alain Ausoni holds a PhD from the University of Oxford and is a Senior Lecturer and Researcher at the University of Lausanne. He draws on his research in translingual literature, self-writing (including co-editing “L’Autobiographie entre autres. Écrire la vie aujourd’hui”), and oral French pedagogy (co-directing the FLORALE project: florale.unil.ch) to enrich his courses in French as a foreign language.
Read the book's introduction and view the detailed table of contents on Fabula…
Table of Contents:
Introduction
Trans-what?
Translingualism and Self-Writing
Part I – CONVERSIONS
Chapter 1: Andreï Makine as a Transplant
Chapter 2: Héctor Becomes Hector: Bianciotti the Convert
Part II – LIBERATIONS
Chapter 3: When Vassilis Alexakis Knits the Translingual Self
Chapter 4: Nancy Huston Seeks the North
Part III – ROBINSONS
Chapter 5: Agota Kristof in Her Enemy Language
Chapter 6: Katalin Molnár's Hungarian Story with “Fransè”
Outlook
This study situates itself at the intersection of autobiography studies and global literary theory, focusing on the phenomenon of translingualism—writing in a language other than one's native tongue. By examining how twentieth- and twenty-first-century authors adopt French as their literary medium, Alain Ausoni investigates the psychological, stylistic, and cultural shifts that accompany this linguistic transition. The book sheds light on how the act of writing the self is fundamentally altered when negotiated through an acquired language, challenging traditional monolingual assumptions about national literatures and personal identity.
Mémoires d'outre-langue addresses crucial questions about the relationship between language, exile, and memory. It explores how writers like Andreï Makine, Agota Kristof, and Nancy Huston use French to reconstruct their pasts and forge new literary identities. This volume is highly valuable for scholars and students of French and Francophone studies, comparative literature, and translation theory. It offers deep insights for anyone interested in how displacement and multilingualism shape contemporary narrative forms, providing a nuanced framework for understanding the evolving landscape of world literature in French.