French Literature Reviews - 2026

Alioune Badara Kandji, Palimpsestes brontëens - Rereading and Rewriting the Brontë Sisters
Novel and Narrative Prose

Alioune Badara Kandji, Palimpsestes brontëens - Rereading and Rewriting the Brontë Sisters

Preface by Alioune Badara Diané.

Paris: L'Harmattan, 2014.

216 p.

EAN 9782343051291 (EAN Ebook format Pdf: 9782336364537)

22.00 EUR (digital version: 16.99 EUR)

Publisher's overview:

As a foundational guarantee of all literature, intertextuality serves both as a means of fertilization and an instrument of poetization. Through the intertexts it employs, the rewriting of the Brontë sisters holds up a mirror to itself, reflecting upon its own creative process and reaching this assertion: art's point of reference is not reality, but rather art itself and the tradition of art. In this essay, the author sheds valuable light on these themes, while also exploring questions of the imaginary, the margins, madness, and genre...

Alioune Badara Kandji holds a Doctorat de 3ème cycle and a Doctorat d'État from Cheikh Anta Diop University (Dakar, Senegal). His research focuses on Victorian and Edwardian English literature and the contemporary British novel. He has published numerous works in these fields. A. B. Kandji teaches English literature and the history of ideas in Great Britain within the Department of English Studies at the Faculty of Arts and Human Sciences of UCAD.

Intertextuality and rewriting have long served as central critical frameworks in comparative literature and Victorian studies, allowing scholars to examine how nineteenth-century authors engaged with precursor texts and established literary traditions. Within this scholarly landscape, the Brontë sisters' novels frequently invite analysis regarding narrative self-reflexivity, marginality, and the gothic imagination. The practice of rewriting established narratives highlights literature's capacity to dialogue with its own history, emphasizing how aesthetic forms evolve through adaptation and internal commentary rather than direct mimesis alone.

In Palimpsestes brontëens - Rereading and Rewriting the Brontë Sisters, Alioune Badara Kandji examines intertextuality as a foundational guarantee of literature and a means of poetization. The study explores themes such as the imaginary, the margins, madness, and genre, reflecting upon the creative process and the tradition of art. Readers interested in Victorian literature and the mechanics of literary rewriting may find this work relevant.