ABSTRACTS

Theorizing Theatre Within World Literature in French

Judith Miller
(French, New York University)

This is the third paper for the panel: Dis-functions, Malfunctions, Functionality in the World Literatures in French Manifestoes





Judith Miller will address one of the holes or un-theorized poles of the literary realm evoked in the Le Bris and Rouaud manifesto and in the April article in Le Monde. For despite the fact that several of the signatories and essayists are dramatists, two being principally so, theatre is a big absence in this effort to think through the possibility and establishment of "world literature in French." She will speculate on why this is so and will specifically look at the theatre work of "so-called" Francophone playwrights, Ivoirian Koffi Kwahulé and Québecois Wajdi Mouawad, through several recurring tropes of the manifestoes: triumphalism (prizes, recognition, inevitability); the demise of the literature-nation pact; and the tension between storytelling and stylistic innovation. She will also show that there is a case to be made for their theatre as a new transnational theatre in French whose operational strategies are located in the specificities of theatrical production.