ABSTRACTS

The Littérature-monde vs. the Parisian Publishing Empire

Holly Collins
(University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)

How powerful is the manifest for a littérature-monde against the nearly monopolizing Parisian publishing industry? Though Quebec has a thriving publishing industry of its own, Paris as the center and almost a must-pass-through location for publishing literature in the French language maintains its strong grasp on a so called French literature and fights against any loss of this power and any dehierarchization of literatures in the French language, however passively it may seem. The distinction between a French writer and a Francophone writer is easily maintained as long as the latter's name remains distinctly not French. In these cases writers even as highly acclaimed as Calixthe Beyala may still be published under editions such as J'ai Lu, not generally the first choice edition for high literature. The case of Quebecois literature, along with some other French speaking regions, remains quite particular. Because the names of these authors bear no distinguishing factors from those of French-French authors, the reader is often lead by the about the author section to assume that they are reading works by French authors. For a good example of this, see the author information on Réjean Ducharme at the beginning of L'Avalée des avalés. It notes that he hales from the town of Saint-Félix-de-Valois, but fails to mention that this is not in France, rather it is in Quebec. It is at this point that the limits of a littérature-monde in French become apparent. Just because independence has been claimed, it is not necessarily recognized, especially by a declining empire who still struggles to maintain it's former position of glory and leadership. The décalage that exists between the imaginaire and the reality of what is creates a strong resistance to what is seen as a tantrum by a rebellious and ungrateful child, but only by those who still hold tightly to a History that has been dictated and protected from any questioning. To seek the approval of the mère patrie in the venture of the literature-monde is completely unnecessary; such a quest would reestablish the hierarchy that was merely a construct in the first place. Rather, as writes Michel LeBris, it is up to France to decide if she wishes to take part in the literature-monde or not, and, of course, on no other terms than those of an equal footing with all literatures that have the French language in common. The question remains, however, can the Parisian publishing industry ever be seen as merely a place amongst many rather than the place for publishing works in the French language. I will examine in this paper the rising and powerful force that is the Quebec publishing industry, its competitiveness with the Parisian publishers and its role in the success and influence of a littérature-monde in French.