Prizes, Publishers, Plagiarism: Decolonizing Literary Legacies in French

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course focuses on literary works in French that have received illustrious prizes, from the Nobel Prize to the Prix Goncourt, and it examines questions related to the prestige of publishing houses and the role of marketing techniques meant to package and sell books alongside questions of influence and imitation, and of possible accusations of plagiarism. The course’s tripartite emphasis on the ways in which authors and their textual creations are celebrated, circulated, and questioned is complemented by an analysis of how these award-winning attempts to decolonize literature in French constitute a contemporary quest with profound historical and intertextual resonances. We read literary works of a great variety, including novels by Nobel prizewinning authors Annie Ernaux (the first Frenchwoman ever to win this award in 2022) and Jean-Marie Le Clézio, Goncourt prizewinning authors Mohamed Mbougar Sarr (the first Sub-Saharan African to win this award in 2021) and Leïla Slimani, as well as works by other writers who are caught up in telling striking stories that involve intersecting understandings of the complexities of race, class, and gender that have too often been missing from the literary landscape in French.