Description
Book SynopsisAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.
Frères Ennemis focuses on Franco-American tensions as portrayed in works of literature from approximately the mid-nineteenth-century to the present. An Introduction is followed by nine chapters, each focused on a French or American literary text which shows the evolution/devolution of the relations between the two nations at a particular point in time. While the heart of the analysis consists of close textual readings, social, cultural and political contexts are introduced to provide a better understanding of the historical reality influencing the individual novels, a reality to which these novels are also responding. Chapters One through Five, covering a period from the mid-1870s to the end of the Cold War, discuss significant aspects of the often fraught relationship from the theoretical perspective of Roland Barthes’ theory of modern myth, described in his
Mythologies. Barthes’ theory helps situate Franco-American tensions in a paradigmatic structure, while at the same time it is supple enough to allow for shifts and reversals within the paradigm. Subsequent chapters explore new French attitudes toward the powerful, potentially dominant influence of American culture on French life. In these sections I argue that recent French fiction displays more openness to the American experience than has existed in the past, and as such contrasts with the more static American approach to French culture.
Trade Review'This book is a most original analysis of the ways in which both French and American writers have imagined, represented, resisted, and resembled their trans-Atlantic
sibling. In a first-of-its-kind study, Cloonan assembles an original set of literary texts from the end of the Civil War to the present and provides a masterful close reading of a multitude of ever-shifting Franco-American tensions that always fascinate the reader.'
Denis M. Provencher, University of Arizona
'I have read with great pleasure
Frères Ennemis which treats an original subject in a masterly way. [...] Bravo! I hope the exploration of Franco-American “literary diplomacy” is continued with a sequel on the Trump years.'
Jean-Marc Moura
'A generally informed and insightful discussion of nine representative novels and a score of similar works, all published between the 1870s and the present by French or American authors.'
J. Gerald Kennedy (Louisiana State University),
H-France Review'Cloonan’s book may not reconcile the French and the Americans with each other, but it clearly advances an appreciation of the ways in which story characters embody perceived ideals about their respective “national” identities'
Hélène B. Ducros,
EuropeNow'Early on, Cloonan points out that while the complicated relations of France and America have been analyzed in a variety of perspectives - historical, political, sociological, anthropological, cultural - his is the first study to consider that problem exclusively through the lens of literature.'
Warren Motte,
French ReviewReviews 'Offers a nuanced portrayal of Franco-American tensions through a striking gallery of portraits.'
Xavier Kalck,
CerclesTable of ContentsDedication
Acknowledgements
Preface
Introduction: A Clash of the Comparable
Chapter I: The Creation of the American in Paris: The American
Chapter II: Splendor and Misery of the American Scientist: L’Ève future
Chapter III: The American Woman and the Invention of Paris: The Custom of the Country
Chapter IV: The Expatriate Idyll: The Sun Also Rises
Chapter V: Blindness and Insight: the Cold War in Les mandarins
Chapter VI: Embracing American Culture: Cherokee
Chapter VII: An American Excursion into French Fiction: The Book of Illusions
Chapter VIII: Rerouting: Ça n’existe pas l’Amérique
Chapter IX: L’Américaine in Paris: Le Divorce
Conclusion: Stasis and Movement
Bibliography
