Virginie Iché
Université Paul Valéry - Montpellier, Études Anglophones, Faculty Member
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Etudes Anglophones, Lewis Carroll, Nonsense, Literary Nonsense, Literature of nonsense, Enunciation, and 95 moreTheory of the Predicative and Enunciative Operation, Discourse Analysis, Enonciation, Grammaire de texte. Enonciation. Analyse du discours., Linguistique énonciative, Reader Response, Reader-Response Theory, Reception and Reader Response Theory, Reception Theory, Alice in Wonderland, Jean Jacques Lecercle, Book Illustration, Humour, Childrens Literature, Theory of Children's Literature as a Genre, 19th Century British (Literature), Semiotics, English Literature, Literary Linguistics, Interactive Narrative, Monty Python, Oscar Wilde, Umberto Eco, Louis Althusser, Structuralism/Post-Structuralism, Victorian Literature, Picture Books, Playfulness, Artist's Books, Agency, Children's agency, Young Children's Agency, Reader's agency, Narrator, Stylistics, Children's and Young Adult Literature, Implied reader, Storyteller, Reading Aloud, The Nursery Alice, Adaptation, Adaptation (Literature), History of Publishing, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, History of Books, Printing, and Publishing, Through the Looking Glass, Pragmatics, Literary Stylistics, Discourse Stylistics, Narratology, Linguistic stylistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Reported Speech, Focalisation, Stylistique, Judith Butler, Imposture, Interpellation, Resignification, Ideological interpellation, Play, Victorian Children's Literature, Children's Play, Roger Caillois, Children's books, Book as a 3d object, Robert Sabuda, Translation Studies, Traductologie, Image text Relations, Intertextuality, Games, Playful Interaction, Subjectivation, Subjectification, Philosophie Du Jeu, Linguistic and Literary Stylistics, Semiotics, Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", First editions, Submission, Children's Picture Books, Reader’s Participation, Pat Hutchins, Rosie's Walk, Shhh!, Secondary narrator, Nursery Rhymes, Children's Literature, Film Adaptation, Pop Up Books, Stage Adaptations, Digital Media, Performing Arts, Children's Media, and Rhetoric edit
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Associate Professor - Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (France). My first book, L’esthétique du jeu dans les Ali... moreAssociate Professor - Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3 (France).
My first book, L’esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll (2015), examines how diegetic games, wordplays, plays on narrative structure and intertext rely on a tension between freedom and rules, and ultimately contribute to transforming the reader into a full-fledged subject, via the process of subjectification (as defined by Judith Butler).
My research interests include stylistics, pragmatics, cognitive studies, reader-response criticism. edit
This international conference intends to examine the pragmatics of cringe humor in the English language on the screen (in sitcoms, TV series, filmed stand-up comedies, films etc.) and on digital media (in audiovisual, textual or... more
This international conference intends to examine the pragmatics of cringe humor in the English language on the screen (in sitcoms, TV series, filmed stand-up comedies, films etc.) and on digital media (in audiovisual, textual or multimodal forms).
“Cringe humor” points to the specific embodied reactions to cringeworthy/humorous contents found both on the screen and on digital media, i.e., “an involuntary inward shiver of embarrassment, awkwardness, disgust” (OED), “shudder and discomfort” (Schwind 2015, 67), “psychic unease” or “physical pain” (Duncan 2017, 37), and even “intense visceral reaction” (Dahl 2018, 19).
Cringe humor relies on a delicate balance between the negatively connoted “cringe” and the positively connoted “humor”. What does it take then to turn cringe into humor and make the awkward become funny or vice versa?
One of the goals of the conference will be to determine when cringe humor fails or succeeds and to identify the “felicity conditions” for cringe humor on the screen and on digital media (pauses, intonation, facial expressions, illocutionary force markers online such as emoji, emoticons, GIFs…)—and whether these (or some of these) felicity conditions hold for both media or are media-specific.
The conference will also address the issue of the politeness of cringe humor in English (or lack thereof) on the screen and on digital media.
If cringe humor is meant to “enhance the rapport” with the other speaker and/or the audience (see Spencer-Oatey 2000, 2005 on “rapport-management”), how can we account for its physical manifestations? If, alternatively, cringe humor unintentionally or deliberately aggravates the rapport with the other speaker/the audience, how can we account for its success?
Can there be such a thing as an ethics of cringe humor?
“Cringe humor” points to the specific embodied reactions to cringeworthy/humorous contents found both on the screen and on digital media, i.e., “an involuntary inward shiver of embarrassment, awkwardness, disgust” (OED), “shudder and discomfort” (Schwind 2015, 67), “psychic unease” or “physical pain” (Duncan 2017, 37), and even “intense visceral reaction” (Dahl 2018, 19).
Cringe humor relies on a delicate balance between the negatively connoted “cringe” and the positively connoted “humor”. What does it take then to turn cringe into humor and make the awkward become funny or vice versa?
One of the goals of the conference will be to determine when cringe humor fails or succeeds and to identify the “felicity conditions” for cringe humor on the screen and on digital media (pauses, intonation, facial expressions, illocutionary force markers online such as emoji, emoticons, GIFs…)—and whether these (or some of these) felicity conditions hold for both media or are media-specific.
The conference will also address the issue of the politeness of cringe humor in English (or lack thereof) on the screen and on digital media.
If cringe humor is meant to “enhance the rapport” with the other speaker and/or the audience (see Spencer-Oatey 2000, 2005 on “rapport-management”), how can we account for its physical manifestations? If, alternatively, cringe humor unintentionally or deliberately aggravates the rapport with the other speaker/the audience, how can we account for its success?
Can there be such a thing as an ethics of cringe humor?
Research Interests:
https://address-readers.sciencesconf.org/ The international conference “The Pragmatics of Communication from the First Printed Novels in English to 20th and 21st Century Digital Fiction” will take place on November 28-29, 2019 in... more
https://address-readers.sciencesconf.org/
The international conference “The Pragmatics of Communication from the First Printed Novels in English to 20th and 21st Century Digital Fiction” will take place on November 28-29, 2019 in Montpellier, France.
Conference organizers: Virginie Iché & Sandrine Sorlin.
Dates of the conference: November 28-29, 2019.
A selection of papers will be considered for publication.
Guest speakers:
• Prof. Alice Bell (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
• Prof. Jean-Jacques Lecercle (Nanterre University, France)
• Prof. Roger Sell (Åbo Akademi University, Finland)
The international conference “The Pragmatics of Communication from the First Printed Novels in English to 20th and 21st Century Digital Fiction” will take place on November 28-29, 2019 in Montpellier, France.
Conference organizers: Virginie Iché & Sandrine Sorlin.
Dates of the conference: November 28-29, 2019.
A selection of papers will be considered for publication.
Guest speakers:
• Prof. Alice Bell (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
• Prof. Jean-Jacques Lecercle (Nanterre University, France)
• Prof. Roger Sell (Åbo Akademi University, Finland)
Research Interests:
British Literature, Pragmatics, Stylistics, Literary Stylistics, Victorian Literature, and 15 moreModernist Literature (Literary Modernism), Reader Response, 18th Century British Literature, Postmodern Fiction, Contemporary Literature, Politeness theory, Pragmastylistics, Edwardian Literature, Narrators, Digital Fiction, Direct Address, Stylistic Analysis, Second Person Narration, Pragmatics of Fiction, and Stylistics, Pragmatics, Pragmastylistics
The 92nd issue of the French peer-reviewed journal Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens (CVE) will address the question of talking to children in Victorian and Edwardian children’s books. [Please download the full CfP!] This issue will... more
The 92nd issue of the French peer-reviewed journal Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens (CVE) will address the question of talking to children in Victorian and Edwardian children’s books.
[Please download the full CfP!]
This issue will thus examine the question of how children are talked to, and consequently ascribed a specific place and role in the conversation. Attention can be paid to characters, whether they are children or child stand-ins, narratees, implied and real-life readers.
Avenues of inquiry for this issue include (but are not limited to):
• the conversational geneses of 19th-century children’s books and their impact on the narrative structures and/or the role of the child reader
• the role and place of conversations with children in 19th-century children’s books
• the conversational relationship between child or adult narrators and child narratees
• the narrative and stylistic strategies to enhance / restrain child agency
• adult-led conversations and children’s responses
• the issue of child narrators
Please send abstracts (no longer than 400 words) with a short bio-bibliographical notice (no longer than 50 words) by January 10, 2019, to Virginie Iché (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France):
virginie.iche@univ-montp3.fr
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by February 15, 2019. Full articles will be due by June 20, 2019. Proposals in English or French will be considered.
The full CfP can also be read online:
• https://victorianist.wordpress.com/2018/09/27/call-for-papers-dear-child-talking-to-children-in-victorian-and-edwardian-childrens-books/
• https://www.navsa.org/2018/09/26/cfpdear-child-1-10-2019-6-20-2019/
• http://www.irscl.com/news/?p=1200
• https://www.fabula.org/actualites/dear-child-talking-to-children-in-victorian-and-edwardian-children-s-books_87097.php
• https://emma.www.univ-montp3.fr/fr/ressources/ressources-sp%C3%A9cifiques/%E2%80%9Cdear-child%E2%80%9D-talking-children-victorian-and
[Please download the full CfP!]
This issue will thus examine the question of how children are talked to, and consequently ascribed a specific place and role in the conversation. Attention can be paid to characters, whether they are children or child stand-ins, narratees, implied and real-life readers.
Avenues of inquiry for this issue include (but are not limited to):
• the conversational geneses of 19th-century children’s books and their impact on the narrative structures and/or the role of the child reader
• the role and place of conversations with children in 19th-century children’s books
• the conversational relationship between child or adult narrators and child narratees
• the narrative and stylistic strategies to enhance / restrain child agency
• adult-led conversations and children’s responses
• the issue of child narrators
Please send abstracts (no longer than 400 words) with a short bio-bibliographical notice (no longer than 50 words) by January 10, 2019, to Virginie Iché (Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, France):
virginie.iche@univ-montp3.fr
Notifications of acceptance will be sent by February 15, 2019. Full articles will be due by June 20, 2019. Proposals in English or French will be considered.
The full CfP can also be read online:
• https://victorianist.wordpress.com/2018/09/27/call-for-papers-dear-child-talking-to-children-in-victorian-and-edwardian-childrens-books/
• https://www.navsa.org/2018/09/26/cfpdear-child-1-10-2019-6-20-2019/
• http://www.irscl.com/news/?p=1200
• https://www.fabula.org/actualites/dear-child-talking-to-children-in-victorian-and-edwardian-children-s-books_87097.php
• https://emma.www.univ-montp3.fr/fr/ressources/ressources-sp%C3%A9cifiques/%E2%80%9Cdear-child%E2%80%9D-talking-children-victorian-and
Research Interests:
Children's Literature, Literary Stylistics, Children's and Young Adult Literature, Narratology, Victorian Literature, and 15 moreReader Response, 19th Century British novel, Narrative and Stylistics in Children's Literature, Rudyard Kipling, Lewis Carroll, Reader-Response Theory, Edwardian Literature, Edith Nesbit, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Grahame, J. M. Barrie, Charles Kingsley, Dinah Craik, Juliana Horatia Ewing, and Catherine Sinclair
Building on the notion of fiction as communicative act, this collection brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to examine the evolving relationship between authors and readers in fictional works from 18th-century English... more
Building on the notion of fiction as communicative act, this collection brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholars to examine the evolving relationship between authors and readers in fictional works from 18th-century English novels through to contemporary digital fiction.
The book showcases a diverse range of contributions from scholars in stylistics, rhetoric, pragmatics, and literary studies to offer new ways of looking at the "author–reader channel," drawing on work from Roger Sell, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, and James Phelan. The volume traces the evolution of its form across historical periods, genres, and media, from its origins in the conversational mode of direct address in 18th-century English novels to the use of second-person narratives in the 20th century through to 21st-century digital fiction with its implicit requirement for reader participation. The book engages in questions of how the author–reader channel is shaped by different forms, and how this continues to evolve in emerging contemporary genres and of shifting ethics of author and reader involvement.
This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars interested in the intersection of pragmatics, stylistics, and literary studies.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Rhetoric-of-Literary-Communication-From-Classical-English-Novels-to/Iche-Sorlin/p/book/9780367555634
The book showcases a diverse range of contributions from scholars in stylistics, rhetoric, pragmatics, and literary studies to offer new ways of looking at the "author–reader channel," drawing on work from Roger Sell, Jean-Jacques Lecercle, and James Phelan. The volume traces the evolution of its form across historical periods, genres, and media, from its origins in the conversational mode of direct address in 18th-century English novels to the use of second-person narratives in the 20th century through to 21st-century digital fiction with its implicit requirement for reader participation. The book engages in questions of how the author–reader channel is shaped by different forms, and how this continues to evolve in emerging contemporary genres and of shifting ethics of author and reader involvement.
This book will be of particular interest to students and scholars interested in the intersection of pragmatics, stylistics, and literary studies.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Rhetoric-of-Literary-Communication-From-Classical-English-Novels-to/Iche-Sorlin/p/book/9780367555634
Research Interests:
So many children’s books were published during the Victorian and Edwardian eras that scholars refer to that period as ‘the Golden Age of children’s literature’. Several children’s authors of the period no longer considered children’s... more
So many children’s books were published during the Victorian and Edwardian eras that scholars refer to that period as ‘the Golden Age of children’s literature’. Several children’s authors of the period no longer considered children’s publications as a way to educate children but as a means to entertain them and, accordingly, adopted a conversational tone in their publications. Other Victorian and Edwardian authors of children’s fiction, however, took this ‘conversational turn’—employing talkative narrators or depicting congenial adult-child conversations—only to better constrain children and their reactions. The introduction and the eight contributions to this special issue of Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens are devoted to these intricate ethical and ideological questions underpinning some of the forms that adult-child conversations took in nineteenth-century juvenile publications. The case studies reveal that Victorian and Edwardian authors who resorted to conversations and conversational tones in their publications were very much aware of the power relationships they entertained with their child readers—whether they decided to exploit them in order to improve an audience they thought of or constructed as ‘deficient,’ or to empower young people they believed had, or would come to have, a sense of agency.
Accessible online: https://journals.openedition.org/cve/7988
Accessible online: https://journals.openedition.org/cve/7988
Research Interests:
Children's and Young Adult Literature, Victorian Literature, Empowerment, Conversational Discourse, Conversation Analysis (Languages And Linguistics), and 7 moreEdwardian Literature, Agency, Youth empowerment, Rhetorical Coercion, Coercion, Victorian and Edwardian Children's literature, and Child-Adult Interaction
L’esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll propose de relire Les Aventures d’Alice au pays des merveilles et De l’autre côté du miroir, deux classiques de la littérature britannique du XIXe siècle, au prisme du jeu. L’analyse des... more
L’esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll propose de relire Les Aventures d’Alice au pays des merveilles et De l’autre côté du miroir, deux classiques de la littérature britannique du XIXe siècle, au prisme du jeu. L’analyse des jeux et jouets, jeux de mots et de langage, jeux narratifs et intertextuels, que propose Virginie Iché met en évidence la tension fondatrice entre liberté et règles qui caractérise les Alice, et, au delà, le processus de subjectivation qui traverse ces œuvres. Il s’avère ainsi que la démultiplication de dispositifs ludiques permet paradoxalement et à la fois de circonscrire l’activité du lecteur en lui proposant un modèle contraignant et de l’amener à se constituer en sujet-jouant qui contre-interpelle le texte carrollien. Les Alice constituent à ce titre un exemple prototypique de littérature ludique, qui non seulement place le jeu au cœur de son principe d’écriture, mais entraîne un lecteur capable de le recevoir. Dès lors, cet ouvrage vient aussi expliquer l’étonnante plasticité de l’œuvre carrollienne, sa vivacité et sa capacité à susciter toujours plus d’interprétations-interpellations 150 ans après sa première publication.
« L’éclatant succès de l’entreprise de Virginie Iché […] est que, partant d’une analyse minutieuse du texte carrollien, elle nous propose […] une théorie de la littérature comme mise en scène du processus par lequel les individus, fictionnels ou empiriques – tous les individus, dit Althusser – deviennent des sujets. » Jean-Jacques Lecercle
« L’éclatant succès de l’entreprise de Virginie Iché […] est que, partant d’une analyse minutieuse du texte carrollien, elle nous propose […] une théorie de la littérature comme mise en scène du processus par lequel les individus, fictionnels ou empiriques – tous les individus, dit Althusser – deviennent des sujets. » Jean-Jacques Lecercle
Research Interests:
Discourse Analysis, Pragmatics, Play, Children's Literature, Stylistics, and 21 moreLiterary Stylistics, Children's and Young Adult Literature, Victorian Literature, Louis Althusser, Judith Butler, Lewis Carroll, Reader-Response Theory, Games, Playful Interaction, Alice in Wonderland, Linguistic and Literary Stylistics, Semiotics, Pragmatics and Discourse Analysis, Reception and Reader Response Theory, Imposture, Children's books, Subjectivation, Stylistique, Playfulness, Through the Looking Glass, Subjectification, Jean Jacques Lecercle, and Philosophie Du Jeu
Naturally-occurring conversations have been described as a collaborative activity. Grice’s central tenet, the cooperative principle, holds that every speaker participates in the conversational exchange as is required “by the accepted... more
Naturally-occurring conversations have been described as a collaborative activity. Grice’s central tenet, the cooperative principle, holds that every speaker participates in the conversational exchange as is required “by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange” (26). However, cooperation has often been (mis)understood as meaning “being benevolent to the other person” (Jobert 2010, my translation)—hence the need, maybe, to shift the focus from cooperation to coordination. Thinking of conversational exchanges on the basis of coordination does not suggest all exchanges have to be idealistically irenic though. Conversations are “joint actions” (Clark 1996) in which co-participants work together towards the building of common ground, and expressing opposing views can be part of the “joint action” that a conversation is. That said, disagreement in naturally-occurring conversations is often treated as potentially detrimental to speakers’ relationships, whether inherently face-threatening (Brown and Levinson 1987) or fundamentally impolite (Leech 1983). In this article, Reza and Polanski’s 2011 Carnage is taken as a case study to analyze the pragmatics of disagreement on screen. The whole movie indeed consists in interactions about a fight between two children, its potential cause and the follow-up action that should be taken. The disagreements between the various characters are increasingly pronounced till conflict emerges, which begs the following questions: are disagreements instances of faulty interactions that are necessarily rapport-challenging (Spencer-Oatey 2005, 2005)? Are the disagreeing parties no longer cooperating or partaking in the “joint actions” that conversations are? What type of rapport-management with the audience is involved by these disagreements on screen?
Open edition journal: https://journals.openedition.org/esa/5370
Open edition journal: https://journals.openedition.org/esa/5370
Research Interests:
Children’s literature has famously been described as “windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange”, and sometimes also “sliding glass doors” that readers have to “walk through in imagination”... more
Children’s literature has famously been described as “windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange”, and sometimes also “sliding glass doors” that readers have to “walk through in imagination” (Bishop, 1990: ix). In other words, children’s literature is often depicted as being able to metaphorically open doors for their readers, i.e., open up vistas and broaden horizons. In this article, I pay attention to picturebooks with literal door-openings: Haunted House (1979) by Jan Pieńkowski, Jane Walmsley and Tor Lokvig, Knock Knock Who’s There? (1985) by Sally Grindley and Anthony Browne, Shhh! (1991) by Sally Grindley and Peter Utton, Postman Bear (2000) by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, Doors (2004) by Roxie Munro and What’s Next Door? (2017) by Nicola O’Byrne. I examine the various strategies implemented to get child readers to open (paper) doors—whether by focusing on the book-as-object with its flaps, door-like pages and cut-out pages, or by working on the book-as-discourse with, in particular, the use of direct addresses to the flesh-and-blood reader. I argue that door-openings in picturebooks help child readers achieve three main goals: (1) to become an experienced liseur, to take up Picard’s terminology, who finds pleasure in the page-turning event, (2) to discover how accessible and enjoyable the world of fiction can be and thereby become lu, and (3) to become a lectant, aware, namely, of the key-role of the page break in the economy of the picturebook. Literal door-openings in children’s books thus open up large metaphorical horizons for their child readers, that include emergent literacy, pleasure reading and forms of agency.
Open edition journal: https://journals.openedition.org/ilcea/16069
Open edition journal: https://journals.openedition.org/ilcea/16069
Research Interests:
This paper is a qualitative analysis of the misunderstandings resulting from Coach's difficulties to process his interlocutors' use of exophoric and endophoric deixis (and anadeixis), in order to show how this character both stands out... more
This paper is a qualitative analysis of the misunderstandings resulting from Coach's difficulties to process his interlocutors' use of exophoric and endophoric deixis (and anadeixis), in order to show how this character both stands out and, paradoxically, fits in. This tension between standing out and fitting in shows 1° that elucidating deixis is not as effortless as could be thought and 2° that these misunderstandings prove to be a key-element of the humor of the sitcom, meant to welcome everyone as they are in the Boston bar called Cheers.
Open edition journal: https://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/6438
Open edition journal: https://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/6438
Research Interests:
The introduction expounds on the pragmatic and rhetoric framework of the volume and the theories convened to account for its conception of literature as communication and/or ascription of places. Reopening the complex author-reader... more
The introduction expounds on the pragmatic and rhetoric framework of the volume and the theories convened to account for its conception of literature as communication and/or ascription of places. Reopening the complex author-reader channel, it brings to the fore the various (direct and indirect) modes of address in fiction as well as their effects and purposes. In so doing it offers a substantial contextualisation of the twelve chapters that compose the book, proposing new ways of looking at the author-reader communicational exchanges in fiction from the 18th and 19th centuries to the Modernist period, the later 20th century and the 21st century. The diachronic and cross-medium perspective from the nascent English novel to digital fiction—and gamebook hybridizing the two mediums—highlights how authors and readers of all time have variously negotiated their relative proximity or distance with one another, with authors at times trying to please their readers, or at least not alienate them, at others purposely distancing them so as to better convey their point or enhance their agency. In this negotiated relationship, readers may or may not (willingly or reluctantly) agree to respond to the direct or indirect addresses of both print and digital fiction.
Research Interests:
Accessible online: https://journals.openedition.org/cve/7992
Research Interests:
Victorian Studies, Conversation Analysis, Rhetorical Analysis, Children's Literature & Culture, Children's and Young Adult Literature, and 9 moreVictorian Literature, Empowerment, Conversational Discourse, Edwardian Literature, Agency, Rhetorical Coercion, Coercion, Direct Address, and Victorian and Edwardian Children's literature
This paper addresses the question of the narrator’s and the adult reader’s voices in Rosie’s Walk (Hutchins 1968), Shhh! (Grindley & Utton 1991) and The Nursery Alice (Carroll 1890)—that is to say in books written for children under five,... more
This paper addresses the question of the narrator’s and the adult reader’s voices in Rosie’s Walk (Hutchins 1968), Shhh! (Grindley & Utton 1991) and The Nursery Alice (Carroll 1890)—that is to say in books written for children under five, who (usually) cannot read on their own yet, and consequently, (usually) need an adult reader to read the book to them. While Cochran-Smith (1985) has argued that the adult reader’s role is not limited to being the “spokesperson for the text,” since children’s books invite him/her to become a “secondary narrator or commentator on the text” (84), some children’s books try to limit and even block the adult reader’s participation, under the guise of encouraging dialogic interaction. Although there is some overlapping of the narrator’s and the adult reader’s voices in Rosie’s Walk and Shhh!, both books encourage the adult reader to depart from the text and truly become a “secondary narrator,” thereby making the two voices diverge considerably. The Nursery Alice, nonetheless, resorts to several strategies meant to thwart every single adult reader’s attempt to comment on the text, leading him/her to follow the flow of the narrator’s voice.
Research Interests:
This article analyzes the role of the reader of the first editions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Exploring the layout of the original editions shows that, though they sometimes require... more
This article analyzes the role of the reader of the first editions of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. Exploring the layout of the original editions shows that, though they sometimes require the reader’s submission to their ploys, they also not infrequently empower her. The reader of the original Alice books is caught up, then, between two contradictory positions: submission and agency. This tension could be explained by the nineteenth-century shift from the early didacticism of children’s books to the modern genre of children’s literature.
Research Interests:
In Wilde in Earnest. Emily Eells, ed. Paris : P. U. Paris Ouest, 2015 : 137-148.
Accessible here: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03056752v1
Accessible here: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03056752v1
Research Interests:
In RANAM 47 (2014): 207-217.
Accessible here: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03062615v1
Accessible here: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03062615v1
Research Interests:
This article focuses on the extent to which Lewis Carroll’s text and John Tenniel’s illustrations are intertwined in the Alice books (namely Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass and The Nursery “Alice”). The author... more
This article focuses on the extent to which Lewis Carroll’s text and John Tenniel’s illustrations are intertwined in the Alice books (namely Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking-Glass and The Nursery “Alice”). The author first insists on how closely together these two artists worked, then analyzes the lay-out of Carroll’s text and Tenniel’s illustrations in order to emphasize how harmoniously synchronized they are. This balanced relationship between the text and the illustrations nevertheless conceals an underlying power struggle, an attempt to control language, to make it crystal clear, as well as an attempt to master the reader’s capacities of ideation. However, the reader remains an active subject captured by the narrative structure, and whose acts of interpretations can be seen as impostures. This is notably the case of British illustrator Ralph Steadman who makes Carroll’s text resignify by including anachronistic elements in his illustrations.
http://revuesshs.u-bourgogne.fr/textes&contextes/document.php?id=1756
http://revuesshs.u-bourgogne.fr/textes&contextes/document.php?id=1756
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In Humoresques 36 (Automne 2012) : 99-110.
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In « Je(u), Joie, Jouissance ». Rives – Cahiers de l’Arc Atlantique n°4. Françoise Buisson, Jane Hentgès, Christelle Lacassain-Lagoin, Michael Parsons, dir. Paris : L’Harmattan, 2011 : 47-62.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In my book L’esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll (The Aesthetics of Play in Lewis Carroll’s Alice books), I have argued that Carroll’s own adaptation of Wonderland for children “aged from nought to five,” that is to say The... more
In my book L’esthétique du jeu dans les Alice de Lewis Carroll (The Aesthetics of Play in Lewis Carroll’s Alice books), I have argued that Carroll’s own adaptation of Wonderland for children “aged from nought to five,” that is to say The Nursery Alice, so strictly constrains the implied reader’s participation that she cannot playfully counter-interpellate the text (thus referring to Judith Butler’s theory of subjection, subjectification and counter-interpellation). In other words, I have shown that the reader of The Nursery Alice cannot indulge in what Roger Caillois calls “paidia,” the impulsive manifestation of a play instinct, but can only adhere to “ludus,” the need to conform to rules. Contrariwise, as the Tweedle brothers would say, even if the 1865 Alice tries to limit the implied reader’s role, she can actively counter-interpellate the text, and play with and against its rules.
For this presentation, I’d like to focus on the reader’s cooperation with the book-as-object, and reveal how the tension between subjection and agency characterizes both Carroll and Tenniel’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and paper engineering artist Robert Sabuda’s adaptation of this classic (2003). As Mou-Lan Wong has convincingly suggested, the reader is actively involved when reading the original Alice books, thereby, I would add, becoming a playful reader. The page-turning mechanism is exploited to the maximum, so much so that turning the pages does not merely mean getting access to the rest of the tale, but actually creating some of the Wonderland characters (145) and ultimately creating Wonderland (144). Similarly, when Sabuda discusses the creation of his pop-up books, he notes that the tension between subjection and agency lies at the core of his work: he wants to make “the paper listen and obey” (9) while knowing at the same time that “the paper will do what it wants to do” (10). My talk will then address the following question: is the reader of Sabuda’s Alice as playfully involved in the book as the reader of Carroll and Tenniel’s version is? or does the (too?) intricate pop-up device actually plan the reader’s role so much that her intervention is drastically limited? In other words, can Sabuda’s reader indulge in what Caillois calls “paidia” while at the same time recognizing the “ludic” rules of the pop-up game, or is she forced to abide by these rules without counter-interpellating them, consequently relinquishing any chance of being a playful reader?
For this presentation, I’d like to focus on the reader’s cooperation with the book-as-object, and reveal how the tension between subjection and agency characterizes both Carroll and Tenniel’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and paper engineering artist Robert Sabuda’s adaptation of this classic (2003). As Mou-Lan Wong has convincingly suggested, the reader is actively involved when reading the original Alice books, thereby, I would add, becoming a playful reader. The page-turning mechanism is exploited to the maximum, so much so that turning the pages does not merely mean getting access to the rest of the tale, but actually creating some of the Wonderland characters (145) and ultimately creating Wonderland (144). Similarly, when Sabuda discusses the creation of his pop-up books, he notes that the tension between subjection and agency lies at the core of his work: he wants to make “the paper listen and obey” (9) while knowing at the same time that “the paper will do what it wants to do” (10). My talk will then address the following question: is the reader of Sabuda’s Alice as playfully involved in the book as the reader of Carroll and Tenniel’s version is? or does the (too?) intricate pop-up device actually plan the reader’s role so much that her intervention is drastically limited? In other words, can Sabuda’s reader indulge in what Caillois calls “paidia” while at the same time recognizing the “ludic” rules of the pop-up game, or is she forced to abide by these rules without counter-interpellating them, consequently relinquishing any chance of being a playful reader?
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This talk proposes to examine the assumption that the Alice books engage in a game with the reader. Such a claim has repeatedly been made by various critics: Robert Sutherland argues that Lewis Carroll was “deliberately setting linguistic... more
This talk proposes to examine the assumption that the Alice books engage in a game with the reader. Such a claim has repeatedly been made by various critics: Robert Sutherland argues that Lewis Carroll was “deliberately setting linguistic ‘brain-teasers’ for his readers to puzzle over” (15) and consequently “quite literally playing games with his readers” (16); Kathleen Blake mentions “a playing-with-the-reader attitude” in the Alices (15); Robert Polhemus posits that the reader plays with language as much as Carroll does (369). This assumption raises a number of questions: how can we say that a reader plays with a text, and what type of games can s/he play? After examining how the virtual reader is constructed in the Alice books, I will provide a qualitative analysis of the actual responses given by some of the members of what Stanley Fish would call the interpretive community of the Alice books. Thus, I will show that although the Alice books are scattered with seemingly response-inviting strategies (such as blank lines, blank pages, dashes), which give the impression that the virtual reader’s active and playful cooperation is elicited, these strategies turn out to be response-controlling expressions. Carroll’s virtual reader, then, seems to be more akin to Umberto Eco’s Model Reader, whose participation is planned and so to speak pre-constructed by the author, than to Wolfgang Iser’s implied reader, who truly communicates with the text. This seems to indicate that, although the virtual reader is apparently invited to give in to what Roger Caillois calls paidia (the impulsive manifestation of a play instinct), s/he is actually tricked into strictly adhering to ludus (the need to conform to rules). I will nonetheless suggest that real readers seem to be able to take on the role of Impostor Readers—a term coined after Jean-Jacques Lecercle’s theory of imposture in Interpretation as Pragmatics—and imagine unforeseen realisations of the text, therefore combining the two aspects of play defined by Caillois, paidia and ludus.
Research Interests:
This talk proposes to compare and contrast Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Nursery Alice. Although Carroll implies in the original preface to The Nursery Alice that this text is nothing but Alice’s Adventures in... more
This talk proposes to compare and contrast Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Nursery Alice. Although Carroll implies in the original preface to The Nursery Alice that this text is nothing but Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland for “children aged from nought to five” (58), I will show that the aesthetics of play that characterises Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland has been discarded in The Nursery Alice. The plot, pictures and characters of The Nursery Alice may well seem familiar, but the aesthetics of this shortened version are much less playful than in AinW: the textual references to games and toys have disappeared; so have many elements of the paratexts, puns and nonsensical logic that made AinW truly playful; besides, the structure of the book has become extremely rigid. As a consequence, the Implied Reader is only expected to silently and meekly submit to the devices laid out in the text: the reader constructed by The Nursery Alice is adhering neither to “ludus,” nor to “paidia”: s/he is a confined reader.
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Review of Alice in Transmedia Wonderland: Curiouser and Curiouser New Forms of a Children’s Classic, by Anna Kérchy. Jefferson: McFarland, 2016. 257 pp. Marvels & Tales 32.1 (2018): 182-184. (Accessible online:... more
Review of Alice in Transmedia Wonderland: Curiouser and Curiouser New Forms of a Children’s Classic, by Anna Kérchy. Jefferson: McFarland, 2016. 257 pp.
Marvels & Tales 32.1 (2018): 182-184.
(Accessible online: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1478&context=marvels )
Marvels & Tales 32.1 (2018): 182-184.
(Accessible online: https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1478&context=marvels )
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Manuel Jobert and Sandrine Sorlin’s collection of articles started off as a tribute to Geoffrey Leech, who was among the first to connect irony and banter in his 1983 Principles of Pragmatics and later in his 2014 Pragmatics of... more
Manuel Jobert and Sandrine Sorlin’s collection of articles started off as a tribute to Geoffrey Leech, who was among the first to connect irony and banter in his 1983 Principles of Pragmatics and later in his 2014 Pragmatics of Politeness. But as Jobert and Sorlin make it clear in their introduction, the book soon took off in another direction, as not every researcher in the field considers it helpful to analyse both notions conjointly. The Pragmatics of Irony and Banter then mainly tackles the issue of irony, while three articles (and the introduction) address the issue of banter, either for its own sake or in conjunction with irony. The collection of articles, published in the John Benjamins’ “Linguistic Approaches to Literature” series, is not, however, just another book on irony, as its focus is not so much on how irony (or banter) is processed, but rather on its (their) discursive function(s).
More: http://www.cercles.com/review/r84/Jobert.html
More: http://www.cercles.com/review/r84/Jobert.html
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In Yes to Solidarity, No to Oppression, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak analyses radical fantasy texts (China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus sequence, Frances Hardinge’s Gullstruck Island, Fly by Night, Twilight Robbery and... more
In Yes to Solidarity, No to Oppression, Justyna Deszcz-Tryhubczak analyses radical fantasy texts (China Miéville’s Un Lun Dun, Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus sequence, Frances Hardinge’s Gullstruck Island, Fly by Night, Twilight Robbery and A Face like Glass, and David Whitley’s Agora trilogy), alongside what she calls ‘radicalizing rather than already radical’ fiction (102), such as Ursula Le Guin’s Powers, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, Terry Pratchett’s Nation, Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina and Shadow Scale, and Kristin Cashore’s Graceling and Bitterblue.
More: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/ircl.2018.0257
More: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/pdfplus/10.3366/ircl.2018.0257
Research Interests:
Reception Studies, Dystopian Literature, Children's and Young Adult Literature, Utopian Literature, Dystopian Fiction, and 14 moreTerry Pratchett, Participative Research Methodologies, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fantasy Fiction, Reader-Response Theory, Philip Pullman, China Miéville, YA Literature, David Whitley, Young Adult Dystopian Fiction, Jonathan stroud, Frances Hardinge, Rachel Hartman, and Kristin Cashore
Zoe Jaques and Eugene Giddens’s book came out one year before the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a timely moment indeed to address the question of the durability and versatility of Lewis... more
Zoe Jaques and Eugene Giddens’s book came out one year before the 150th anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, a timely moment indeed to address the question of the durability and versatility of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books. In the fourth volume of the Ashgate series ‘Ashgate Studies in Publishing History, Manuscript, Print, Digital’, Jaques and Giddens do not merely meticulously unravel the intricate tale of the publication history of Carroll’s 1865 and 1871 Alice books, they also set out to tell the story of how Alice came to be adapted and transformed mainly through print, illustration and film—in keeping with the Ashgate series’s purpose to investigate textual creation and multimedia dissemination.
More: http://cve.revues.org/2651
More: http://cve.revues.org/2651
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La stylistique anglaise de Sandrine Sorlin est, comme Manuel Jobert l’indique en préface, un travail de grande envergure, qui témoigne du dynamisme de cette pratique « à la croisée de différents courants » (7). Cet ouvrage parvient à... more
La stylistique anglaise de Sandrine Sorlin est, comme Manuel Jobert l’indique en préface, un travail de grande envergure, qui témoigne du dynamisme de cette pratique « à la croisée de différents courants » (7). Cet ouvrage parvient à mêler avec pertinence micro- et macro-analyses, théories et pratiques, écoles anglaise et française. L’auteure expose clairement son souhait de ne pas prendre le Texte – dont la majuscule signale que ce terme englobe « tout type de discours, oral, écrit, ou en situation d’interaction » (42) – comme prétexte à un commentaire de faits de langue ou à l’application d’une unique théorie. Il s’agit d’effectuer des allers-retours fructueux entre Texte et linguistique de manière à révéler l’entièreté des potentialités langagières et de leurs objectifs en contexte. Cette ambition, qui transparaît dans le sous-titre de ce volume (« Théories et pratiques »), est parfaitement satisfaite : l’auteure fait preuve d’une grande rigueur théorique, alliée à une approche pédagogique fort bien pensée, qui permet à tout lecteur de pleinement s’approprier de nombreux concepts et théories de stylistique française et anglo-saxonne.
More: http://ebc.revues.org/2760
More: http://ebc.revues.org/2760