Hassan Melehy

Du Bellay and the Space of Early Modern Culture

This examination of Joachim Du Bellays Deffence et Illustration de la Langue Francoyse (1549) begins with a summary of the texts paradoxical thematic, namely, that its problem is not a problem: there is no need to defend French as a literary language against Latin, many have said, as there is already in the sixteenth century a thriving vernacular literature. However, there are some who insist on Latins superiority: Du Bellay answers them, but also exaggerates their position in order to stage a defense that has legal and military overtones. He does so in order to bring French into a dialogical relationship with Latin, as well as with other European literary languages. Although some critics have pointed out that this procedure is but one of several put forth by Du Bellay, this reading of the Deffence shows that the author valorizes it over the others by engaging in it: Du Bellay incorporates into the Deffence a number of antecedent texts in order to respond to the conditions he faces. He situates France and the French language in relation to antiquity; the relation is sketched out as a spatial one, the space being that in which the shape of modernity is emerging.

Antiquities of Britain: Spenser's Ruines of Time

I N The Ruines of Time, the poem that opens his Complaints (1591), Spenser offers reflections on the evanescent nature of all worldly things, death, and the creation of new life that may be found in poetry. Indeed, The Ruines of Time presents a poetics that Spenser develops and follows throughout the Complaints, and no less than a manifesto for a renewed English poetry, founded on the ruins of the past, a new life springing forth on the funeral monuments of the dead. In this respect, Spenser engages in a productive imitation of one of his major French predecessors, Joachim du Bellay, whose sonnet sequences the Antiquitez de Rome and Songe (published together in 1558) he presents as translations toward the end of the Complaints under the respective titles Ruines of Rome: by Bellay and Visions of Bellay. As I will show here, The Ruines of Time is marked by frequent allusion to and reworking of these sequences. And in a broader perspective, Spenser borrows notions of imitation from Du Bellay’s Deffence et Illustration de la Langue Francoyse (1549), a text with which he was likely familiar from as early as adolescence through the agency of his teacher, Richard Mulcaster. As I have presented it elsewhere, for Du Bellay imitation involves borrowing pieces of text from models from the past, reordering them, transforming them, and writing a text that addresses and contributes to the present context. That is, past models are drawn on in such a way that

Literatures of Exile and Return: Jack Kerouac and Quebec

Melehys essay explores Jack Kerouacs relationship to the Quebecois diaspora of which his Massachusetts family was a part, his experience of English as a foreign language, and how these inform his aesthetics. Melehy situates the discussion in debates on multilingualism in the study of American literature as well as theories of minor literature and translation. He demonstrates that Kerouacs realism involves an effort to bring into dominant US representation many aspects of the diaspora that were ideologically hidden. Part of this consideration is the reception of Kerouac in Quebec as a major literary figure who made immense contributions to reflections on hybrid North American identity. In the appreciation of Kerouac by Quebec novelist and critic Victor-Levy Beaulieu, the author shows that early critical dismissals of Kerouac in the United States were closely connected to the aesthetic problems he raised in his work that were specific to his awareness of the diaspora. Melehy then turns his attention to some of Kerouacs lesser-known novels, especially two that focus mainly on French-Canadian culture and identity, Dr. Sax (1959) and Satori in Paris (1966). Proceeding to a commentary of a Quebecois rewriting of Kerouac, Jacques Poulins 1984 Volkswagen Blues, Melehy demonstrates this novels exploration of North American identities in connection with Quebec and the role of literature in mapping them. The conclusion assesses Kerouacs contribution to American literature as a meditation on transnational, translingual identity.

Critiques of Early Modern Criticism

Whether or not we were already involved with the academic profession in the 1980s, most of us have heard quite a bit about the so-called theory wars of that time. The existence of this institute is an indication that, though without remaining as loud, shrill, and preemptively disqualifying as in those days, that set of conflicts has never been settled. Following the many attacks that theory saw when it began to mark most areas of literary studies, it appeared for a while in the 1990s that it might finally have hit a housebroken stride by retreating into a small lot in the different national literatures’ variations on twentieth-century studies. Rather than functioning as a tool or conceptual schema for proliferating readings of old and new texts, in this domain it became concerned primarily with itself and secondarily with offering tools for the production of criticism to students and scholars in different areas. Although in the 1980s it wasn’t unusual to encounter theorists from any of the areas of specialization in the national literatures, such creatures became less common as time passed and the divisions between periods, specializations, and disciplines became more forceful. Indeed, interdisciplinarity itself has steadily been on the wane since its heyday in the 1980s: as resources become scarcer, departments became less willing to share and collaborate, and faculty more adamant about protecting their minuscule place in the academic sun. And the rise of barriers between the periods (in French studies, where I do most of my work, the narrative of literary history has long favored an organization of events according to centuries) has accompanied a strengthening of historicism, which regularly reaffirms its stance against theory.

Jack Kerouac and the Nomadic Cartographies of Exile

With the 1950 publication of his first novel, The Town and the City, Jack Kerouac saw a measure of success. Although sales were disappointing, major outlets reviewed the book (Nicosia 300–310, 319), signaling the twenty-seven-year-old writer’s obvious talent.1 One milieu in which Kerouac’s accomplishment was especially appreciated was the Franco-American or French-Canadian community of New England, in which he had grown up and to which he maintained close ties. Members of this population, who had left Quebec mainly between 1840 and 1930 under severe political, cultural, and economic pressures, were understandably pleased to see the mainstream prominence of “one of their own.” This interest in traditional U.S.-American success was somewhat complicated by the Franco-American community’s strong commitment to survivance, the set of practices designed to maintain cultural identity, especially with regard to the continued use of the French language. Certainly aware of the history and conditions of his home community, Kerouac was thrilled to read Yvonne Le Maitre’s review of The Town and the City in the French-language weekly Le Travailleur, published in Worcester, Massachusetts. His reaction to this review, a letter to its author, is a remarkable document for the way it reveals the major role of his relationship to his community in his approach to writing. This role is evident throughout his work—not just in his fictional depictions of French Canadians but also in his consistent fascination with the great variety of cultures in the United States and how they show signs of heterogeneous origins.