Vietnam and the Colonial Condition of French Literature explores an aspect of modern French literature that has been consistently overlooked in literary histories: the relationship between the colonies-their cultures, languages, and people-and formal shifts in French literary production. Starting from the premise that neither cultural identity nor cultural production can be
pure or homogenous, Leslie Barnes initiates a new discourse on the French literary canon by examining the work of three iconic French writers with personal connections to Vietnam: Andr-alraux, Marguerite Duras, and Linda L-
In a thorough investigation of the authors- linguistic, metaphysical, and textual experiences of colonialism, Barnes articulates a new way of reading French literature: not as an inward-looking, homogenous, monolingual tradition, but rather as a tradition of intersecting and interdependent peoples, cultures, and experiences.
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