Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François, PhD (2012), University of Mauritius, is a Marian Trygve Freed Early Career Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Pennsylvania State University. He has published numerous articles, namely on representations of violence in Francophone literatures.
"The scope of the study is impressive. It ranges across geographical locations including Algeria, Belgium, Canada, Côte dâIvoire, Djibouti, Iran, Madagascar, Martinique, Mauritius, and Morocco to identify a new generation of writers whose work develops a poetics to account for the crisis in the representation of violence and breaks with established aesthetic values. [...] Not only does the author carefully trace the evolution of contemporary concepts of violence and their thematic and formal manifestations in the works studied, but he draws from an impressive body of philosophical, sociological, and literary work to examine the aesthetic and ethical strategies of representation that the contemporary proliferation of violence in fiction has inspired." - Charlotte Baker, in French Studies 72-3, July 2018
"Jean-Françoisâs book paves the way for novel theoretical approaches to questions of aesthetics and ethicality, offering compelling evidence of a transoceanic literary phenomenon underwriting the contemporary francophone novel." - Benjamin Hiramatsu Ireland, Modern Language Review, January 2018.
"In amove that differentiates his work from those of other scholars working on la francophonie, Jean-François does not work exclusively from a postcolonial approach, even as he weaves it throughout his analysis. He incorporates theories from a variety of other disciplines, such as philosophy and psychoanalysis. In addition, he divides his chapters thematically, rather than geographically, resulting in his decentering of the texts to create an analytical network of encounters, ruptures, and continuities. [...] Jean-Françoisâs monograph is a useful resource for scholars meditating on literary and historical violence, particularly given its exhaustive line of inquiry. Scholars interested in broader questions of poetics and the contemporary will also benefit from the insights offered by this study." - Nanar Khamo, French Review, 92.2.
All interested in the fields of Francophone, postcolonial, and comparative literatures, and anyone concerned with the literary representations of violence in contemporary cultures across various geographical regions.