Vivan I. Steemers is associate professor of French at Western Michigan University.
Description
Chapter 1: Francophone African Narratives in a French and Global Publishing Landscape Chapter 2: Entering the Anglo-American Book Market Chapter 3: Literary Awards for Minority Authors and their Impact on Further Consecration Chapter 4: Early Female Writing and its Reception on the Anglo-American Book Market Chapter 5: Transnational Reception and Appropriation of Rene Maran's Batouala Conclusion Appendix 1: Corpus Narratives and Translations Appendix 2: Mainstream Publishers of French Corpus Narratives Appendix 3: Specialized Publishers of French Corpus Narratives Appendix 4: Table A - French to English Translation Awards Appendix 5: Table B - Any-Language-to-English Translation Awards/Grants and Foreign Fiction Awards Appendix 6: Table C - Literary Translation Prizes/Awards: Gender and Minority Representation
Reviews
This is the fascinating story of the multiple forces that wrought the contours of sub-Saharan francophone literature as it entered the Anglo-American marketplace. With her freshly-tuned diachronic and transnational approach, Vivan Steemers unravels the amazing interconnections between the act of translation and the socio-political environment in which this occurred. Elegantly navigating between past and present, Steemers shows how the perception of key figures of African literature like Rene Maran and Mariama Ba has been shaped by the paratextual frame in which they were introduced to an often non-French speaking readership. Francophone African Narratives and the Anglo-American Book Market will find avid readers among colleagues in search of new postcolonial challenges in comparative literature, world literature, and translation studies. -- Ieme van der Poel, Universiteit van Amsterdam Meticulously researched, Francophone African Narratives and the Anglo-American Book Market:Ferment on the Fringes proposes an ambitious and inspiring demonstration of the crucial role played by translators, publishers and journalists in the transnational value-making process of African literature. Based on a corpus of translated narratives and archival work, this superb research generated at the crossroads of translation and postcolonial studies, sociology, and literary analysis is also attentive to minor transversal articulations that have shaped the meaning of African literary production in the 20th and 21st century. -- Claire Ducournau, Universite Paul-Valery Covering almost one hundred years of publishing history, this is a rich and nuanced study of the ways in which African literature has been marginalised, stereotyped, consecrated, and globalised. It offers a thought-provoking engagement with sociological theories of literary circulation and cultural capital, drawing on diverse methodologies to deepen our understanding of the World Republic of Letters. -- Kathryn Batchelor, Professor of Translation Studies, University College London