Alex Hughes. Encyclopedia of Contemporary French Culture

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

248

portray the poverty-stricken Berber region of

Kabylia, but shows implicitly that such pov-

erty was a direct consequence of French colo-

nization.

The 1950s was also marked by the revolu-

tionary style of writing of the Tunisian Albert

Memmi, the Moroccan Driss Chraïbi and the

Algerian Kateb Yacine. They respectively pub-

lished what were to become canonical texts in

francophone Maghrebian literature: La Statue

de sel (The Statue of Salt) in 1953, The Simple

Past (Le Passé simple) in 1954 and Nedjma in

1956. While Yacine wrote about the meta-

phorical repeated rape of Algeria, Memmi and

Chraïbi respectively attacked the traditional

Jewish and Muslim societies from which they

feel alienated and which they describe in an-

gry and violent tones.

Of the three writers, it is Chraïbi who drew

more attention, both for the quality of his novel

and for the aftermath of its publication. His

direct attack on Islamic law, which in Chraïbi’s

view subjugates the individual, gained him the

applause of those in France who were for the

continuation of colonial rule over a nation who

they believed needed to be civilized, and at-

tracted the anger of Moroccans who, during

the publication of The Simple Past, were strug-

gling for independence and saw the novel as

propaganda against their fight.

While the 1950s novels were highly auto-

biographical, the 1960s saw a more politi-

cized kind of writing, especially in Algeria.

With the Algerian war of independence, Alge-

rian writers took up arms, and this period saw

prolific literary production with revolution-

ary tones and themes. Thus, Mouloud

Mammeri’s 1965 novel L’Opium et le bâton

(The Opium and the Baton) set in a small

Kabyle village, became a classical text dealing

with the Algerian Revolution and the role of

the National Liberation Front (FLN) and the

resistance fighters. But, before that, Les En-

fants d’un nouveau monde (Children of a

New World) was published by a woman

writer, Assia Djebar. In her 1962 novel,

Djebar celebrates the role of women in the

war of independence.

From the mid-1960s, a new generation of

writers emerged, including Rachid Boudjedra

and Mohammed Dib in Algeria, and Moham-

med Khaïr-Eddine in Morocco. They were

concerned less with the war than with the situ-

ation of the Maghrebin countries in the after-

math of independence. They focused on their

own societies, which they criticized for inhib-

iting freedom of expression and for abusing

human rights. Likewise, under the banner of

free speech, the Moroccan poet Abdellatif

Laâbi founded the literary review Souffles

(Breaths) in 1966. He was later jailed as a po-

litical prisoner but was released in 1988 after

Amnesty International intervened on his be-

half.

The publications of the 1970s marked a

complete break from the previous styles of

francophone Maghrebin literature. The writ-

ing of this period subverted the French lan-

guage and gave it new dimensions with highly

philosophical tones. Illustrative writers of this

period are Abdelkebir Khatibi with his 1971

novel, La Mémoire tatouée (The Tattooed

Memory), and Abdelwahab Meddeb’s 1979

work, Talismano. Language, identity, history

and sexuality were the key themes of writing

of this period. The production of poetry

gained ground on the novel in the 1970s.

Thus, in addition to novelists who are also

poets, such as Mohammed Dib and Tahar Ben

Jelloun, new names became prominent, such

as Abdellatif Laâbi (who continued to write

from his prison cell), Mohammed Loakira and

Mostafa Nissaboury.

Maghrebin women started publishing in

French as early as 1947. Religious, social and

state censorship often constrain women’s

writing, which results in some women giving

up writing altogether or publishing under

pseudonyms, such as Aïcha Lemsine. While,

generally, women writers share the same so-

ciopolitical concerns, Assia Djebar stands as

the only woman writer whose work experi-

ments with the multiplicity of women’s voices

in literature and whose use of French is a sub-

version of what she calls her ‘stepmother

tongue’.

Despite the controversies surrounding the

use of French, women writers continue to use

francophone writing (fiction, poetry): North Africa

249

it as a medium to make their voice heard. In

fact, in spite of the policy of Arabization in

the Maghreb since the 1970s, the 1980s and

1990s produced more names from both sexes

on the francophone literary scene. Repre-

sentative of these periods are women writers

such as Béji Hélè, Nina Bouraoui, and male

writers such as Rachid Mimouni, and

Edmond Amrane El Maleh. On the other

hand, of the old generation, Kateb Yacine

ceased to write in French as a result of his

opposition to the institutionalization of

francophonie. However, ironically, in 1986 he

was awarded the prestigious Prix National

des Lettres for his rich contribution to

francophone writing.

Though the 1990s represent political and

religious threats to Maghrebin writers—espe-

cially intense in Algeria—the majority con-

tinue to publish. Unlike their predecessors,

most of whom lived in France, they have opted

to remain in their own countries. This is a

brave and risky choice: many writers, like

Tahar Djaout in 1993, have been murdered

by Islamist opposition groups in Algeria (any-

one perceived to be an ‘intellectual’ is a tar-

get). The very real risk of violent death is a

high price to pay to keep alive a literature that

some critics previously regarded as being of

little real value.

LAÏLA IBNLFASSI

See also: autobiography; decolonization;

francophone performing arts (North Africa);

francophone popular music: North Africa; lit-

erary prizes

Further reading

Ibnlfassi, L. and Hitchcott, N. (eds) (1996)

African Francophone Writing: A Critical

Introduction, Oxford: Berg (first selection

of critical essays on North and sub-Saha-

ran African literature in English).

Khatibi, A. (1968) Le Roman maghrébin,

Paris: Éditions du Seuil (full-length study

of the North African novel in French).

francophone writing (fiction,

poetry): Switzerland

Switzerland and its literature are often viewed

as constituting an island in the middle of Eu-

rope—an appropriate image, as long as one

bears in mind that the closed world of an is-

land is also the symbol of travel, refuge and

escapism. Historically speaking the Swiss have

always tried to ‘escape’ their boundaries (in

58 BC Julius Caesar sought to halt their gen-

eral exodus). The fragmentation of Switzer-

land, with its late absorption of some of the

French-speaking cantons, means that Swiss

identity is often constructed in contradistinc-

tion to other nationalities.

Historically, perhaps inevitably, French-

Swiss literature is strongly linked with France.

Indeed the romand intelligentsia traditionally

went to Paris to study or work. Within Swit-

zerland, France is often accused of claiming as

her own the greatest Swiss-French writers,

such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Mme de Staël,

the linguist Saussure, Blaise Cendrars, Robert

Pinget, Albert Cohen and Pierre Klossowski.

In the same way, most Swiss visual artists are

perceived to become ‘un-Swissed’ once famous

(for example, Füseli, Balthus, Le Corbusier,

Alberto Giacometti, Paul Klee, Jean-Luc

Godard), leaving ‘local’ and ‘minor’ artists to

remain Swiss.

Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz (1878–1947),

whose innovative characteristic is the placing

of the reader within the novel by a poetic use

of the pronouns ‘we’ (nous, on) and ‘you’

(vous), instigated the rebirth of local literature,

his rhythmic, poetical style influencing many

later writers beyond the borders of Switzer-

land. However, his nationality and his affir-

mation thereof have undoubtedly served to

diminish his international standing as a great

writer.

The movement of emigration and immigra-

tion that constituted Switzerland has gener-

ated two specific types of literary Swissness:

that adopted by the refugee and immigrant

(such as Cohen, Anne Cuneo, Klossowski,

Benjamin Wilkominski), and that of the ‘fifth

francophone writing (fiction, poetry): Switzerland

250

Switzerland’, comprising the Swiss abroad

(like Blaise Cendrars, Edmond Fleg, Clarissa

Francillon, Philippe Jaccottet, Pinget,

Monique Saint-Hélier), who produced a sub-

stantial body of travel and exile literature, as

well as some internationally recognized

‘French’ literature. The insular Swiss have not,

as generally believed, generated solely dull and

austere work. Playfulness and observation of

the outside world are strong preoccupations,

as if singularity could be better expressed by

toying with otherness (see, for example the

work of Amélie Plume). Peasant and workers’

roots have also inspired an important strain

of Marxist literature (for example, Yves Velan,

and Jacques Chessex, who received the

Goncourt prize for L’Ogre in 1973).

This singularity has led to Swiss-French

writers wishing to be seen as individuals rather

than as a group, and certain ambiguities to-

wards the notion of nationality can be dis-

cerned in their work. Distinctions between

writers are today felt to be thematic rather

than nationalistic, their Swiss roots often only

being identifiable by the fact that they are pub-

lished by Swiss presses (see, for example

Charles-Albert Cingria, Anne Cuneo, Amélie

Plume, Gustave Roud, Yvette Z’Graggen). In-

deed, except for a substantial corpus of inter-

nationally recognized Swiss-French academics

and intellectuals (Albert Béguin, Léon Bopp,

Marc Eigeldinger, Jean Piaget, Marcel

Raymond, Denis de Rougemont, Jean

Rousset, Jean Starobinski, Jean Ziegler), the

international reputation of Swiss-French writ-

ing today rests on the unjustly small number

taken up by publishers in France (Chessex,

Cohen, Jaccottet, Pinget, Velan).

VÉRÈNE GRIESHABER

See also: francophone performing arts: Swit-

zerland; literary prizes

Further reading

Francillon, R. (ed.) (1996–8) Histoire de la

littérature suisse, 4 vols, Lausanne: Payot

(essential background reading).

Frères Jacques, Les

Singers

A legendary quartet of male singers, formed

in 1944, whose stage costumes (including leo-

tards, white gloves, top hats and handlebar

moustaches) became their distinctive trade-

mark. They perfected their stage performances

in variety theatres rather than music halls,

combining gesture, mime, movement and

lighting in songs which became sketches or

playlets. Les Frères Jacques gave their farewell

performance at the Champs-Élysées in 1980.

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Verlant, G. (1985) Gainsbourg, Paris: Livre

de Poche (biographically oriented study).

Gall, France

b. 1947, Paris

Singer

Having had early success as one of the French

yé-yé (1960s pop) generation, France Gall

modified her image successfully in two differ-

ent reincarnations: first, singing songs by Serge

Gainsbourg—including Poupée de cire,

poupée de son (Wax Doll, Rag Doll), which

won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965 and

sold over a million copies in Japan alone; and

second, singing songs by the man who became

her husband, the late Michel Berger, includ-

ing La Déclaration d’amour (The Declaration

of Love) and Musique. France Gall is still

popular today.

IAN PICKUP

Further reading

Assouline, P. (1984) Gaston Gallimard, un

demi-siècle d’édition française, Paris:

Balland.

Martin, H.-J., Chartier, R. and Vivet, J.-P. (eds)

(1986) Histoire de l’édition française, vol.

4, Le Livre concurrencé 1900–1950, Paris:

Promodis (essential reading).

game shows

Ratings rivalry between TF1 and France 2 has

produced a variety of game shows for prime-

time TV. Many are American by-products,

such as Wheel of Fortune (Roue de la fortune)

and Une Famille en or (both TF1), and Des

Chiffres et des lettres (France 2). Less slavish

towards their Anglo-Saxon prototypes are

Dessinez c’est gagné and Que le meilleur gagne

game shows

254

(both France 2). Live audience participation

in most game shows is reduced to applauding.

The two exceptions to the normal kind of

game show are Des Chiffres et des lettres and

Que le meilleur gagne. In the former, if partici-

pants fail, members of the audience (those with

the right answer) are picked out to stand up

and read it out—a moment of glory. In the lat-

ter, the audience is the game, which is one of

auto-elimination and self-applause (they clap as

they lose). Of the 200-odd participants, only

one must remain at the end, and he or she goes

on to try to win the prize. The audience shouts

‘Au revoir’ as participants are skittled out by

failing to answer silly multiple-choice questions.

Of all the games this is the only one that in any

way resists the codes of game shows. The

compère, Naguy, is North African (elsewhere

on these shows, white males dominate). He in-

sults his participants—especially those who get

answers wrong. But the audience hits back: they

take pleasure from losing, even deliberately los-

ing to get their moment on the box. Naguy un-

dermines the myth of the all-knowing

compère—‘it’s all written on the card’, he an-

nounces, thus also ridiculing the myth of knowl-

edge as the key to social and economic mobil-

ity to which game shows subscribe. He is not

the patriarch nor the prof his more elderly coun-

terparts have become. He caricatures the nudge-

nudge/wink-wink sexual innuendos so com-

monplace in the compère’s discourse by aping

the ‘black man as macho/virile’ and by deliber-

ately setting up question marks around his own

sexuality as much as around that of the male

participants in the game.

Dessinez c’est gagné is a reinscription of cha-

rades on to a large flip chart, upon which par-

ticipants draw clues for their team to guess the

unnamed word, phrase or whatever. Two teams

compete, three to each side—two young con-

testants plus a well-known TV or media per-

sonality. They sit opposite each other on sofas

and are surrounded in close proximity by the

TV audience. This cosiness is deconstructed by

the fact that the teams are single-sexed—male

versus female, battle of the sexes—and that

ageism and the teacher-pupil dynamic are well

in place as the young contestants are subjected

to ridicule by the middle-aged compère. There

appears to be no prize, except the delight of

winning, being insulted and being so close to

fame. One particular broadcast, however, might

not have been so pleasurable: the star in ques-

tion was the actor Philippe Léotard whose

drunkenness was apparent to all. Attempts to

laugh off his rudeness and stifle his volubility

failed completely—but the spectacle went on,

live broadcasting at its best!

SUSAN HAYWARD

Further reading

Whitton, D. (1987) Stage Directors in Mod-

ern France, Manchester: Manchester Uni-

versity Press (a discussion of García’s work

and influence).

gastronomy

France’s reputation as the world centre of gas-

tronomy—loosely defined, perhaps, as the

consumption not only of fine food and drink,

but of discourses about it—is closely con-

nected with both her geography and her his-

tory. At once a Mediterranean and an Atlan-

tic, a northern and a southern country, the

range of raw materials to which she has ac-

cess is probably unrivalled in Europe, and it

was after the French Revolution and the bour-

geoisie’s triumph over the nobility that the

multiple ways in which these foodstuffs could

be prepared and served spread through soci-

ety. It is no accident that the first restaurant in

the modern sense of the term was opened in

Paris in 1782 by a former cook to the count of

Provence (later to become Louis XVIII).

Yet la haute cuisine as it was known and

consumed immediately after the war might

well appear monotonous and turgid to a con-

temporary public. Refrigeration was uncom-

mon, and produce in consequence often far

from fresh; it was often as much to mask the

less-than-pristine state of fish or meat as to

enhance their flavour that the heavy dairy-

based sauces characteristic of this type of

cooking were used. Even in 1960 there were

only seven supermarkets in the whole of

France, so the range of raw materials avail-

able to the domestic cook or restaurateur was

restricted. The red Guide Michelin, like

France’s leading restaurants dependent on the

motor car and the expanding tourist industry,

shows certain of their number listing the same

specialities literally year in, year out. Crayfish

au gratin, duckling, truffles and foie gras as

accompaniments suggest what may now seem

the indigestible tone of this cuisine, in which

vegetables were relegated to a strictly second-

ary position. Presentation was as heavy and

codified as the dishes themselves; the ceremo-

nial raising of the silver dome that covered the

plat de resistance was an indispensable part of

the dining ritual. The vast majority of French

people, of course, had neither cultural nor fi-

nancial access to this type of cooking. La cui-

sine bourgeoise, often perforce rooted in re-

gional specialities, yielded such dishes as the

tripes à la mode de Caen characteristic of

Normandy or the quenelles (sausages of

minced pike) of Lyon. Popular restaurants

such as the bistrots in the Les Halles area of

Paris or the bouchons of Lyon fed into the

loftier gastronomic tradition—a tendency that

has continued apace until the present day.

The spread of refrigeration, improved sys-

tems of transport and the increasing impor-

tance of television all contributed to the de-

mocratization of gastronomy that has been a

dominant tendency of the postwar period.

Raymond Oliver, owner of the celebrated Pa-

risian restaurant, Le Grand Véfour, gave the

first live television cookery demonstrations in

the 1950s, thereby becoming one of the two

key French gastronomic personalities of his

time. The other was Fernand Point (1897–

1955), whose Restaurant La Pyramide in

Vienne (between Lyon and Grenoble) trained

many of the greatest chefs of succeeding gen-

erations and whose stress on fresh products of

the highest quality, always freshly prepared,

combined with his innovative use of sauces to

mark a welcome break from the often lacklus-

tre cuisine of the bigger hotels.

The spread of colour photography , enli-

vening the cookery columns of such maga-

zines as Elle or L’Express, also had a major

influence, especially combined with the

gastronomy

256

weekly column in Elle written by Dr Édouard

de Pomiane, France’s best-known apostle of

the healthy diet until 1964, when he died.

More types of food became widely available

and more care went into finding healthier

ways of preparing them; Oliver and other

chefs ‘returned from the [1964] Tokyo Olym-

pics infatuated with Japanese cooking’

(Mennell 1993), and this was to exercise a

major influence on what was later to become

known as la nouvelle cuisine. The food critics

Henri Gault and Christian Millau applied this

term (whose first use dates back as far as

1740) to the cooking of such figures as Paul

Bocuse and Michel Guérard, though Point

has a strong claim to be its founding father.

Through their annual restaurant guide and

monthly magazine, Gault and Millau became

the dominant figures in French gastronomy.

Nouvelle cuisine reacted against heavy

saucing, lengthy cooking times, excessive reli-

ance on dairy products and the orthodoxies

of Parisian and grand hotel dishes, in favour

of lighter types of cooking (steaming, under

the Oriental influence, was a favourite), the

use of unusual herbs and fruits to impart new

flavours, and an inventiveness often drawing

upon regional and provincial traditions for its

inspiration.

Nowadays many of the innovations of

nouvelle cuisine scarcely seem novel at all. The

serving of sorrel with salmon (a Troisgros dis-

covery), the use of a plethora of wild mush-

rooms, the promotion of once ‘vulgar’ items

such as lentils or spinach to gastronomic glory

have all long since become part of the French

diner’s landscape. The controversy it raised

between about 1973—the date of Gault and

Millau’s article ‘Vive la nouvelle cuisine

française’—and 1976, when Guérard’s La

Grande Cuisine minceur was published, was

none the less fierce, partisans of the ancien

régime such as Le Monde’s food critic La

Reynière (Robert Courtine) or Jean-Robert

Pitte often acrimoniously crossing swords with

Gault and Millau and ‘their’ young Turks.

Nouvelle cuisine’s cause was certainly not

helped by the zealotry of some of its practi-

tioners, who dished up combinations of well-

nigh Surrealist absurdity (raspberry vinegar

was a favourite component), in visual forms

more reminiscent of abstract painting than of

still life, and most notoriously all too often in

minuscule portions (a cartoon in the English

magazine Punch memorably distilled this last

tendency in depicting a puzzled couple in a

nouvelle cuisine restaurant asking the waiter:

‘Excuse me, have we eaten?’). It was not sur-

prising that no less a figure than Bocuse was

to abjure the ‘movement’, nor that its succes-

sion, enthusiastically abetted by Gault and

Millau, should have been assumed by cuisine

du terroir, harking back historically to the sup-

posed heyday of France’s peasantry rather

than looking exotically to the East for its in-

spiration. It was the turn of haricot beans,

black and white pudding, humbler fish such

as the grey mullet, lesser-known varieties of

regional cheese all to find stardom. Heartier

this type of cooking undoubtedly was, but it

in no sense represented a return to the haute

cuisine of yore, whose omnipresent frying and

roasting were largely replaced by grilling and

even more casseroling.

The last-named method of cooking, of

course, takes time, which is doubtless why it

has been raised from the rank of commoner to

the nobility; easier by far, if one can afford it,

to pay somebody else to prepare a gourmet

casserole for you in a restaurant…The corol-

lary of this, of course, has been a movement

on a vast scale towards various kinds of con-

venience food for everyday eating. These need

not necessarily be bad: the big-name chefs all

endorse deep-frozen or vacuum-packed prod-

ucts bearing their name, the best of which are

quite as delicious as anything most people

could expect to prepare at home, even given

unrealistic amounts of time and energy.

‘Macdonaldization’, however, is spreading

apace in France as everywhere else, and for

every Bocuse- or Guérard-signed vacuum-

packed scallop ragoût, numerous tins of

cassoulet or sauerkraut in the downmarket

William Saurin range are undoubtedly sold in

supermarkets. Younger people, their elders

often complain, care little for food and less for

its traditions, and even actively prefer a

gastronomy

257

Macdo to the traditional dishes of their re-

gions. Non-European restaurants—North Af-

rican ones in particular, generally serving

couscous, which occupies a similar place in

France to Indian food in Britain—are often

popular with younger people, especially stu-

dents, and their range has been steadily on the

increase. Fifteen years ago, a Thai or Indian

restaurant was a rarity even in Paris; today,

most provincial towns of any size have one or

more of each. That, of course, is no less symp-

tomatic than Macdonaldization of the grow-

ing internationalization of everything to do

with food. Nor, for all the rarity of mad cow

disease and the plethora of jokes about it to

which English people living in France have

been exposed, is anxiety about the quality and

purity of one’s diet. Excessive use of preserva-

tives, standardized fruit and vegetables grown

for appearance not flavour, cheeses with the

taste pasteurized out of them—the litany of

worries is a familiar one. It is ironic, after two

decades and more in which French cuisine re-

turned to the precept of the gastronomic

writer Curnonsky (1872-–1956), ‘Gas-

tronomy is when things taste like what they

are’, that the very technical developments that

made such a return possible seem to be men-

acing its survival.

KEITH READER

Further reading

Fischler, C. (1990/3) L’Homnivore, Paris: Odile

Jacob/Points (a fascinating socio-anthropo-

logical overview, striking a good balance

between information and interpretation).

Gillet, P. (1994) Soyons français à table!, Paris:

Payot/Rivages (contains a helpful glossary

of key names and figures).

Guérard, M. (1976) La Grande Cuisine

minceur, Paris: Robert Laffont (an eloquent

plea for the new style of cooking).

Mennell, S. (1985) All Manners of Food (Eat-

ing and Taste in England and France from

the Middle Ages to the Present), Oxford:

Blackwell (the most thorough and schol-

arly historical overview readily available).

——(1993) ‘Food and Wine’, in M.Cook (ed.)

French Culture Since 1945, Harlow and

New York: Longman (a concise distillation

of the key developments since the war).

Neirinck, E. and Poulain, J.-P. (1992) Histoire

de la cuisine et des cuisiniers, Malakoff:

Jacques Lanore (a succinct illustrated his-

tory, with good biographical and chrono-

logical information).

Gatti, Armand

b. 1924, Monaco

Journalist, playwright and director,

real name Saveur Dante Gatti

Wartime experiences as a deportee, resistance

fighter and prizewinning journalist fuelled

many of Gatti’s flamboyant political plays. In

1968, he began developing theatre studios for

the people of Toulouse and Montreuil, and

turned to television, while continuing to de-

velop community theatre projects.

ANNIE SPARKS

Further reading

Knowles, D. (1989) Armand Gatti in the

Theatre: Wild Duck Against the Wind,

London: Athlone Press (analysis of his life

and work).

Gaulle, Charles de

b. 1890, Lille;

d. 1970, Colombey-les-deux-Églises,

Haute Marne

Politician

Gaulle, Charles de