Jean-François Vernay

The Great Australian Novel -- A Panorama (Brolga, 2010)

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BOOK PRESENTATION

The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama has a tale to tell. It is a story of Australia, its history and geography, its people and its ideas as revealed through the rich literary genre of the Australian novel. This is a cinematic story for all Australians to know about and to experience like an audience in a darkened cinema absorbed in exciting action on the silver screen. Jean-François Vernay’s seemingly casual approach speaks directly to the reader in a free-flowing narrative that is concerned with involving the reader intellectually – and emotionally. This remastered version of Panorama du roman australien (Paris: Hermann, 2009) is now available to all zones. Restricting it to the French zone would have deprived many of much.

BIONOTE

Jean-François VERNAY is a Franco-Australian essayist with a lifelong love of Australian writing. His most recent book, The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama (Melbourne: Brolga, 2010), has been translated by Dr. Marie Ramsland and reads like a riveting novel in a nonchalant – if not conversational – style. With his delightful command of language, Dr. Vernay has spared no effort to share his enthusiasm for Australian fiction from a refreshing and witty perspective.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK

Simon Caterson, “French take on the Australian novel” in A2 “Features”, The Age (Melbourne), 14 Feb 2009, p.21. Disponible sur Internet.

“… Vernay’s approach to the Australian novel has the intellectual playfulness associated with some of the best French critical writing … Panorama du roman australien is bold in its conception and promises to be influential in shaping the wider world’s appreciation and understanding of Australian literature”.

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Maurice Blackman, Explorations : A Journal of French/Australian Connections 47 (Melbourne), Dec. 2009, pp.41-2.

“ […] Panorama du roman australien is a remarkable achievement which promises to raise awareness of the Australian novel in France and Europe …"

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Marie Ramsland, LINQ (Queensland), May 2010, pp.185-90.

“Like a silver screen narrator, Vernay speaks directly to the reader – the « I » soon becomes « we ». And this seemingly casual approach continues in the prologue and onwards, in a free-flowing narrative that is not just concerned with giving cold hard disjointed facts (although facts there are), but with involving the reader intellectually – and emotionally. One can imagine the reader as part of an audience in a darkened cinema absorbed in exciting action on the silver screen."

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Nicholas Jose, General Editor of the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature. Foreword to The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama. Mai 2010.

[Jean-François Vernay’s] guiding principle is to see Australian literature on its own terms rather than, as is often the case, as a subsidiary of the Anglophone subset of world literature […]. Vernay’s is a decolonising project that brings a vitalising perspective to Australian literary studies. […] Vernay’s observations […] are enlivened by enthusiasm, sensitivity and engagement. He participates in the quarrels and triumphs of Australian literature. Whether this panorama is surveyed in its French or English versions, whether in the classroom where it will be useful or elsewhere as a general introduction, we owe Jean-François Vernay a debt of gratitude for his generous intervention.

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Ludivine Royer, Postcolonial Text 5: 4 (2009), 3 pp.

[…] unlike the aforementioned university publications, which compile the work of several contributors who together sought to give a comprehensive view of Australian literature in bulky volumes meant to be reference works, Panorama is a short and single-authored book that reads from cover to cover like a riveting novel. In fact, it would seem that Vernay intended—and managed—to share his enthusiasm for Australia’s national literature as much as he sought to impart the sound knowledge he acquired over ten years of research. Passion shows through each page of this carefully argued text.

MAJOR REVIEW: Peter Pierce, “Spotlight on the Literary Bunyip”, The Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum), 21-22/05/2011, p.35

A respectful French academic has cast a cinematic eye over Australian fiction.

"In 1868, John William De Forest coined the term “The great American Novel.” This was, perhaps, a move of cultural reconstruction hard on the end of the Civil War. The hope he expressed that one day such a creature as the great American novel might appear in the US ignored the great novels already written there – by Hawthorne and Melville.

Speaking on behalf of his national literature, A.D. Hope averred that “the bunyip of Australian literature is the mythical beast the great Australian novel”, thus reducing the notion to hearsay and comedy. Nowadays the term is rarely used. A score of our novels could contest for the honorific. Nevertheless, it has resurfaced in an enterprising book by the New Caledonia-based French academic Jean-François Vernay, The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama.

Already the author of a monograph on Christopher Koch, Water From the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (2007), Vernay follows other French scholars of our literature such as Xavier Pons and Chantal Kwast-Greff. The French version (2009) of his latest work was plainly called Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours. Vernay explains that he “set out to inform the French reader of a literature that was still relatively unknown despite the efforts of a few publishing houses in France.”

The notion of the great Australian novel scarcely features in his work whose direction is indicated instead by the subtitle A Panorama. Vernay’s method is cinematic, so that within an orderly chronological narrative, he intersperses close-ups of individual authors and books, low-angle shots of novels or novelists who dominate the landscape, and panoramic views of themes of the career of an important author (for instance, literature of the convict system; Christina Stead).

The question of what is “Australian” about our literature is sensibly handled by reference to the flexible definition in D.R. Burns’s underrated The Directions of Australian Fiction: 1920-74 (1975) “tied in some ways …to things Australian”. Vernay also follows Burns as that now scarce specimen, the author of a single volume literary history, albeit one restricted to the novel. Having signalled what he regards as “iconic themes” – the quest, conquest, voyage, geography, topography, isolation, The Antipodes, abundance, religion, disappearance – Vernay briskly gets on with his analytical survey. There is a stock coverage of the colonial period, from Savery’s Quintus Servinton (1831) to Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life (1874) – The latter is suggestively titled La justice des hommes in its French translation – and of what he calls the “emergence of a national consciousness” between 1875 and 1900.

We hear a more distinctive, original, indeed an outsider’s voice once Vernay reaches the 20^th century. Covering its first half, he notes a double antinomy…detachment, by authors writing behind pseudonyms or living elsewhere as expatriates, in contrast to engagement expressed as a neo-nationalist or populist trend”. He is judicious on such communist writers as Frank Hardy – “docile, yet faithful authors who carried out the dogma to the letter” – and on Colin Johnson’s usurping of an Aboriginal identity, which led to his being “incorrectly hallowed” by some critics still. Vernay considers Koch “largely ignored by critics [though not by him] as a result to his strong opposition to university orthodoxy”. He also reclaims forgotten works and authors, among them Kerryn Higg’s All That False Instruction: A Novel of Lesbian Love (originally published in 1975 under the pseudonym Elizabeth Riley).

The final chapter Postmodernism and New Tendencies (1981 Onwards), which encompasses one third of the book, shows Vernay at his most daring. He judges freely: Gerald Murnane “wrote novels that are true static odysseys of conscience with almost no action”; Michael Wilding is “the Australian David Lodge”. There is a perceptive commentary on novels about psychoanalysis by Carmel Bird, Brian Castro, Peter Goldsworthy and others, but under the contentious rubric of the disintegration of the family at the end of the 1960s. The agent? “Feminism exposed serious family secrets: paedophilia, violence in marriages, family dramas, incest and so on.” Helen Garner is intriguingly viewed as the precursor of grunge fiction seen in turn as the “expression of a fin-de-siècle mentality”.

The French theorist in Vernay leads him to coin the term “esperectomic” for the fiction of L.A. McCann, M.J Hyland, and James Bradley (combining the French word for hope with the Greek for excision). On the other hand, his conclusion sees the return of the repressed – the organic metaphor as literary historical explanation – “the Australian novel, young and vigorous, is prospering in fresh soil and is in full bloom”. That is not the panorama we have been given. Vernay reveals a more vexed, complex, less benign condition in our fiction. Perhaps his remark is best regarded as a graceful gesture from a respectful, inquisitive, penetrating observer of our literature from the outside."

Peter PIERCE.

URL:

http://www.panmacmillan.com.au/display_title.asp?ISBN=9781921596391&Author=Vernay,%20Jean-Francois

Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours (Hermann, 2009)

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Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours. Collection Savoirs Lettres créée par Michel Foucault, puis dirigée par Arthur Cohen et Patrick Née, Paris: Hermann, 2009, 250 pp.

URL: http://www.editions-hermann.fr/voirRevue.php?revueid=2617&menu=&prodid=664&lang=fr

Recensions: Simon Caterson, The Age (A2), 14/02/2009, p.21; Sylviane Soulard, Episodes, 06/2009, pp.56-60; Roland Rossero, Les Infos 347, 03/07/2009, p.4; Xavier Pons, Anglophonia/ Caliban 25, 2009, pp.515-7; Maurice Blackman, Explorations : A Journal of French/Australian Connections 47, 12/2009, pp.41-2; Michel Feith, Erea 7.2 (2010), en ligne; Marie Ramsland, LINQ 36, (2009), 185-90 ; Ludivine Royer, Postcolonial Text 5: 4 (2009), en ligne ; Peter Pierce The Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum), 21/05/2011, p.35; James Ley, The Weekend Australian (Spectrum), 11-2/06/2011, p.21

Traduction : The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama, traduction de Marie Ramsland (Melbourne: Brolga, 2010) et avant-propos de Nicholas Jose.

– Commentaires (extraits) –

Sylviane Soulard, Episodes 1 (Nouméa), juin 2009, pp.56-60.

“Cet ouvrage n’est certainement pas un catalogue ou un résumé des romans évoqués : il traduit un souci constant de l’évolution chronologique, des liens de la littérature avec l’histoire de l’Australie, il nous propose une littérature en mouvement. Il présente avec précision, alliant les notions abstraites et les références concrètes, les mouvements littéraires internationaux ou spécifiques de l’Australie dans lesquels s’inscrivent les romans."

"Il fallait faire ce « panorama », le roman australien le mérite. Le projet pouvait sembler audacieux, ambitieux, trop peut-être. Jean-François Vernay vient de nous prouver que ce n’était pas mission impossible, qu’il ne nous livrait pas un film de science-fiction. Cette étude est complète, précise, circonstanciée et, redisons-le …attrayante. Et c’était peut-être là le plus difficile !”

Roland Rossero, Les Infos 347 (Nouméa), 3 juillet 2009, p.4.

“Dans un style précis et agréable à lire, Jean-François Vernay déroule pour les francophones le film à épisodes du panorama australien. Les images sont nettes et les focus sur les auteurs et leurs oeuvres engagent à une connaissance plus en profondeur par la lecture exhaustive. Après cet ouvrage, le vaste continent de la littérature de nos proches voisins ne sera plus tel le désert non cartographié du bush."

Xavier Pons, Anglophonia/ Caliban 25 (Toulouse) 2009, pp.515-517.

“C’était une gageure de rendre intelligible une telle profusion d’auteurs et de titres (il se publie chaque année des centaines de romans en Australie), de proposer au lecteur des perspectives à la fois claires et respectueuses des spécificités individuelles sans jamais perdre de vue le contexte très particulier de la culture australienne. L’insertion, à intervalles réguliers, de ‘gros plans’ et de ‘contre-plongées’ sur tel titre ou tel auteur contribue à faire du livre une réussite : elle permet de donner du relief à certains éléments du paysage littéraire australien et d’éviter ainsi la monotonie d’un récit trop linéaire".

"… il faut espérer [que Panorama du roman australien] stimulera l’intérêt des lecteurs français pour la littérature australienne, encore mal connue mais désormais assez bien représentée en traduction. Le livre de Jean-François Vernay leur sera d’une grande utilité, aussi bien pour avoir une vue d’ensemble de cette littérature que pour s’informer sur un auteur particulier”.

David Martin, entretien publié dans Les Nouvelles Calédoniennes 11677 (29/01/2010), p.5.

Michel Feith, Erea 7.2 (2010), URL : http://erea.revues.org/index1021.html

« Le Panorama du roman australien est donc un ouvrage honnête, qui sera un outil utile aux étudiants comme aux simples amateurs de la littérature australienne. Le fait qu’il englobe la production romanesque jusqu’en 2007 lui donne un avantage temporaire sur la plupart de ses concurrents. »

Pour ceux qui souhaitent en savoir davantage sur mon histoire littéraire de l’Australie, voici un entretien accordé à Jean-Noël Ducasse, de la radio australienne SBS qui diffuse des émissions en français.

http://www.sbs.com.au/podcasts/Podcasts/french/episode/155871/Jean-Francois-Vernay

Autre émission où Sylviane Soulard en parle:

http://nouvellecaledonie.la1ere.fr/programmes/gweba/andre-gable_59399.html

Distinctions et invitations

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Février 2011 Invité à Paris par la Province Sud de la Nouvelle-Calédonie pour donner une conférence à Paris.

Septembre 2010 Invité au Brisbane Writer’s Festival par Jane O’Hara, son organisatrice.

Septembre 2010 Invité à faire un cycle de conférences en français dans les alliances françaises de Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adélaïde Perth, & Brisbane par Jean-Jacques Garnier, Attaché culturel à l’Ambassade de France de Sydney, afin de promouvoir Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours.

Janvier 2010 Invité à Sydney par Robert Dixon pour présenter une communication au colloque Reading Across the Pacific.

Janvier 2010 Invité à Paris par la Province Sud de la Nouvelle-Calédonie pour donner une conférence à la Maison de la Nouvelle-Calédonie à Paris.

Décembre 2009 Lauréat du Prix Thèse-Pac, dans la catégorie Grand Jury (Pacifique Sud-Australasie : Prix Jean-Pierre Piérard, pour ma thèse sur l’œuvre romanesque de Koch.

Septembre 2009 Invité au Salon International du Livre Océanien 2009, Poindimié, Nouvelle-Calédonie.

Septembre 2007 Invité au Salon International du Livre Océanien 2007, Hienghène, Nouvelle-Calédonie

Ma recherche

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Grands axes de recherche

Commonwealth – Australie – littérature et théorie postcoloniales – Océanie – théorie et genres littéraires (le bildungsroman, la littérature grunge, le roman historique, le récit australasiatique, le roman gay, etc.) – histoire littéraire – édition – effets de la mondialisation – roman contemporain – représentations culturelles et littéraires – identités et identifications – affects – l’esprit – psychanalyse – philosophie –

Publications : travaux, articles, ouvrages, réalisations

Edition

2009 Codirection (en collaboration avec Nathanael O’Reilly) d’un numéro spécial de Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature Special Issue : Fear in Australian Literature and Film 23:1.

URL: http://www.australianliterature.org/Antipodes_Recent_Issues.htm

“But it seems time now to comment on some exciting developments in Australian Studies. I would be remiss if the last issue of Antipodes, an exciting special issue on Fear edited by two rising stars in the field, Nathanael O’Reilly and Jean-François Vernay, was not at the top of the list. This issue heralds an enhanced interdisciplinary and transnational direction for the journal, which will be heightened by the special Latin America/Caribbean issue announced for December 2010.”

Nicholas Birns, Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 23:2, Dec 2009, 108.

* * * * *

2002-2006 : Direction d’une revue culturelle.

Mise en place un semestriel culturel thématique afin de démocratiser les études menées en Océanie. Depuis sa création, Correspondances océaniennes a publié les contributions de nombreux spécialistes sur des thèmes aussi divers que la femme, la jeunesse, la nature, la mémoire, les littératures, le corps, la création, l’image, l’Australie, les départs, les insularités et les inscriptions. Depuis sa création, ont été publiés :

- les auteurs australiens suivants : Robyn Walton, Alexis Wright, Anita Heiss, Stephen Mueke, David Williamson et Terri Janke

- de nombreux articles sur des écrivains postcoloniaux aussi variés que Sia Figiel, Christopher Koch, David Malouf, Colin Johnson et Alan Duff

- des entretiens avec Sia Figiel, Larry Thomas, Janette Turner Hospital et Alan Duff

Ouvrages en tant qu’auteur unique

Mai 2012 NOUVEAU LIVRE DOCUMENTAIRE, Paris: Pascal.

Fév. 2009 Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours. Collection Savoirs Lettres créée par Michel Foucault, puis dirigée par Arthur Cohen et Patrick Née, Paris: Hermann, 250 pp.

URL: http://www.editions-hermann.fr/voirRevue.php?revueid=2617&menu=&prodid=664&lang=fr

Traduction : The Great Australian Novel – A Panorama, traduction de Marie Ramsland (Melbourne: Brolga, 2010) et avant-propos de Nicholas Jose.

Août 2007 Water From the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch. New York: Cambria Press, 204 pp.

URL : http://www.cambriapress.com/cambriapress.cfm?template=3&bid=48&font=2

Recensions: Susan Wyndham, Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum) 31/02-01/03/2007, p.30; Chad Habel, Australian Book Review 293, 07-8/2007, pp.57-8; Sue Ryan Fazilleau, Correspondances océaniennes 6: 2, 11/2007, p.34; CA Cranston, JASAL 7, 2007, pp.116-21; Paul Sharrad, Postcolonial Text 3: 4, 2007, online; Paul Genoni, Australian Literary Studies 23: 4, 10/2008, pp.493-6; Richard Carr, Antipodes 23: 2, 12/2009, pp.224-5;

Articles pour des revues et ouvrages internationaux avec comité de lecture/ Articles in international peer-reviewed journals and books

1 – “Only Disconnect – Canonizing Homonormative Values: Representation and the Paradox of Gayness in Christos Tsiolkas’s Loaded”, Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 20 : 1 (New-York), juin 2006, 7-11.

2 – “Sex in the City: Sexual Predation in Contemporary Australian Grunge Fiction”, AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 107, (Sydney), mai 2007, 145-58.

3 - “C.J.Koch’s Novels: From Fiction to Friction – Fictional Reality Strikes Back”. Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 21: 1 (New York), juin 2007, 7-9.

3 bis - “Fictional Reality Strikes Back. C.J.Koch’s Novels from Fiction to Friction”. In Amit Sarwal & Reema Sarwal (dirs.) Fact & Fiction: Readings in Australian Literature, New Delhi: Authorspress, 2008, 27-41. Article cité supra, repris dans sa version originale.

4 - ““From Context to Text: Peter Carey’s Monstrous Creation in My Life as a Fake”. Lemuria: A Research Journal of Indo-Australian Studies 2: 1 (Ajmer), numéro sous la direction de Bruce Bennett, 2008, 5-18.

5 – Avec Nathanael O’Reilly, “Terror Australis Incognita?: An Introduction to Fear in Australian Literature and Film”, in Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature. Special Issue: Fear in Australian Literature and Film 23: 1 (New York), juin 2009, 5-9.

6 - “Freudianism in Dire Straits: The Representation of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary Australia”. AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 112, novembre 2009, 81-96.

7 - “Lost in Distraction: Repetition and Ennui in Antoni Jach’s The Weekly Card Game”. Southerly 69:2, Long Paddock 5, Sydney, décembre 2009.

URL: http://www.brandl.com.au/Southerly/southerly%20longpaddock/2-2009/Jachs.htm

8 - “White Nation Fantasy, the Imperialistic Streak, and the Lingering Empire. A Contrapuntal Reading of Christopher Koch’s Fiction”, in Perennial Empires: Postcolonial, Transnational, and Literary Perspectives, Chantal Zabus & Silvia Nagy-Zekmi (eds.). Amherst/ New York: Cambria Press, 2011, 153-167.

9- “Male Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder? Guys, Guises and Disguise in Patrick White’s The Twyborn Affair”. Transnational Literature 4: 2, Adelaide, mai 2012, 1-11.

URL :

10- “Big Father is Watching You – A Postcolonial Reading of Peter Kocan’s Total Institution Novellas”. Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 26: 1 (New York), juin 2012.

Articles pour des revues et ouvrages nationaux avec comité de lecture/ Articles in national peer-reviewed journals and books

1 - "Des victuailles aux entrailles : entre Copia et Inopia, la sociabilité chez Carey et Koch". In Sonia Lacabanne (dir.), Les vivres et le vivre en Océanie/ Food, nourishment and lifestyle in Oceania (Nouméa : CORAIL & UNC, 2003), 124-39.

2 - "Du jeu de la création à la création du je. L’enfant dans les romans de C.J.Koch". L’enfant en Océanie: Regards sur les enfants, regards d’enfants (Nouméa : CORAIL & UNC, 2004), 117-31.

3 – "Les ombres du royaume à la lumière du postcolonialisme : les romans de C.J.Koch". In Sonia Faessel & Michel Pérez (dir.), Littératures d’émergence et mondialisation (Paris : In Press/ Colloque de la FILLM Nouméa 2003, 2004), 319-37.

4 - “Projections and Utopianism in Contemporary Australian Fiction: Toward an Exploration of the Paranoid Mind”. Alizés : Revue angliciste de la Réunion 33, 2010, 183-199.

Diffusion de la recherche

Articles grand public/ Articles for the general reader.

1 - "Les Bildunsgromane de Christopher Koch : de la formation à la transformation", Correspondances océaniennes 1 : 2 (Nouméa), octobre 2002, 26-9.

2 - "La critique littéraire en Australie", Correspondances océaniennes 2 (Nouméa), Hors-série, octobre 2003, 21-4.

3 - "‘Des hommes traduits’ : Les Australiens, de la copie à l’original", Correspondances océaniennes 3 : 1, avril 2004, 13-4.

4 – "Penser/ Panser les ‘blessures de l’histoire’ : Colin Johnson et sa (re)présentation littéraire de la colonisation", Correspondances océaniennes 4 : 1, octobre 2005, 25-6.

5 - "Survol du roman australien : de sa naissance à nos jours", Correspondances océaniennes 6 : 2, novembre 2007, 23-6.

6 - "Couched Words: The Interimplication of Fiction and Psychoanalysis", Etchings 7, Melbourne, 2009, 153-62.

Entretiens/ Interviews

1 - "Entretien avec Sia Figiel", (trad.: "An interview with Sia Figiel") Correspondances océaniennes 1 : 1 (Nouméa), mars 2002, 28-9.

2 - ‘Repetition and Colonial Variation on the Europe Theme: An Interview with Christopher J.Koch’. Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 17 : 2, décembre 2003, 114-7.

3 – “An Interview with Alexis Wright”. Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 18 : 2, décembre 2004, 119-22.

4 - "Entretien avec Janette Turner Hospital", Correspondances océaniennes 4 : 1, oct. 2005, 29-30.

5 - “An Interview with Christos Tsiolkas”, Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 20 : 1, juin 2006, 38-40.

6 - “‘An intelligent conversation of a structured kind’ with Antoni Jach”, Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 22: 1, June 2008, 56-62. Entretien réédité dans Etchings 5, Melbourne, août 2008, 30-46.

Recensions/ Book reviews

1 – “Rose Zwi's Speak the Truth, Laughing”, Journal of Australian Studies: “Sojourners and strangers” 77, St Lucia/ Perth, UQP/ Curtin University of technology (2003), 170-2.

2 – “Revisiting Europe and the Past: Koch's 'Home-Sweet-Home' Truths”, Antipodes 17: 1 (June 2003), 72-3.

3 – “Island and Otherland, by Noel Henricksen”, Australian Literary Studies 21: 2, St Lucia, Queensland (October 2003), 227-8.

4 – “Philip Salom’s Toccata and Rain”, Journal of Australian Studies, Perth (2004). Sur internet.

5 – “Murnane Makes it Plain: The Truth is Out There”, Antipodes 18: 2 (December 2004), 179-80.

6 – “A.L. McCann and the Esperectomic Generation”, Journal of Australian Studies (May 2006). Sur internet.

7 – “Fabulating Beauty, Andreas Gaile (ed.)”, Australian Literary Studies 22: 3 (May 2006), 399-401.

8 – “Chantal Zabus, Tempests After Shakespeare”, AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 107 (mai 2007), 159-61.

9 –“Joy Damousi, Freud in the Antipodes: A Cultural History of Psychoanalysis in Australia”, Journal of Humanities 31, Taiwan (juillet 2007), 313-19.

10 – “Globalise this!”, Nicholas Birns & Rebecca McNeer (eds.): A Companion to Australian Literature Since 1900, Overland 192 (Printemps 2008), 93.

11 – “Carey Takes Centre-Stage in France. Sue Ryan-Fazilleau, Peter Carey et la quête postcoloniale d’une identité australienne", LINQ 35, (décembre 2008), 129-31.

12 – “The Memory Room, by Christopher Koch”, In/Stead 2 (Hiver 2008), 2 pp. Sur internet.

13 – “Ken Gelder & Paul Salzman. After the Celebration: Australian Fiction 1989-2007”, JASAL 9 (2009), 4 pp. Sur internet.

14 – “Salhia Ben-Messahel (dir.). Des frontières de l’interculturalité. Etude pluridisciplinaire de la représentation culturelle : Identité et Altérité". Erea 7.1 (15 juillet 2009), 3 pp. Sur internet.

15 – “Messengers of Eros: Representations of Sex in Australian Writing by Xavier Pons”, Erea 7.2 (2010), 3 pp. Sur internet.

16 – “The Secret Lives of Them. Christos Tsiolkas, The Slap", LINQ 36, (2009), 183-5.

17 – “The Literature of Australia by Nicholas Jose (ed.) & The Cambridge History of Australian Literature by Peter Pierce (ed.)”, CERCLES, (mai 2010), 3 pp. Sur internet.

18 – “Postcolonial Issues in Australian Literature by Nathanael O’Reilly (ed.), CERCLES, (mai 2011). Sur internet.

EDITING PROJECTS

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CALL FOR PAPERS: PATRICK WHITE’S CENTENARY

The year 2012 marks the centenary of the birth of Australia’s Nobel-prize winning author Patrick White who died just over twenty years ago. Since his death, White’s critical reputation has suffered somewhat, although there are signs now of renewed interest in his work. Cercles, the major French online journal for academic work in the field of Anglophone studies, http://www.cercles.com/, will dedicate a special issue to Patrick White in 2012 in order to celebrate the centenary of the author.

Submissions for papers to be included in this issue are called for, especially, but not only, from non-Australia based scholars.

Papers can address any major aspect of White’s fiction including, for example, transnational perspectives, regional aspects, metaphysics, myth-making, recognition (including a discussion of the Patrick White award), aesthetics or representations of Indigenous Australians. Papers that address and theorise gender, sexuality and queer readings of White’s work are also welcome.

Proposals of book reviews on Patrick White scholarship are also solicited.

Please submit an abstract of up to 200 words simultaneously to both Editors (details provided below) as soon as possible. Full length essays will be expected by the end of March 2012. The Chicago Manual of Style is the guide for referencing.

Besides publishing several essays on contemporary Australian fiction, Jean-François Vernay is the Co-Editor of a special issue of Antipodes entitled Fear in Australian Literature and Film 23: 1. He is the author of three monographs: Water from the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (Cambria Press, 2007) and Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours (Paris: Hermann, 2009) translated as The Great Australian Novel– A Panorama (Brolga, 2010) and a forthcoming essay on fiction, literary theory and criticism that will be published in May 2012 by Editions Pascal. Contact: vernayj@yahoo.com

David Coad is a Lecturer at the University of Valenciennes, in France. After a doctorate on the religious metaphysics of Patrick White, obtained at the University of Paris III – Nouvelle Sorbonne, he published a collection of essays on Patrick White in 1997. Other publications include Gender Trouble Down Under: Australian Masculinities (Valenciennes: PUV, 2002) and The Metrosexual: Gender, Sexuality, and Sport (New York: SUNY, 2008). Contact: coad@neuf.fr

Entretien SBS: http://www.sbs.com.au/yourlanguage/french/highlight/page/id/202205/t/Jean-Francois-Vernay-The-Australian-Philosopher-Patrick-White
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FORMER EDITING PROJECT:
Antipodes: Fear in Australian Literature and Film 23: 1

June 2009 Guest-editing with Nathanael O’Reilly a special issue of Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature. Fear in Australian Literature and Film 23: 1

URL: http://www.australianliterature.org/Antipodes_Recent_Issues.htm

Comment :

Nicholas Birns, Antipodes: A North American Journal of Australian Literature 23:2, Dec 2009, 108.

Water From the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch

2011-08-05T18:22:00.000-07:00

Description

Author of six novels, Christopher John Koch (born in 1932) is one of Australia’s leading novelists who enjoys worldwide recognition. Koch’s writing has its finger on the pulse of today’s changing society. Not only does his work fall within a universal stream but it also stands out as a production of its own, built like a puzzle with distinct pieces. Through fiction, Koch explores other genres – the fairy tale, drama, poetry – to the point of producing multi-faceted works which challenge classification. In spite of the constant renewal of his settings for action, one notices the presence of a main thread which runs through Koch’s fiction: the antipodean and ambiguous relationship between illusion and reality.
This theoretically-informed monograph provides a book-by-book analysis of the novelist’s œuvre and gives a full picture of his Weltanschauung. It is valuable reference for scholars in Australian Studies, as well as those researching postcolonial, psychoanalytic and literary theories.
This book is also winner of the Excellence Award 2009 by the THESE-PAC jury (le prix THESE-PAC, Prix Jean-Pierre Piérard) in the South Pacific-Australasia category for his PhD dissertation on Christopher Koch, the subject of his Cambria Press monograph.

URL: http://www.cambriapress.com/cambriapress.cfm?template=3&bid=48&font=2

Reviewed: Susan Wyndham, Sydney Morning Herald (Spectrum) 31/02-01/03/2007, p.30; Chad Habel, Australian Book Review 293, 07-8/2007, pp.57-8; Sue Ryan Fazilleau, Correspondances océaniennes 6: 2, 11/2007, p.34; CA Cranston, JASAL 7, 2007, pp.116-21; Paul Sharrad, Postcolonial Text 3: 4, 2007, online; Paul Genoni, Australian Literary Studies 23: 4, 10/2008, pp.493-6; Richard Carr, Antipodes 23: 2, 12/2009, pp.224-5; Igor Maver, Zeitschrift für Australienstudien 25, 2011, pp.137-140;

Excerpts:

Chad Habel, Australian Book Review 293, July/ August 2007, 57-8. (Correspondence: Toni Tan, ‘The finished article’, Australian Book Review 294, September 2007, 6): “This is an important book, and a valuable contribution to what correctly identifies as a neglected area in Australian literary studies… Water from the Moon is a testament to the richness of Koch’s work and to the difficulty in analyzing, categorizing or pigeonholing it. It is a fitting (but backhanded) tribute to an author who has always vocally opposed the appropriation of his work for political, social or ideological ends.”

Sue Ryan Fazilleau, Correspondances océaniennes 6: 2 (dir. Christophe AUGIAS), novembre 2007, 34 : “…un livre important qui comble de façon compétente une lacune reconnue dans la critique littéraire australienne contemporaine”.

CA Cranston, JASAL 7, 2007, 116-21: “…Water from the Moon is, importantly, relevant and topical…”

E-print: http://www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/649

Paul Sharrad, Postcolonial Text 3: 4, 2007: “Another valuable feature of Water from the Moon is its bringing Koch commentary up to date, with chapters on Highways to a War and Out of Ireland. Vernay is to be commended on pushing through the post-thesis trough to produce this study.”

E-print: http://journals.sfu.ca/pocol/index.php/pct/article/view/827/511

Paul Genoni, Australian Literary Studies 23: 4, October 2008, 493-6.: “… Water from the Moon has considerable merit. At a time when single author studies are out of favour, it is reassuring to find an account of a major Australian author that is timely, thorough and generally persuasive.”

Richard Carr, Antipodes 23: 2, December 2009, 224-25. : “By the close of Water from the Moon, Vernay has succeeded in his goal of giving Koch his due as a complex artist, even as he has achieved a corollary aim: to send readers to the author and his books.”

“Jean-François Vernay has written an interesting study of my work, informed by a particular set of theories concerning the nature of literature. This is natural; every critic, like every creative writer, works within the framework of his own beliefs. In doing so, Dr. Vernay pursues his themes with considerable thoroughness, relating them to the broader topic of Australian literature in the 20^th century in a way which should be of interest to other scholars in the field – and to anyone who is concerned with Australian writing, both at home and abroad. His book should provoke thought and discussion; and for this, I welcome it.” Christopher Koch, online at the Cambria Press website.

Igor Maver, Zeitschrift für Australienstudien 25, 2011, pp.137-140: "Koch is […] a great Australian literary author, despite some of the shortcomings that Vernay does not sweep under the carpet; rather, he certainly makes an excellent scholarly case for Christopher Koch’s writing.”