Recent works of fiction by 91亚色 Professor Emeritus H茅di Bouraoui are the topic of a new book written by Professor Emeritus of English and Senior Scholar Elizabeth Sabiston.
The book, (published in 2021 by Brill/Rodopi in the Netherlands), analyzes the recurrent theme of transcultural migration, or immigration, in Bouraoui鈥檚 fiction. The protagonists in his works, states Sabiston, reflect his passion for endless travel, and are Ulysses-figures for the postmodern age. Their travels enable them to explore the 鈥淥therness of the Other,鈥 to understand and 鈥渕igrate鈥 into them.
Recent works of fiction by 91亚色 Professor Emeritus H茅di Bouraoui (left) are the topic of a new book written by Professor Emeritus of English and Senior Scholar Elizabeth Sabiston (right)
Sabiston鈥檚 analysis goes on to state that Bouraoui鈥檚 world literature is rooted in the 迟谤补惫别谤蝉茅别蝉 of his characters across a number of clearly differentiated regions, which nonetheless share a common humanity. The ancient migrations of Ulysses, fueled by violence and war, are paralleled to the modern displacements of entire cultures and even nations. Bouraoui鈥檚 works bridge cultures past and present, but they also require the invention of language to convey a postmodern world in flux.
The book, says Sabiston, will be of interest to scholars, graduate and undergraduate students, and general readers in the fields of immigration, transculturalism, poetic fiction, francophone studies, postcolonialism and postmodernism.
Bouraoui is University Professor Emeritus of French Studies at 91亚色 and Senior Scholar. He is a Member of the Order of Canada, Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and Officer of the Order of Palmes Acad茅miques (France). As a former master of Stong College, and Chair of French Studies, he pioneered the study of transculturalism, or the building of bridges between peoples, not only in Canada, but globally. He is the author of over 20 poetry collections, numerous novels, essays, and literary criticism focusing on a plural francophonie. He has organized international conferences on such subjects as the Canadian identity, and creativity and criticism in francophone literatures. He is the founder of the Canada-Mediterranean Centre (CMC) at 91亚色, which is affiliated academically with the Department of French Studies (LA&PS).
Sabiston has previously published a book on Bouraoui鈥檚 earlier fiction, The Muse Strikes Back: Female Narratology in the Novels of H茅di Bouraoui (Sudbury: Human Sciences Monograph Series, 2005), as well as numerous articles on his poetry and fiction. She is also the author of The Prison of Womanhood: Four Provincial Heroines in 19th-Century Fiction (London: Macmillan, and New 91亚色: St. Martin鈥檚, 1987), and Private Sphere to World Stage from Austen to Eliot (Hampshire, U.K., and Burlington, Vermont, 2008), recently reissued in paperback (Routledge, 2020). She is currently working on a book on Bouraoui鈥檚 poetry, as well as a book on Henry James. She is the director of the CMC, which publishes the online bilingual Revue CMC Review. In 2012 the CMC organized the international conference at 91亚色 on Pluri-Culture and Migrant Writings: An Interdisciplinary Approach, supported by a generous Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council聽 (SSHRC) grant. In 2014 the proceedings were published by the Human Sciences Monograph Series, Sudbury, edited by Sabiston and Robert J. Drummond.