The «Conte»

The Editors: Janice Carruthers is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Queen's University Belfast. She has published widely on tense and aspect in contemporary French, and on the structure of oral discourse, especially oral narrative. Her recent monograph brings together these two fields, Oral Narration in Modern French. A Linguistic Analysis of Temporal Patterns (2005). Maeve McCusker is a Senior Lecturer in French Studies at Queen's University Belfast. She has published extensively on Caribbean literature, notably a monograph (Patrick Chamoiseau: Recovering Memory, 2007), and a number of articles on créolité, on contemporary autobiography and on memory in Antillean fiction.

Contents: Janice Carruthers/Maeve McCusker: Contextualising the oral-written dynamic in the French and francophone conte - Richard Francis: The shadow of orality in the Voltaire conte - Sophie Raynard : Mises en scène de l'oralité dans les récits-cadres de Mme d'Aulnoy : les enjeux - Ruth B. Bottigheimer: A new history for fairy tales - Tim Farrant: Definition, repression and the oral-literary interface in the French literary conte from the 'folie du conte' to the Second Empire - Jean-François Perrin : Une interface paradoxale au XVIII e siècle : conte merveilleux et bibliothèque des savoirs chez Thomas-Simon Gueullette - Anne Defrance : Du conte 'parodique' au conte pédagogique : Le Prince Désir de Mme Leprince de Beaumont - Mary Gallagher: The Creole folktale in the writing of Lafcadio Hearn: an aesthetic of mediation - Maeve McCusker: Mastering the word: appropriations of the conte créole in Antillean theory - Andy Stafford: The politics of orality and allegory in the African conte - Nadine Decourt : Autour de quelques contes maghrébins en situation interculturelle : création d'un texte à l'interface oral-écrit - Janice Carruthers: The oral-written dynamic in 'new' storytelling in French - Patrick Caudal: Tense switching in French oral narratives - Nathalie Guézennec : Parallélismes et contes oraux bas-bretons : niveaux, rôles et fonctions.

"This is a volume that is essential for anyone who conducts research on the tale, whether in French or other languages, and who needs to stay abreast of current trends in research on the genre." (Thomas A. Hale, Research in African Literatures)