Representations of migration in contemporary poetry emphasize the motive of displacement and its consequences, most often inhuman. Nevertheless, through the various functions it assumes, this poetry can also lead to the emancipation of lyrical subjects, questioning the migrant identity. These redefinitions also intersect questions about the very place of migration in contemporary societies and its repercussions on the understanding of the contemporary world. The article proposes a reading of contemporary poetry as a space of tension between denunciation and reinvention, where migrant voices are not limited to complaint but contribute to a reconfiguration of poetic language. By articulating individual experience and collective scope, this poetry interrogates the imaginaries of mobility and the forms of subjectivation it makes possible.
This article offers an analysis of two theater texts which have in common, on the one hand, that they were born following a commitment to helping migrants, and on the other hand, that they specifically address the notions of solidarity and repression. We study the way in which these notions are represented: solidarity retrospectively in witnessed form, repression at the heart of the drama but defused by a poetic or comic hybridity. Constructed in this way, these works invite to formulate an engaged reflection on the modes of action of helping migrants.
At the same time as state borders are being re-established to stem migratory flows, many international authors and artists are taking an interest in the subject of migration, focusing on the representation of the movement of migrants towards Europe. They aim to reveal what lies behind the walls, barbed wire, and migration statistics, and to grasp the human dimension of this phenomenon. Artistic and literary works have become the preferred medium for expressing the unease, brutality, and inequality that the modern border represents. The article examines how the representation of the border mechanism modifies the imaginary of migration, particularly the figure of the migrant, often stereotyped and marginalised. It explores how contemporary literature and art take part in this storytelling through the representation of the border artefact, and what space the migrant is destined to occupy between the real and the fictional, the world and the imaginary.
This article examines spatial vulnerability, the right to the city, and homelessness in two novels: Stardust by Léonora Miano and Tiohtiá:ke [Montréal] by Innu writer Michel Jean. These works bear witness to the dramatic trajectories of African migrants in Paris and Indigenous homeless people in Montreal. An interdisciplinary approach has been chosen to address several issues, such as the ethic of care and the relationship between violence and colonialism. Through these narratives, the article explores forms of urban marginalisation and dynamics of exclusion, while shedding light on the resistances and solidarities that emerge in the interstices of the city. It offers a comparative reading of both texts to reflect on contemporary issues related to space, memory, and social justice.
The following article looks at pictorial and filmic representations of bathing at night. We will begin by focusing on the artists’ fascination with both water and the night, before moving on to analyse the transgressive motives behind night-time bathing. We intend to show how bathing at night certainly allows bathers to free themselves from a normative social gaze, but also conceals perils that can transform a liberating practice into a deadly experience, as demonstrated by several thrillers and horror movies.
Ovid’s exile in Tomis (8-17 CE) engenders a poetic and existential metamorphosis. His relegatio – prompted by a carmen (Ars Amatoria) and an ambiguous error – becomes a creative matrix. From the Tristia to the Epistulae ex Ponto, he transforms lamentation into a literary exploration of alterity, intertwining myth and marginal experience. Contre Ibis radicalizes this process through invective, recasting exile as poetic combat. Ovid constructs a new literary persona, interrogating center/periphery dynamics. His work establishes exile as a space of reinvention where language compensates for territorial loss. This approach anticipates contemporary migrant literatures, demonstrating how exclusion can be reconfigured as creative potential, transmuting dispossession into literary power.
This article explores the affinity of filiation stories with the phenomenon of migration. Oscillating between family biography and autobiography, this literary genre has over time become a privileged sphere for both intimate and universal reflection on the topics of exile and integration. Focusing on a recent work – La Mémoire délavée (2023) by Mauritian writer Nathacha Appanah – the article proposes a sociopoetic reading of the ambivalences inscribed into a postmemory of migration. It highlights how filiation narratives articulate individual and collective memory, while revealing the tensions between heritage, transmission, and identity reconstruction. This framework allows for an interrogation of contemporary narrative forms that give voice to migratory experiences, and for considering migration as a vector of literary and social transformation.
This proposal focuses on contemporary reinterpretations of the tragedy Antigone, highlighting their relationship with the representation of the migratory phenomenon. The aim is to study the mythical figure of Antigone, reinterpreted in contemporary contexts and understood as a symbol of migration. From a sociopoetic perspective, it will be interesting to examine how the mythic elements of the tragedy are updated to give voice to migrants and to the challenges they face, first during their journey and then within the host society.
The Palestinian diaspora poetry in a history marked by conflict and exodus, population displacement, exile following wars and colonization, occupies a singular place in migrant literature. Several generations have been identified: that of the Nakba, the Al-Naksa following the Six-Day War and, finally, the poetry of emigration - Mahjar. Olivia Elias is a poet from the Palestinian diaspora who writes in French, reflecting the dual situation of exodus and war. She provides an insight into the irreducible singularity of Palestinian poetry from the diaspora, where the poetics of migration is inextricably linked to the poetics of war, involving writing, an intimate identity and a lost country.
Marie Cosnay, a prominent voice in “refuge literature”, delves into the complexities of migration through a deeply engaged and documentary-inspired approach. Her work, shaped by her activism, critically examines European migration policies and challenges mainstream narratives of exile. In books like Des îles (2021-2024) and Toi et ton frère (2023), Cosnay combines on-the-ground research with historical analysis, drawing parallels between contemporary migration and historical displacements, particularly in the context of the Alboran Sea. Her polyphonic style brings to life the voices of migrants, their families, and those who support them, while shedding light on the silenced and overlooked aspects of their journeys. Using a sociopoetic lens, this article explores how Cosnay crafts counter-representations that resist dominant discourses, reimagining the ways migration is understood and portrayed.
This contribution traces the evolution of the concept of migrant literature, moving from an author-centric to a text-centric approach, and ultimately to its redefinition as “new world literature.” In a postmigrant era, this concept seems to have fulfilled its purpose. The article reflects on the role of migrant literature in a postmigrant society, where migration is no longer viewed as an exceptional phenomenon but as an inherent characteristic of contemporary societies. It questions the current relevance of this critical category within a literary landscape shaped by the diversity of narratives and trajectories, and invites us to rethink analytical frameworks in light of the transformation of social and cultural contexts linked to human mobility.
This article examines two typical figures of migration that Fatou Diome uses in her novels: “l’homme de Barbès” and “celles qui restent”. These figures reflect the complexity of the migrant subject, caught up or trapped in a proxemic trajectory that compels them to self-sacrifice within an “economy of kinship.” Through these characters, the analysis highlights the tensions between mobility and attachment, between departure and waiting. These figures also make it possible to construct a portrait of the exile from the point of view of women, anchored in the representations of the society of departure. The article thus offers a reading of migratory dynamics through these two literary figures, which reveal the affective, social, and political stakes linked to migration.
This article explores James Baldwin’s migratory experience in Paris through the lens of the sociopoetics of migration, analyzing how his exile, both present and inherited, shaped his literary, social, and identity perspectives. As a Black and Queer man, Baldwin found in France a space of freedom where he could question race, sexuality, and oppression, distanced from the direct pressures of North American society. However, his migration was not merely a physical displacement; it also constituted an inner exile, fostering a constant tension between attachment and rejection of the United States. While he regarded France as a literary refuge, he did not idealize it, becoming aware of structural racism inherited from the country’s colonial past and developing a deep empathy for other migrant populations. The article examines how Baldwin transformed the emotions of exile – such as solitude, frustration, and nostalgia – into a creative force and a critical tool against marginalization.
The aim is to propose a gendered sociopoetic reading of Honorine, a short novel by Balzac. By focusing on the garden, where the novel’s eponymous protagonist takes refuge after leaving her husband for a lover who soon abandons her, Balzac brings into play a set of period representations of the flower woman and this place of sociability that the century has consecrated. A novel of manners about conjugality, Honorine reveals the mechanisms of a woman’s tragic downfall, as she fails to renew stereotypes: the garden of Saint-Maur, far from being a space of freedom, functions as a cage or trap.
The name Lampedusa resonates with shame, liberation or failure, depending on whether you’re a migrant or a host. Based on a corpus of four works, two novels for adults: Maylis de Kerangal, À ce stade de la nuit (2014) and Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, Silence du chœur (2017), and two novels for children and teenagers: Maryline Desbiolles, Lampedusa (2012) and Annelise Heurtier, Refuges (2015), we’ll look at what the name Lampedusa does to migration and how literary texts seize on this name alone with different variations, to evoke flabbergasted characters, depending on the place they occupy, depending on their experience of arrival or welcome. Lampedusa reconfigures migration, because it alone implies that everyone is on the move.
The consequences of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake altered the perception of natural disasters as physical evils, once again raising the question of their origin. This question, which falls primarily within the realm of theology, was first formulated by Gottfried W. Leibniz, who made it the central issue of his theodicy and proposed, as a solution, his theory of the best of all possible worlds. Following the Lisbon earthquake, Voltaire challenged this optimism in his Poem on the Lisbon Disaster, which prompted a written response from Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This debate between two major figures of the Enlightenment culminated in the publication of Candide, one of Voltaire’s most emblematic works. The article traces the evolution of Voltaire’s and Rousseau’s respective philosophical positions in response to the Lisbon earthquake and highlights their significance in contemporary thought.
Verso la foce is a literary narrative configured as a space of memory of the environmental disasters that have overwhelmed the Padana plain. The aim is to see how the literary work reappropriates social representations relating to the flooding of the Po, and to analyse how the author, Gianni Celati, transforms the mythical image of the natural disaster by placing it within a post-industrial context.
Voltaire’s Poem on the Lisbon Disaster describes the consequences of a natural disaster that occurred in 1755. However, this article will show that this text is rather holding a dual reading. The author of Candide uses verse as a medium to spread a satirical view on philosophical optimism and hypocritical devotion. Voltaire is thus counterbalancing the collapsing with a dual construction: this poem is emerging from the ruins of civilization, in the same way as the deist thought unveils the cruelty of a not so loving form of deity.
The article aims to explore the role of literature as a tool of resistance and transformation in the era of the Anthropocene and the climate crisis, emphasizing how certain reworkings of classical myths can act as mechanisms capable of awakening collective consciousness and imagining alternative responses to the ongoing climate catastrophe. Drawing inspiration from Carla Benedetti’s theories presented in her essay La letteratura ci salverà dall’estinzione, the goal is to highlight the crucial role of literature in the ecological discourse. In particular, the analysis focuses on the play La Nouvelle Antigone. Le mythe s’empare du climat by Frédérique Zahnd, to demonstrate that contemporary reworking of classical tragedies emerges as a powerful tool to raise awareness about climate change.
This article shows how in four short plays the author Ina Césaire draws inspiration from an environmental disaster – the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée in Martinique – to address themes of politics, race, gender and social inequality in early twentieth-century Martinique and their continued impact on contemporary society and culture. The article focuses on plays by Martinican author Ina Césaire: La Diablesse du Morne Rouge [The She-Devil of Morne-Rouge] (2005), Les Bourgeois de couleur [The Colored Bourgeois] (2011), Les Fuyardes [The Runaway Women or The Women Runaways] (2011), Des jours ordinaires [Ordinary days] (2011). The four plays are inspired by the 1902 Mount Pelée eruption which destroyed the town of Saint-Pierre in Martinique. This article will first focus on the political, religious and racial dynamics of early twentieth-century Martinique as depicted in Césaire’s plays. It will then focus on how the plays address contemporary societal imaginaries and prejudices, looking specifically at the treatment of female characters and the depiction of gendered stereotypes.
