Ethnographical, archaeological and historical studies on Rapa Nui put the emphasis on scientific approaches in an attempt to decipher the “mysteries” around the island. However, literatures and arts have also engaged with Rapa Nui imaginaries through poetical and composite representations of Easter Island. Through the explorations of the literary and aesthetical implications of an organogenesis, this article argues that the cartoonist Hugo Pratt, the poet Édouard Glissant, and the plastic artist Sylvie Séma Glissant devise an entanglement of graphic, narrative and artistic schemas to offer a counter-representation to the unique scientific descriptions. This contribution opts for an intermedial approach in order to analyse the ways in which interweaving different materials allows to forge a dialogue between the imaginaries of Rapa Nui and to study how these diverse literary, aesthetical and artistic explorations nurture the poetics of the authors and artists of our corpus. This article was published open access under a CC BY-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ .
Brigitte Bardot and Catherine Deneuve occupy a revered status as icons of French cinema yet they possess diametrically contrasting personas. Both stand as cultural icons and both were chosen to personify Marianne, the mythic national icon and symbolic personification of France. This article highlights the contrasting star images of Bardot and Deneuve, reflecting their cultural significance as embodiments of Marianne. It argues that Bardot’s Marianne contained a disruptive image of sexual autonomy, whereas Deneuve’s Marianne stabilised a more controlled, bourgeois and internationally marketable image of French femininity. Guy Austin argues that the relationship between French film stars and national identity is unusually close, with Deneuve serving as a prime example of a star who “embodies” the nation. 1 According to the Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires Étrangères, “Marianne is the embodiment of the French Republic […]” representing the values: “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.” 2 Bardot, Deneuve and Marianne are thus images of a France that exist in reality and as mythologized constructs, raising questions about how France projects its image both nationally and internationally. This article was published open access under a CC BY-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/ .
This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .
Based on Mardi J. Horowitz’s five-stage theory of trauma therapy, this article analyses the healing journeys of Irena and Josef in Milan Kundera’s Ignorance. It argues that Horowitz’s framework clarifies both characters’ movement through “outcry”, “numbing and denial”, “intrusive re-experiencing”, “working through” and “completion”, while also explaining why neither reaches full recovery. Irena’s failure is linked to the constraints of exile, the loss of her husband and her inability to rebuild a secure emotional attachment; Josef’s failure stems from his refusal to confront traumatic memory and from his fixed rejection of his homeland. The article shows that Kundera’s unresolved ending underlines the need for timely emotional expression, supportive relationships and sustained engagement with painful memories in trauma therapy. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .
This article examines the para- and meta-textual apparatus of Laurent Bordelon’s L’Histoire des imaginations extravagantes de Monsieur Oufle (1710), focusing on the footnotes and the author-narrator’s commentaries. Although Bordelon’s novel belongs to the Cervantine tradition of the anti-romance, its fictional plot repeatedly collapses into failure around the eccentric figure of Oufle. The article argues that the notes and commentaries do more than supplement the narrative; they expose the void at the centre of the fiction, organize the reader’s critical distance from superstition and reshape the relation between erudition, satire and narrative authority. In doing so, Bordelon turns both the paratext and the metatext into central mechanisms of comic and epistemological critique. This article was published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ .
