Conference report: ‘Lydia Davis: Writing, Reading and Translation‘ - Journal of Romance Studies 21.3

Je viens de publier dans la dernière livraison du Journal of Romance Studies un résumé des deux journées d'études consacrées à Lydia Davis que j'avais organisées en février 2021 à l'Institue of Modern Languages Research. En voici les premières lignes :

"The IMLR was delighted to host two Study Days online, organized by Jean-Michel Gouvard (University of Bordeaux Montaigne), ‘Lydia Davis: Writing, Reading and Translation | Lydia Davis: Écrire, Lire et Traduire’. The first Study Day was held on the afternoon of 11 February 2021, and the second on 12 February, concluding with a live conversation with guest speaker Lydia Davis herself, speaking online from the USA.

The first session opened with a keynote lecture delivered by Emily Eells (University of Paris 10-Nanterre) entitled ‘The Way by Swann’s: In-between the Lines of Lydia Davis’s Proust’ in which she examined the strategies Davis adopts to transpose Proust’s word play from French into English, and to mark the interaction of the two languages when she translates Odette Swann’s anglicisms into her English version.

This was followed by a session on Davis’s ‘(Very) Short Stories’, with presentations by Claire Fabre-Clark (Université Paris-Est-Créteil) on ‘Lydia Davis’s short stories: the (im)possibilities of fiction’, Ahlam Othman (British University in Egypt) on ‘Irony in the Microfiction of Lydia Davis’ Varieties of Disturbance (2007)’ and Lynn Blin (Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III) on ‘Coherence in Lydia Davis’ Can’t and Won’t (2015)’. Studying her latest collection Can’t and Won’t (2014), Claire Fabre-Clark demonstrated that Davis’s fiction turns the enduring theme of language’s failure into a carefully crafted poetical score which redefines the borders of fiction’s (im)possibility. Focusing on the same collection, Lynn Blin investigated the coherence of the collection, showing how Davis’s distancing, ironic, self-reflective, over-correct voice seizes each detail and works it to the bone. Ahlam Othman, studying Varieties of Disturbance (2007), argued that irony is what gives rise to the plot in Davis’s microfictions."

La suite est disponible en suivant ce lien, vers le site de l'éditeur.

Pour rappel, l'entretien avec Lydia Davis qui eut lieu au cours de ces journées est disponible sur le site de l'IMLR en suivant ce lien.