Acquérir une littérature seconde

Abstract

This article retraces some uses of the notion of literary translingualism in francophone literary studies and contextualizes its restriction of meaning. When it refers to the literary practice of a foreign language acquired late, the phenomenon of translingual writing involves situations of learning French as a foreign language and a singular familiarization with canonical texts of French literature. Just as we talk about second language acquisition, shouldn’t we consider the reading practices through which translingual writers acquire a second literature? The article provides elements to respond in the positive by considering texts by Milan Kundera and Katalin Molnár and by taking stock of two related areas where translingual literature forms a corpus: second language acquisition and foreign language learning and teaching. In many universities, foreign language learners are themselves acquiring a second literature, with translingual literary texts as mediators.

Keywords:

• translingualism
• canon
• Kundera
• Molnár
• second language acquisition
• francophone

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alain Ausoni

Alain Ausoni is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lausanne, where he directs the Centre interdisciplinaire d’étude des littératures and co-pilots FLORALE (https://florale.unil.ch/), a corpus of spoken French for the teaching and learning of French as a foreign language.