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Robbe-Grillet in America: The Nouveau Roman Meets the Language Textbook

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Sara Kippur
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Abstract

How could American students of intermediate French be the catalysts for a work of avant-garde French literature? This article centers on Le rendez-vous, an intermediate French-language textbook that combined a novel written by the French New Novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet with grammatical exercises written by Yvone Lenard, a prominent textbook author and instructor of French in the United States. Focusing on previously unexamined archives of this publication, from its release in America to the publication of Robbe-Grillet's novel in France under the title Djinn, the essay reveals an unknown literary history of transnational collaboration and exchange and places new emphasis on Robbe-Grillet's formative involvement with American higher education during his literary career. Through close reading of manuscript drafts and publishers' papers, the essay demonstrates how the dynamics of global publishing and shifting trends in language pedagogy aligned to condition the production of what would become Robbe-Grillet's most commercially successful novel.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 135 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 492 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © 2020 Sara Kippur

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