‘The story takes place’: Claire Messud’s The Last Life and the cosmopolitan imaginary
‘The story takes place’: Claire Messud’s The Last Life and the cosmopolitan imaginary
The work of the Franco-American novelist, Claire Messud, remains under-explored. This article focuses on her 1999 novel, The Last Life, in relation to the idea of ‘literary globalism’. Recent scholarship has generated work on ‘world literature’ as an emerging theoretical paradigm. I locate her novel in relation to this generally, but more crucially to the category of ‘the cosmopolitan imaginary’. Cosmopolitanism is a key term in social theory and political philosophy but has yet to gain critical currency in relation to the literary. The work of Messud is crucial here in its exploration of the legacies of Algerian decolonisation in the South of France and in its negotiation of cross-cultural identities and cultural displacement.
messud, claire, literary globalism, world literature, cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan imaginary, empathy, the experience of place, cultural belonging, travelling cultures, franco-algerian relations, private and public
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Orchard, Vivienne
887b56d5-eda6-4583-ba2e-709de2ccff3a
Orchard, Vivienne
887b56d5-eda6-4583-ba2e-709de2ccff3a
Orchard, Vivienne
(2013)
‘The story takes place’: Claire Messud’s The Last Life and the cosmopolitan imaginary.
Forum for Modern Language Studies, 49, .
(doi:10.1093/fmls/cqt026).
Abstract
The work of the Franco-American novelist, Claire Messud, remains under-explored. This article focuses on her 1999 novel, The Last Life, in relation to the idea of ‘literary globalism’. Recent scholarship has generated work on ‘world literature’ as an emerging theoretical paradigm. I locate her novel in relation to this generally, but more crucially to the category of ‘the cosmopolitan imaginary’. Cosmopolitanism is a key term in social theory and political philosophy but has yet to gain critical currency in relation to the literary. The work of Messud is crucial here in its exploration of the legacies of Algerian decolonisation in the South of France and in its negotiation of cross-cultural identities and cultural displacement.
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e-pub ahead of print date: 6 July 2013
Keywords:
messud, claire, literary globalism, world literature, cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan imaginary, empathy, the experience of place, cultural belonging, travelling cultures, franco-algerian relations, private and public
Organisations:
Modern Languages and Linguistics
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 349562
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/349562
ISSN: 0015-8518
PURE UUID: 352c2745-63dd-4f7a-8c3b-c67ab1c3e10a
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Date deposited: 11 Mar 2013 16:44
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:13
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