Couverture RMA 17/2017

17 | 2017Contemporary Writers Reading Literatures of the Past

Edited by Anne-Laure Tissut and Léopold Reigner

DOI : 10.35562/rma.1488

Even before the development of a more international awareness of literature, partly thanks to extensive translation practices, writers have been finding inspiration not only from acknowledged literary traditions, but also in individual works from the past or contemporary times. Reading—writers’ initial link with literature—offers material for writing, while fashioning writers’ conceptions of literature, as well as their vision of their own work in relation to tradition.
This volume explores various forms of textual influence as manifested in the works of 20th and 21st centuries authors, to both trace continuities and assess said authors’ “singularity”, in Derek Attridge’s terms. The papers gathered in this volume analyse a large variety of forms of influence, be they visible in the chosen topics or objects, in style, manner, or language itself—turns of speech, recurring motifs, or rhythmic patterns. Quotation, unacknowledged borrowing, allusion, imitation, parody, travesty, are but a few examples of the presence—unconscious or not—of another text in a literary work.

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