Alice Duhan examines how Swedish writers, with a focus on women, have used French from the 17th century to today. She argues that French is part of Sweden’s literary landscape, not just a foreign influence. All interested are welcome!
Alice Duhan is an Assistant Professor of French.
Although the golden age of French in Sweden is usually associated with the Gustavian era of the eighteenth century, Swedish writers have continued to draw on French in different ways and to varying degrees ever since: some writing directly in the language, others self-translating, and still others weaving French into their Swedish texts. Yet, apart from a few emblematic figures such as August Strindberg, Franco-Swedish translingualism remains surprisingly underexplored, both in studies of literary multilingualism in the Nordic region and in research on migrant writers in France.
This seminar presents a chapter from the forthcoming volume Francographie au féminin. Les écrivaines suédoises de langue française (Classiques Garnier, co-edited by Alice Duhan and Mickaëlle Cedergren). Focusing on Swedish women writers, the chapter traces the shifting dynamics of Franco-Swedish translingualism from the seventeenth century to the present, examining how the functions, meanings, and motivations of writing in French have evolved over time. It proposes that viewing French - and French cultural space - not simply as an external foreign influence but as one of the “significant geographies” (Laachir et al., 2018) of Swedish literary history allows for a more nuanced understanding of Sweden’s place within the transnational and transcultural cartographies shaping world literature.