Jean-François Vernay
Jean-François Vernay is the author of five scholarly books, most of which are available in translation or are currently being translated: Water from the Moon: Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (Cambria Press, 2007), A Brief Take on the Australian Novel (Wakefield Press, 2016), The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) and: La séduction de la fiction (Hermann, 2019). He has also edited several special issues of international academic journals and his 30-odd peer-reviewed articles and chapters have appeared in many countries around the world. His latest monograph, The Rise of the Australian Neurohumanities: Conversations Between Neurocognitive Research and Australian Literature, is an edited volume also available in the Routledge Focus series.
Essayiste, écrivain de fiction et chercheur en littérature, Jean-François Vernay a signé plusieurs ouvrages dont "Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours" (Paris, Hermann, 2009) et "La séduction de la fiction" (Paris, Hermann, 2019). Deux de ses livres documentaires sont désormais disponibles en langue anglaise sous les titres de : "A Brief Take on the Australian Novel" (Adelaide : Wakefield Press, 2016), et : "The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation" (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Ses livres ont été traduits en anglais, en coréen, en arabe et en mandarin.
Address: Nouméa, New Caledonia
Essayiste, écrivain de fiction et chercheur en littérature, Jean-François Vernay a signé plusieurs ouvrages dont "Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours" (Paris, Hermann, 2009) et "La séduction de la fiction" (Paris, Hermann, 2019). Deux de ses livres documentaires sont désormais disponibles en langue anglaise sous les titres de : "A Brief Take on the Australian Novel" (Adelaide : Wakefield Press, 2016), et : "The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation" (New York: Palgrave Macmillan). Ses livres ont été traduits en anglais, en coréen, en arabe et en mandarin.
Address: Nouméa, New Caledonia
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Translated into Mandarin by Jun Feng, Cognitive Poetics 11, Spring 2022 (China). URL: http://www.cognitive-poetics.com/cn/periodical
Source: Explorations cognitivistes de la théorie et la fiction littéraires DIRECTEURS D'OUVRAGE : MISTREANU DIANA, FREYERMUTH SYLVIE
Jean-François Vernay, « Dans le laboratoire des études littéraires cognitives », Acta fabula, vol. , n° , Essais critiques, Décembre 2017, URL : http://www.fabula.org/revue/document10619.php
In this article I discuss whether I actually have a French view on Australian novels and whether my outsider’s perspective gives me an unquestioned vantage point to discuss Australian fiction.
Source: Jean-François Vernay, “The Ringside View of Australian Fiction.” Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/ New Zealand Literature 31: 1 (New York), June 2017, 38-46.
As Lubomír Doležel reminds us, the concept of possible words came back into fashion and gained currency in the early 1960s with Saul Kripke’s published article entitled “Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic” which drew on Leibnizian metaphysics. By taking the opposite view of a mimetic semantics of fictionality which is operating within the one-world model frame, possible-worlds semantics of fictionality has transposed possible-worlds theory (which believes the world we inhabit to be one of the many possible worlds) to fiction with the brash conviction that “the possible-worlds model […] provides a much larger space for literary fictions than the one-world model frame” which, according to Doležel, fails to enclose the worlds of fairy-tale or science fiction that he assumes to be non mimesis-based.
No matter what outlook you have on this interdisciplinary pollination (philosophy/literature) and whether you take our world to be the sole which exists or not, the approach of possible-worlds semantics is attention-grabbing insofar as it stimulates investigations of the alethical dimension, the philosophy and the nature of heterorepresentational fiction, and of the strained relationship between the fictional and actual worlds.
All novels under consideration12 fall neatly into what I would define as total institution fiction, namely literature concerned with characters confined to reclusion in total institutions and living in very close quarters with other inmates, all of whom are placed under one supervising and all-powerful authority that is the keystone to an administratively structured organization. No matter how useful a purpose these institutions serve, most characters would feel to act under constraint. A round-off study of insanity in contemporary total institution fiction would de facto imply a threefold approach that would examine in turn the 3 Ps: the penning institution, the patients and their pathology – a pattern that I shall follow in the structure of this article.
URL:http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/jspui/bitstream/2328/25951/1/Male_Beauty_in_the_Eye_of_the_Beholder.pdf
Translated into Mandarin by Jun Feng, Cognitive Poetics 11, Spring 2022 (China). URL: http://www.cognitive-poetics.com/cn/periodical
Source: Explorations cognitivistes de la théorie et la fiction littéraires DIRECTEURS D'OUVRAGE : MISTREANU DIANA, FREYERMUTH SYLVIE
Jean-François Vernay, « Dans le laboratoire des études littéraires cognitives », Acta fabula, vol. , n° , Essais critiques, Décembre 2017, URL : http://www.fabula.org/revue/document10619.php
In this article I discuss whether I actually have a French view on Australian novels and whether my outsider’s perspective gives me an unquestioned vantage point to discuss Australian fiction.
Source: Jean-François Vernay, “The Ringside View of Australian Fiction.” Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/ New Zealand Literature 31: 1 (New York), June 2017, 38-46.
As Lubomír Doležel reminds us, the concept of possible words came back into fashion and gained currency in the early 1960s with Saul Kripke’s published article entitled “Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic” which drew on Leibnizian metaphysics. By taking the opposite view of a mimetic semantics of fictionality which is operating within the one-world model frame, possible-worlds semantics of fictionality has transposed possible-worlds theory (which believes the world we inhabit to be one of the many possible worlds) to fiction with the brash conviction that “the possible-worlds model […] provides a much larger space for literary fictions than the one-world model frame” which, according to Doležel, fails to enclose the worlds of fairy-tale or science fiction that he assumes to be non mimesis-based.
No matter what outlook you have on this interdisciplinary pollination (philosophy/literature) and whether you take our world to be the sole which exists or not, the approach of possible-worlds semantics is attention-grabbing insofar as it stimulates investigations of the alethical dimension, the philosophy and the nature of heterorepresentational fiction, and of the strained relationship between the fictional and actual worlds.
All novels under consideration12 fall neatly into what I would define as total institution fiction, namely literature concerned with characters confined to reclusion in total institutions and living in very close quarters with other inmates, all of whom are placed under one supervising and all-powerful authority that is the keystone to an administratively structured organization. No matter how useful a purpose these institutions serve, most characters would feel to act under constraint. A round-off study of insanity in contemporary total institution fiction would de facto imply a threefold approach that would examine in turn the 3 Ps: the penning institution, the patients and their pathology – a pattern that I shall follow in the structure of this article.
URL:http://dspace.flinders.edu.au/jspui/bitstream/2328/25951/1/Male_Beauty_in_the_Eye_of_the_Beholder.pdf
Né en Nouvelle-Calédonie, Jean-François Vernay a signé de nombreux ouvrages en anglais comme en français. Il est notamment l’auteur de Panorama du roman australien (Hermann), Plaidoyer pour un renouveau de l’émotion en littérature (Complicités) et La séduction de la fiction (Hermann). Chercheur en littérature et titulaire d’une habilitation à diriger des recherches, il est le seul auteur néo-calédonien à être traduit dans plusieurs langues (anglais, arabe, coréen et mandarin).
Commande: https://www.sansescale.com/a-acheter/forteresses-insulaires-de-jean-franois-vernay-paratre?fbclid=IwAR2_Jof4McFPVqGLK-R7MDTUxzuhHrJguxgMEFPOev55AQMIK3hh0VV2rBQ
Plaidoyer pour un renouveau de l’émotion en littérature
(which was translated into English as The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation)
Translator: Professor Fuad Abdul Muttalib
It unprecedentedly showcases a wide variety of the latest research at the intersection of Australian literary studies and cognitive literary studies in a single volume.
It takes Australian fiction on the leading edge by paving the way for a new direction in Australian literary criticism.
https://www.routledge.com/The-Rise-of-the-Australian-Neurohumanities-Conversations-Between-Neurocognitive/Vernay/p/book/9780367751944
Cet ouvrage, à la frontière entre étude littéraire et sciences cognitives, entend ainsi explorer ce qu'est la passion littéraire, en apportant des réponses aux questions suivantes : La rencontre avec le livre est-elle le fruit du hasard ? Quelle est la nature des liens qui déterminent notre rapport au livre et qui favorisent l’attachement ? Est-ce le plaisir, le cœur ou le cerveau qui sont le moteur de cette séduction ? Quelles sortes de délices promet la consommation de cette relation ? Comment séduire et être séduit ? Quelle est la part des émotions dans cette entreprise ? Quel est le ciment de cette relation et peut-on y voir un échange profitable ? Enfin, si les effets de la séduction apportent d’indéniables bénéfices, pourquoi bouder notre plaisir ?
http://www.editions-hermann.fr/5467-la-seduction-de-la-fiction.html
—John Frow, University of Sydney
In this short compelling study Jean-François Vernay off ers engaging and accessible ruminations on the many ways that emotions inform and enliven works of literature, providing further reasons why we, as 'professional' or 'non-professional' readers, do and should read such works.
—Peter Lamarque, University of York
By meshing psychology with literary analysis, this book inspires us to view the reading of fi ctional works as an emotional and seductive aff air between reader and writer. Arguing that current teaching practices have contributed to the current decline in the study of literature, Jean-François Vernay's plea brings a refreshing perspective by seeking new directions and conceptual tools to highlight the value of literature. Interdisciplinary in focus and relevant to timely discussions of the vitality between emotion and literary studies, particularly within the contexts of psychology, aff ect studies, and cognitive studies, this book will open up a space in which the formation of our emotions can be openly examined and discussed.
Translation: Dr. Carolyne Lee.
A Brief Take on the Australian Novel gives us a brisk 200 year tour of the preoccupations and patterns of Australian writing. Jean François might be French in origin but fear not, dear reader: his synoptic account of our literary past and present does not come draped in post-post-early-for-Christmas theorising. What the book will do is to show us again our literary origins as the prominent, the neglected, the forgotten and the unfashionable books are dusted off and shown in a new light. Although I sorely wish Jean François' book existed when I studied Australian literature at university, his brief take is much more than a undergraduate primer. A Brief Take on the Australian Novel will open up new reading choices and shows in a lively, engaged manner the diversity, vigour and relevance of the Australian novel."
Mike Shuttleworth
De l'espace émotionnel à l'espace littéraire des ouvertures se créent. A nous de les explorer et de les connaître. Nous aboutirons alors à une redécouverte de la littérature et de son plaisir à l'enseigner. Un véritable défi pour les années à venir.
Jean-François VERNAY est enseignant,essayiste et chercheur en littérature. Il a déjà publié deux essais littéraires.
Revue universitaire française publiée en anglais. En collaboration avec David Coad.
A Special Issue on Patrick White co-edited with David Coad.
David Coad, « Introduction»
Full-Text: PDF
Bill Ashcroft, « A Fringe of Leaves : The Edge of the Sacred »
Full-Text: PDF
Fiona Richards, « “Rubbed by the warming violins” : Music and Patrick White »
Full-Text: PDF
Ian Alexander, « Patrick White and his Brazilian Contemporaries »
Full-Text: PDF
Robyn Walton, « Utopianism in Patrick White's The Living and the Dead »
Full-Text: PDF
Charles Lock, « And Stood Breathing: Patrick White and the Novelistic Discourse of Modernism »
Full-Text: PDF
Reviews
Nicholas Birns, John Beston, Patrick White within the Western Literary Tradition
Full-Text
Anne Le Guellec-Minel, Cynthia vanden Driesen, Writing the Nation : Patrick White and the Indigene
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Dominique Hecq, Xavier Pons, Messengers of Eros : Representations of Sex in Australian Writing
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Ce Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours propose, pour la première fois, une introduction générale à la littérature australienne. Les courants, les auteurs et les oeuvres majeurs sont présentés de manière didactique et chronologique. L'auteur retrace également les métamorphoses du genre romanesque en Australie et propose une analyse originale des six seuils qui jalonnent son évolution.
Ce livre constitue ainsi une somme encyclopédique consacrée à la littérature des antipodes.
Jean-François Vernay s'intéresse à la littérature australienne depuis une dizaine d'années. Sa thèse sur Christopher Koch a fait l'objet d'un premier livre intitulé : Water From the Moon : Illusion and Reality in the Works of Australian Novelist Christopher Koch (New York, Cambria Press, 2007).
This theoretically-informed monograph provides a book-by-book analysis of the novelist’s œuvre and gives a full picture of his Weltanschauung. It is valuable reference for scholars in Australian Studies, as well as those researching postcolonial, psychoanalytic and literary theories.
This book is also winner of the Excellence Award 2009 by the THESE-PAC jury (le prix THESE-PAC, Prix Jean-Pierre Piérard) in the South Pacific-Australasia category for his PhD dissertation on Christopher Koch, the subject of his Cambria Press monograph.
Unlocking My Brain: Through the Labyrinth of Acquired Brain Injury (2014), by Dr. Christine Durham and My Lucky Stroke (2020), written by Dr. Sarah Brooker, both recount personal tragedies and how the lives of these women changed overnight following a traumatic brain injury caused by a brutal car-driving accident. Their nonfiction writings, which go under the restrictive label of “acquired brain injury memoirs”, reveal how their subjects are coping with acquired disability and how their personalities and subjective well-being are getting affected by it.
Therefore, I will build upon cognitive literary theory, and more specifically upon Neuro Lit Crit, to analyse the acquired brain injury (henceforth abbreviated as ABI) memoir genre and its reparative possibilities which enable these writers’s plastic brains to transition from chaos to order, from trauma to resilience, and from harm to harmony. The thorough investigation of this emerging life writing genre of a special kind will show how writing can offer healing possibilities to the vulnerable body and how it can boost the much-hope-for recovery by remaining in control of one’s life narrative.
I shall first define and unpack the notions of human flourishing in parallel with well-being, before reviewing the rather recent eudaimonic turn in Literary Studies. This will set the context for my critique of a 2023 Oxford title which connects the two keywords of this exciting symposium: Literary Studies (or the study of literature) and Human Flourishing (which is correlated to well-being). Finally, I will reflect on how this monograph participates in the rise of the Positive Humanities by shaping the profile of the eudaimonic critic.
Annika Mörte Alling : Depuis ce que les Anglais appellent « the affective turn » au tournant du siècle, ou plutôt « le retour à affectif » comme vous dites à juste titre, de plus en plus de voix se sont élevées en faveur d'une approche plus émotionnelle dans les études littéraires, vous-même avec Plaidoyer pour un renouveau de l’émotion en littérature, qui est sorti en 2013 et traduit en anglais en 2016 (The Seduction of Fiction: A Plea for Putting Emotions Back into Literary Interpretation). Pouvez-vous commenter le rapport entre ce livre et La séduction de la fiction, et aussi la situation actuelle dans ce champ de recherche, vingt ans après le tournant affectif.
par Raphael Baroni
Notice biographique :
Jean-François Vernay est un enseignant bilingue, chercheur en littérature et auteur de fiction et documentaires. Son premier essai publié en français, Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours, a été ré-édité aux éditions Hermann.
Résumé du livre :
Le propos de Jean-François Vernay repose sur un constat : le développement des neurosciences, depuis une vingtaine d’années, valorise l’émotion et apporte de nouveaux éclairages sur l’espace sensible du cognitif. De l’espace émotionnel à l’espace littéraire, des ouvertures se créent. Dès lors, un vaste chantier se profile pour redonner à la littérature ses lettres de noblesse contemporaines : retrouver le plaisir d’enseigner la littérature et retrouver le plaisir de l’apprendre. Jean-François Vernay, jeune enseignant-chercheur, fonde son propos sur un vaste corpus littéraire, philosophique et psychanalytique appartenant à la tradition du XXe siècle. Les arguments avancés visent à provoquer un débat d’idées sur l’avenir de la littérature en ce début du XXIe siècle en France.
Entretien publié le 01/02/2015
Review of Burke, Michael and Emily T. Troscianko, editors. Cognitive Literary Sci- ence: Dialogues Between Literature and Cognition. Oxford University Press, 2017. 346pp.
Acta fabula, vol. 20, n° 4, Notes de lecture, Avril 2019
La Littérature française face au XXIe siècle, Paris, Éditions Corti, 2017
RELIEF – Revue électronique de littérature française 12 (1), 2018, p. 139-142
Transnational Literature Volume 10 No. 2, May 2018. http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/home.html
‘Penser la littérature’ (Thinking with Literature) published in Interprétation littéraire et sciences cognitives (2016), a collection of scholarly articles edited by Françoise Lavocat. Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism is a further attempt to chart the territory of cognitive literary theory. An interdisciplinary approach, no consonance of paradigms, an inspiration from cognitive science research, a concern for issues in literary studies, and the use of multiple prisms, seem to be the chief characteristics defining this ever-broadening category.
Reviewed Work: A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature by Belinda Wheeler
Review by: Jean-François Vernay
ab-Original
Vol. 1, No. 1 (2017), pp. 148-150
Published by: Penn State University Press
DOI: 10.5325/aboriginal.1.1.0148
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/aboriginal.1.1.0148
Page Count: 3
autobiography Land’s Edge (1993). He wrote his way to become the darling of Australian
readers who enjoy his rich prose that evokes the south-western landscape of his native land. He
can be regarded as a writer who has a close affinity with the people and especially the land that
he holds in high regard in his stories. Winton’s coastal narratives invariably vividly depict rural
communities functioning in harmony with the beach culture.
“Island Home : A Landscape Memoir” by Tim Winton, Transnational Literature 9: 2 (May 2017), online: http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/home.html