Repair the World : French Literature in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Drawing on twenty-first-century French-language literature, this study shows how literature can not only serve as a means of "personal development", but also help repair the "brokenness" implied in victimhood, and redress individual and collective traumas. As it reflects on discourses of repair (and reparations), it questions the canonical theories on the functions of literature and proposes a new way of writing (and reading) literary history.