Clémentine BEAUVAIS
Crafting Reading Pleasure with Literary Analysis? Tentative Notes from the Field
Too many people hate literary analysis – even (and this is especially worrying), people who claim to love reading and to want people to read for pleasure. Pleasure reading and analytical reading are like oil and water in the great literary education soup: the former (allegedly) intuitive, immediate, and personal; the latter (reputedly) laborious, taught, and institutional. The problem of this conceptual split is not just that it is flawed, it is also that it conditions, for the worse, the reception of all literature in society, at school and at home, and influences the creation and mediation of children’s literature. In this keynote, I defend a different perspective on literary education: one where literary analysis can be intuitive, fun and collaborative, and reading pleasure can be seen as what it really is: a taught thing, a skill, a crafted affect. I tentatively present a number of approaches that seek to craft reading pleasure from literary analysis and theory – approaches where, as often, children’s literature is our best ally.
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I am a Senior Lecturer in English in Education at the University of York. My research revolves around literary and cultural aspects of childhood and education, especially children’s literature, creative writing, literary translation in education, and the history and cultural sociology of childhood. At York, I teach on the undergraduate course in English in Education, and supervise undergraduate, MA and PhD research projects.
I joined the Department of Education in January 2016; prior to this, I was a Junior Research Fellowship in Education at Homerton College, Cambridge (UK), from 2013 to 2015. I hold a BA, MPhil and PhD in Education from Cambridge. I arrived in the UK in 2006, from my native country of France.
I am also a writer for children and young adults in French, and a literary translator from English to French. I am currently exploring literary translation, its potential role in education, and its mediation and practices in children’s literature in the UK. My activities as a French children’s author and translator take me to very many places in the world to talk to children, young adults and children’s literature professionals.
I am an Associate Editor of Children’s Literature in Education and on the advising board for the John Benjamins Children’s Literature, Culture and Cognition series.
My earlier years of research were focused primarily on children’s literature: my doctoral thesis explored contemporary, politically committed children’s picturebooks. An expanded version was published as The Mighty Child: Time and Power in Children’s Literature (John Benjamins, 2015). This monograph proposes an existentialist theorisation of adult-child relationships in children’s literature.
During my postdoctoral work I studied perceptions of child precocity in the 20th and 21st centuries, looking at a variety of discourses surrounding precocity, from literary to academic texts. My aim was to situate narratives of child precocity, both within contemporary concerns regarding time and economic pressures on education, and in continuity with more traditional forms of storytelling related to ‘child time’ and ability. A number of publications, including three in history of education journals, were derived from this work.
I very much like working on different types of projects and have published on such varied topics as the Mozart Effect, Roald Dahl’s Matilda, the ‘pushy parent’ label, Simone de Beauvoir... and the motif of the moon in Tintin.
Bibliography
Academic Work
- The Mighty Child: Time and Power in Children’s Literature, John Benjamins, 2015.
- The Edinburgh Companion to Children’s Literature, coedited with Maria Nikolajeva. Edinburgh University Press, 2017.
- “An Emergent Sense of the Literary: Doing Children’s Poetry Translation in the Literature Classroom”, Journal of Literary Education n. 2 (2019)
- ‘We actually created a good mood!’: Metalinguistic and literary engagement through collaborative translation in the secondary classroom, with Charlotte Ryland, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 34:3 (2020), 288-306.
- “Sturm, Drang and Slang: Writing Translations of Teenage Fiction”, in Jan Steyn (ed.) Translations: Craft, Contexts, Consequences, in Jan Steyn (ed.), Translations: Craft, Contexts, Consequences, Cambridge University Press, 2022.
- Écrire comme une abeille : la littérature jeunesse, de la lecture à l’écriture, Gallimard jeunesse, 2023.
Fiction
Novels
- Les petites filles top-modèles (2010)
- La plume de Marie (2011)
- La pouilleuse (2012)
- Comme des images (2014)
- [English] Sesame Seade Mysteries (2014)
- [English] The Royal Baby-Sitters series (2014-2016)
- Les Petites Reines (2015)
- Carambol’Ange (2015)
- Songe à la douceur (2016)
- Brexit Romance (2018)
- Âge Tendre (2020)
- Décomposée (2021)
- Les Facétieuses (2022)
Short Stories
- « L’Étrange cas des deux amours de Jean-Baptiste Robert », L’enfant sur la falaise et autres nouvelles (2010)
- « Le Raccourci », Que raconte mon corps ? Philéas et Autobule 44 (avril-mai 2015).
Greek mythology retellings
- Io, pour l’amour de Zeus (2018)
- Ariane et le défi du labyrinthe (2019)
- Orphée aux enfers (2019)
- Antigone la révoltée (2020)
- Icare, comme un oiseau (2021)
- Midas, le roi aux oreilles d’âne (2022)
Picture books
- La Louve (2014), illustrated by Antoine Déprez
- Lettres de mon hélicoptère (2015), illustrated by Anne Rouquette
- Va jouer avec le petit garçon ! (2016), illustrated by Maisie Paradise Shearring
- Ameline, joueuse de flute (2018), illustrated by Antoine Déprez
- Les esprits de l’escalier (2020), illustrated by Gérald Guerlais
- Boucles de pierre (2021), illustrated by Max Ducos
Collective Works
- On n’a rien vu venir : roman à 7 voix (2012)
- 16 nuances de première fois (2017)
- La revanche des princesses (2019)
- Si on chantait ! tome 2 : Prunille présidente (2022)
Selected translations
Works (re)translated by Clémentine Beauvais (from English to French)
- Inséparables (original title: One) by Sarah Crossan (2017)
- Caribou baby (original title: Moose Baby) by Meg Rosoff (2018)
- Signé Poète X (original title: The Poet X) by Elizabeth Acevedo (2019)
- L’Ickabog (original title: The Ickabog) by J.K. Rowling (2020)
- Dans le bleu (original title: After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away) by Joyce Carol Oates (2022)
- Emma by Jane Austen (2023)
Works translated by Clémentine Beauvais (from French to English)
- Piglettes by Clémentine Beauvais (original title: Les Petites Reines) (2017)
Translations of Clémentine Beauvais’s works
- Les Petites Reines (2015)
- Czech translation, Královny ošklivek (2019) published by Práh
- Dutch translation, De zomer dat we Parijs bestormden (2020) published by Querido
- German translation, Die Königinnen der Würstchen (2017) published by Carlsen
- Italian translation, Le reginette - Tre amiche, una sfida (2018) published by Rizzoli
- Korean translation, 돼지들 (2020) published by A Thousand Hope Publishing
- Lithuanian translation, Kiaulystės dėsnis kiaulėms negalioja (2019) published by Debesų ganyklos
- Polish translation, Pasztety, do boju! (2017) published by Wydawnictwo Dwie Siostry
- Russian translation, Королевишны #3Колбаски (2020) published by Самокат
- Serbian translation, Tri kraljice na dva točka (2023) published by Odiseja
- Slovak translation, Jaternice tiahnu na Paríž (2021) published by Absynt
- Slovenian translation, #3špehbombe (2019) published by Mladinska knjiga
- Songe à la douceur (2016)
- English translation, In Paris With You (2018) published by Faber & Faber
- American translation, In Paris With You (2019) published by Wednesday Books
- Italian translation, Pensa alla dolcezza (2018) published by Rizzoli
- Romanian translation, Cu tine în Paris (2019) published by EPICA
- Russian translation, Ужель та самая Татьяна? (2019) published by Самокат
- Polish translation, Pomyśl, jak słodko (2021) published by Dwie Siostry
- Va jouer avec le petit garçon ! (2016)
- Chinese translation, 我现在只想自己玩 (2018) published by 21st Century Publishing Group
- English translation, Hello, Monster! (2018) published by Thames & Hudson
- Russian translation, Иди поиграй с тем мальчиком (2021) published by Самокат
Adaptations
Les Petites Reines, theatrical adaptation
- Les Petites Reines (2017), French play by the Soy Creation Company directed by Justine Heynemann
- Die Königinnen der Würtstchen (2023), German play directed by Maria Winter
- „Pasztety, do boju!” (2023), Polish play directed by Lukazs Zaleski
Link to Clémentine Beauvais’s English website: https://www.clementinebeauvais.com/eng/
