Articles in a Collection

1. M. Longino. "Le "Mamamouchi" ou la colonisation de l'imaginaire français par le monde ottoman.." Théâtre et voyage. Presses universitaires de Paris - Sorbonne, forthcoming 2008.

   Abstract:
   Mention of Molière’s comedy, Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, more often than not evokes the knowing riposte: “ah, le grand mamamouchi!” The play functions as a standard marker in the story of French exoticism. Molière’s plot resolution depends totally on a cross cultural contrivance —Frenchmen disguised as Turks—dressing like them, behaving like them, speaking like them, and on cultural markers such as rugs, dervishes, even the Koran reduced to the status of props. While the credulous lead star, Monsieur Jourdain, will believe his eyes and fall for the visuals of the ruse, even he will have trouble believing his ears: “Tant de choses en deux mots?” He, son of a merchant, knows how to count, and misapplies the skills of his family trade to assess translation. While this is a moment of high comedy, it is also a reminder that language and commerce are intimately related through the process of exchange they both represent. Such serious spoofing suggests that we look at the linguistic and commercial, and, by implication, diplomatic and cultural relations that obtained between the French and the Ottomans in and around 1670, when the play was first staged.