Open Access

This article examines the placement of Yanick Lahens, a francophone writer who lives in Port-au-Prince, and gets published in France. In a lecture at the Collège de France, Lahens has set herself the task of decolonising the Eurocentric concept of Francophonie. [...] To what extent can quick responding be considered a strategy of francophone writing? Lahens has not only repeatedly taken a stand on events in Haiti but has done so very quickly, publishing in French newspapers and books. The fact that these contributions materialise in France demands more attention. As an author of Haitian origin living in a Creole-dominated society, her French presence points to a transfer driven by inclusion (and exclusion) in the French public sphere and book market. In France, Lahens has the status of a mediator who can speak about everything (but exclusively) that has to do with Haiti. Lahens uses this leap of faith by placing her texts on a postcolonial horizon and entering the field of an ongoing debate around the concept of Francophonie. [...] The French language, like most languages, would no longer belong to one nation, but would become more and more decentralised. However, this decentralisation is accompanied by localisation, as we will see. Lahens uses newsworthy events in Haiti to decolonise and delocalise the Eurocentric concept of Francophonie. Thus, quick response is less about information and more about formation. This thesis is already apparent in the titles of the texts published in France, which always include a reference to Haiti: "Gomorra à la haïtienne" (2008), "Haïti ou la santé du malheur" (2010) and "Haïti n'est ni un cauchemar ni une carte postale" (2021). The three parts of this article elaborate on this thesis. The first part, entitled "Journal Writing: Towards Quick-Response Literature", focuses on a newspaper article by Yanick Lahens published in the French daily Libération in 2008. In "Restoring Order through Quick Writing: The 2010 Haiti Earthquake", the second part of this article, the French reactions of Lahens after the earthquake in Haiti are discussed. Before concluding this article, the third part, "Urgent writing: The Assassination of the President", looks at the quick response of Lahens after the assassination of the Haitian president in 2021.

In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world, writers were racing to produce timely accounts, with texts that ranged from reported narratives to poems and short pieces that resembled spontaneous snapshots more than well-thought-out compositions. Short texts that cannot necessarily be assigned to a single genre but that fit well into an anthology seem to be the trend, as some quickly published anthologies on COVID-19 show. [...] Above all in France, the "journal du confinement", or "confinement diary" - or "corona diary", as I will call it in the following - became highly popular as a genre during the pandemic. This phenomenon seems to have been not only international in scope but represented in various media. As a new genre, the corona diary emerged at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, following in the footsteps of two traditional literary branches. First, it had a strong affinity with the literary serial: published as different instalments in newspapers or as video and audio on the internet, the corona diary can be seen as following in this tradition, which until recently was threatened with extinction. As a serial work - and as a quickly written text published in a newspaper - the corona diary can be understood as a revival of this phenomenon, even if its episodes do not build on each other in a linear fashion and therefore need not necessarily be read one after the other. Secondly, the "diary" genre has been undergoing a revival. [...] This genre seems to have spread most quickly at the beginning of the pandemic in the francophone context in particular. Examples include Wajdi Mouawad's corona diary, published on YouTube and SoundCloud, Leïla Slimani's publications in Le Monde, and Marc Lambron's contributions to Le Journal du Dimanche. Although there are a few examples of German-language quick-response literature centered on the pandemic, the corona diary would seem to be a largely neglected genre in the German-language context. [...] One exception in this regard is the work of Thomas Glavinic, whose texts were published in the daily newspaper Welt. Described as a serial novel, the contributions constitute more of a diary than a novel, as I aim to show.

This article charts a new path for understanding the relationship between French and other languages in Joachim Du Bellay's early publications, "La Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse" and "L'Olive" (both published in 1549). While Du Bellay seems to present ancient Greek, Latin and Italian exclusively as source languages that can be used to enrich the French vernacular and to turn it into a worthy competitor, I suggest that the edition as a whole paints a more nuanced picture. The prefatory poems written by Jean Dorat in ancient Greek and Latin, respectively, suggest that these languages are not only sources and implicit rivals but also companions that are instrumental in the "defense and illustration" of the French language.

Vor dem Hintergrund der epochalen Verunsicherungen des ausgehenden 18. Jahrhunderts stellen sich Goethe und Schiller in ihrer Dramatik den politischen Dimensionen und Abgründen der klassischen französischen Tragödie. Verkappte Staatsgründungen beherrschen ebenso das Geschehen wie der Staatsstreich, der Bürgerkrieg oder der failing state. Eine neue Aktualität gewann das Drama Corneilles und Racines jedoch erst wegen seiner Aufladung der klassischen Form mit staatspolitischen Fundamentalfragen. Das Ringen um eine Regelpoetik und ihre angemessene Umsetzung, vermeintliche Nebensächlichkeiten wie die Einheit der Zeit werden zum Schauplatz genuin politischer Reflexion. Goethe und Schiller verzichten auf eine Restauration der klassischen Form, sie entdecken aber ihre ursprüngliche Energie wieder und verhandeln diese neu. Besonders deutlich zeigt sich dies am dramaturgischen Konflikt zwischen König und Held, der einen bislang weithin übersehenen Grundpfeiler der klassischen Tragödie bildet.