Marginalities and Migrants on the Move: A Comparative Reading of Medieval French Literature and Contemporary French Culture

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My research will compare portraits of culturally marginal figures in medieval French literature with those of migrants inpresent-day French literature, emphasising their social and geographical movements. It will set up an interdisciplinarydialogue between medieval narratives that depict the liminal status of the internally subjugated (French) individual, andemergent migrant literature, which comments on the Syrian/Iraqi migration crises from French perspectives. Framed byHomi K. Bhabha's theory, my project will build upon my MPhil Core Course Essay. My PhD will revise the medievalcanon and poorly reported struggles of middle-eastern migrants, offering re-readings of French representations ofmarginalised/migrant figures in medieval and modern-day family narratives. I will unpack the medieval Pontieu genealogy(Jean d'Avesnes, La Fille du comte de Pontieu, Saladin); I will compare this with familial migration narratives from theCalais situation. I will show how the displacements of marginal/migrant figures are essential to constructing Frenchidentity fictions across the ages. This study could develop through textual studies of the Saracen other living in Frenchterritories, or of current framing debates on French-born Muslims. It could incorporate visual materials. This study wouldreflect on the constructedness of cultural discourses across the ages and the embattled position of marginalised/migrantfigures, changing how we see ourselves and how we read narratives.