To mark the tenth anniversary of the passing of Alain Ricard (1945–2016)—a major figure and pioneer in the study of African literature and theater—Phyllis Taoua, Professor of French and Francophone Studies at the University of Arizona, invites us to explore the journey of this "ragpicker"* through his library, which was donated to BULAC in 2019.
Abstract
Alain Ricard (1945-2016) was one of the most prominent critics of African literature of his generation. His primary area of study focused on the interface between African languages and the writing, publishing and reading of literary texts. While he had a wide-ranging interest in theory and criticism, the methodology in his published scholarship drew primarily on philology, sociology, comparative literary history and ethnography. As an Africanist, he was committed to reading extensively about all aspects of African writing and to travelling on the continent where he lived and conducted fieldwork over more than forty years. Over the course of his distinguished career, spanning roughly forty-six years, he carefully curated a personal book collection that is estimated at 4,500 volumes and took up three adjoining rooms in his family residence in Bordeaux. This impressive collection of books contained a vast array of printed materials in European and African languages including rare early-twentieth-century French-Kiswahili dictionaries, pamphlets printed in Africa and popular African-language literature sold in markets. In 2018, the Bibliothèque universitaire des langues et civilisations (BULAC) in Paris acquired the collection which is being processed as the Fonds Ricard. Before Alain Ricard's books left his home, I had an opportunity to study his collection and interpret how it was organized. To mark the tenth anniversary of his passing, this talk based on a forthcoming essay is a testament to the book collection that Alain Ricard curated for himself in his personal library in Bordeaux, to the manifestations of his commitment to extensive reading and to the way his library and interventions continue to shape the field of African literary criticism.
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