(Sino)graphs in Franco(n)texts: The Multilingual and the Multimodal in Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts

This chapter examines the aesthetic of the sinograph in the French-language novels, calligraphic works, and picture books by two first-generation Chinese migrant writers and artists in France, François Cheng and Shan Sa. It begins with an illustration of Cheng's and Shan's 'Chinese' calligraphic works published in France and explicate their artistic sensibilities and visions informed by traditional Chinese aesthetic concepts. These calligraphic images are then 'read' into their respective French novelistic fabric. Our knowledge of the sinograph is key to the revelation of these writers' transcultural stylistic innovations and diegetic configurations, a kind of (in)visible multilingualism and multimodality beyond the obvious linguistic translation and lexical borrowing. This conscious visual poeticization of/through the sinograph in the French language is a defining aesthetic of Franco-Chinese literature and visual arts. Such ‘imagetext’ works problematize ‘Chineseness’ while highlighting the multilingual and multimodal aspects of cultural translation in the critical framework of World Literature.