Brigitte Lane - Tufts University

Brigitte M. Lane
Associate Professor of French
The Department of Romance Languages lost close friend and colleague, Associate Professor of
French Brigitte Lane, on March 3, 2015. Later that day Brigitte’s son, Mathieu Barton Lane,
had written, “It saddens me to inform you that Brigitte Lane passed away early this morning,
succumbing to the cancer which came upon her so quickly at the end of last year. She passed
her final weeks at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston where she received wonderful care
in the hospice unit. She was surrounded by caring and attentive doctors and nurses who kept
her from suffering to her last moment.” Joseph Garreau, Emeritus Professor of French Studies
& Culture of the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and close friend of Brigitte gave the
following eulogy on the day of her memorial service on May 2, 2015 at her gravesite at the
Mount Auburn Cemetery.
__________________________________________________________________________________
As most of you, if not all of you, already know, for the last
decade Brigitte was not only my best friend but my primary friend. Thanks to her I have
met many of her own friends who are here today with her own family at this grave site.
May I take this opportunity to thank you publicly for your appreciated words of comfort or
your phone calls, while defeated by sadness I was grieving her loss. Yes, Mathieu, you were
right when you saw me crying inconsolably on her deathbed and said: “You were very
close.” Yes, we were.
Now, to turn to her mom and some of my own memories, here is just one revealing
example of a brilliant mind that would not quit: Her last 2013 published article, titled Le
Clézio et le sacré is dedicated (I quote): “To the memory of my master Professor Albert
Bates Lord of Harvard who better than anyone knew how to initiate his own students,
myself included, to the process of composition of oral epics.” When Mathieu, who
demonstrated, in addition to his filial love, such an admirable fortitude despite his own
grief, returned to his mom’s house a few weeks ago and started to clear off her diningroom or rather work table, there were still on it no less than three translations of the Song
of Roland, which she had asked me to take to the rehabilitation center in Lexington last
December. The story-pattern theory of the two-companions, as illustrated for example in
the epic poem of Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu, or, in the Song, the companionship of
Roland and Olivier, that Professor Lord had taught her, of whom she has now become ad
aeternum, a close neighbor in this glorious cemetery – that story-pattern indeed occupied
her mind to almost her last breath.
We also read on this grave marker: passionate teacher. I could add: teacher ad infinitum,
that is even after her official May 31, 2014 retirement from Tufts University. Hoping that
she could regain in the meanwhile some physical strength, she has proposed to teach a
course this summer on the two latest Nobel Prizes in French Literature: Le Clézio (2008)
and Modiano (2014): one looking to the future, the other turning himself to the past. Le
Clézio-Modiano: another French duo, as it is so common in our literature to associate our
great writers by pairs: Montaigne-Rabelais, Sartre-Camus, Yourcenar-Duras. (Sorry to
sound ad nauseam like the old professor.) Mathieu, you won’t remember it but there was
also a Modiano novel left on that dining-room table!
To conclude, I would like to read you just one testimony addressed to me, that of a dear
friend of Brigitte at Swarthmore College, (where she taught for 10 years before coming to
Tufts University) from Carole Netter, whom I also knew. (It’s written in her native
French): “Having been a very close friend of Brigitte during the years when she taught
here, I share your own grief. I enjoyed her for her great intellect and extraordinary culture,
her sense of poetry, her innovative ideas, her generosity, her charming art of story-telling,
her niçois savoir-vivre, the stories of her youth in her childhood home facing the
Mediterranean Sea, her warm and faithful friendship. I still can hear her soft singing voice,
that of the happy times and that of dark thoughts that also tortured her. All this
reverberates in me and saddens me. Je suis de tout coeur avec vous et sa famille. I’m
wholeheartedly with you and her family.”
Brigitte Marie Andrée, née Desrues, born, she liked to tell us in a car accident on Thursday,
the 3rd of September 1942 in Vichy (central France, where her father owned a factory), but
because of the war was officially registered at the mairie (the town hall) as being born on
Saturday the 5th and buried in the snow on Saturday, March 7, 2015.
Passionate of all things Celtic, Brigitte wanted that her feast day be celebrated on the 1 st of
February, the feast of Saint Brigid of Ireland, Brigid of Kildare, (who, according to tradition,
also died at the age of 72). Her favorite Christian Holiday was Palm Sunday. As if they
knew about it - friends of the Mt Auburn Cemetery I suppose - planted a fresh branch of
boxwood on her grave, as we still do in our native France on Palm Sunday.
With Heather, Henry, Abby, Mathieu and myself standing by, each of us holding a branch
of her favorite white lilies, that we each later deposited on her coffin, after the reading of
two poems, the well-known Do not stand at my grave and weep and The Energy of
Prayer by Thich Nhat Hanh, we watched her coffin being slowly descended into the
ground.
Sit tibi terra levis. Que la terre te soit légère. May the earth rest lightly upon you, devoted
friend.
___________________________________________________________________________
Degrees: Ph.D., Harvard University, 1982 (Cultures of French expression and African Studies);
M.A., University of Kansas; Licence ès Lettres Université de Paris, Sorbonne; Université du Théâtre
des Nations (Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt)
Expertise: Oral Tradition/Anthropology, French Cultural Studies, Drama and Theater, Film Studies,
Contemporary French literature and society (with a focus on multiculturalism and immigration
issues), Interdisciplinary perspectives in all academic domains
Distinctions and Awards: Chevalier, Ordres des Palmes Académiques (1991), NEH Grant (1996),
Women Studies Phelps Grant, Wellesley College (1989), Mellon Grant, Swarthmore College for the
creation of an interdisciplinary program on "The French speaking World" (1993); Marion and Jasper
Whiting Foundation Grant (1988); National Council on the Arts Grant (1970) as Co-Director of "The
Bread and Puppet Theater" Children's workshops, Coney Island, N.Y., Fulbright scholarship (1969)
Professional Positions: Member Head Committee of the Laurence Wylie North-American Prize in
French Cultural Studies; Member Editorial Board Nouvelles Francographies (SPFFA); Referee for
L'Érudit franco-espagnol; Referee for the American Society of Utopian Studies; former freelance
reader for the Editions du Seuil, Paris (Collection Théâtre)
Books:



Pour une littérature de l’exil (with the participation of contemporary French writer Leïla
Sebbar. Bleu autour Publisher, September 2015.
Collaboration on the re-edition by Prof. Eve Sourian (CUNY) of George Sand's Impressions et
souvenirs. Paris: Editions des Femmes/Antoinette Fouque, 2005.
Franco-American Traditions and Popular Culture in Lowell, Massachusetts. New York:
Garland Press, 1990. 593 p. Coll. Harvard Dissertations in Folklore and Folklife. Albert Lord,
editor. Introduction, Laurence Wylie.
Selected Articles:




(Forthcoming) "JMG Le Clézio et le sacré" In Recherches sur l'imaginaire Cahiers n°35.
Presses de l'Université d'Angers, 2012.
"Rapt, Reprise et Revenance d'âme dans 'Le Roi des Corbeaux'. In Les Vivants et les Morts :
Littératures de l'Entre-Deux Mondes. Paris : Imago, 2008. 286-306.
"Surréalité et magie du désir: le théâtre de Leïla Sebbar, théâtre d'exil, d'attente et de rêve".
Paris: L'Harmattan, 2003. 201-220.
"Three Major Witnesses of Franco-American Folklore in New England: H. Beaugrand, A.
Lambert and R. Berthiaume". In Steeples and Smokestacks: The Franco-American Experience
in New England. Editions de l'Institut Français, Assumption College, 1996. 412-430.













"Histoire orale des Franco-Américains de Lowell, Mass, Histoire et Identité(s)."
Francophonies d'Amérique 5. Ottawa: Presses de l'Université, 1995. 153-173.
"Analyse d'une écriture croisée: Le Chinois vert d'Afrique de Leïla Sebbar". In Regards sur la
France des Années 80. Stanford French and Italian Studies 80. Saratoga, Ca : Anma Libri,
1994. 44-56.
"Mystique ouvrière et réalité sociale ou 'Le Contrat impossible' dans Le Compagnon du Tour
de France. George Sand Studies, 1995-1996. Vol.14. 45-58.
"La Représentation du paysan français dans La Terre d'Emile Zola ou L'Invention du paysan
'total'. Et de l'écriture ethnographique illusoire". In Le Cri de ma chair: Actes de la Conférence
Internationale Emile Zola. Boston College, 1991. Berkeley : Les Nouvelles Presses
Universitaires, 1992. 67-70 (letter format).
"Les Contes d'une Grand'mère" de George Sand: 'Les Ailes de courage' ou l'Envol du paysan.
Réinvention d'un genre." George Sand Studies, XI, 2 (Spring 1992). 67-81.
"George Sand, ethnographe et utopiste: Rhétorique de l'imaginaire." Revue des Sciences
Humaines, 226 (1991-2. 135-160.
"La Petite Fadette, a pre-feminist dialectic of tradition." In The World of George Sand: Actes
du Colloque George Sand, Hofstra University, 1987. Greenwood Press, 1991, 15-26.
"Toward a Cultural Approach of Mauriac's Fiction: Settings, Ideology and écriture in
Génitrix". In François Mauriac: Visions and Reappraisals. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1989. 123.
"Voyage et initiation dans La Mare au Diable de George Sand: géographie symbolique et
topographie rituelle du voyage initiatique." Etudes Françaises 24/1 (Printemps 1988). 71-85.
"De la culture immigrée à la culture ethnique: la chanson populaire d'expression française et
l'expérience franco-américaine en Nouvelle Angleterre." Etudes de Linguistique Appliquée, 70
(avril 1988). 51-65.
"Mythe, Enfer et Paradis dans 'La Trilogie Rezeau' d'Hervé Bazin." Hervé Bazin: Actes du
Colloque d'Angers (décembre 1986). Angers: Presses de l'Université, 1987. 59-69
"Pseudo-mères et pseudo-épouses: bourreaux et victimes dans quatre romans de François
Mauriac." Cahiers François Mauriac, 13 (Special 1986 Anniversary Issue). 93-104.
"De la Méduse à Marie: dramaturgie, systèmes symboliques et idéologie dans 'Génitrix' de
François Mauriac". Cahiers François Mauriac, 13 (Special 1986 Anniversary Issue), 164-374.
Community work and personal interests:
Children's Theater workshops (formerly in Paris and New York City underprivileged areas); Art:
painting, clay sculpture, masks and puppets building; Picasso, Matisse, De Chazal works and folk art;
art and ethnology museums' ethics; oral-traditional epic literature from the ancient world; shamanism
as a pre-scientific mode of thought; poetry; cinema, in all its dimensions; global Amerindian cultures
and their representation in films (from the Western tradition until today); African Yoruba Nigerian
traditions; Celtic studies, especially in terms of the aspects of the ancient diasporic Celtic world;
flowers, trees, the mysteries of the vegetal world and their symbolic and ritual dimensions; music,
singing, especially traditional French songs and hearing other people's voices; imaginative cooking