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Articles 1 - 25 of 25
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Not Your Average Rose: Cultural Inversion In Pizan’S 'City Of Ladies', Alex Donley
Not Your Average Rose: Cultural Inversion In Pizan’S 'City Of Ladies', Alex Donley
Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship
This research addresses Le Livre de la Cité des Dames—translated into English as The Book of the City of Ladies—as an outstanding work of proto-feminist literature from 1405. It is written by a woman, in defense of women. Christine de Pizan plays the central character in her own work, in which she combats misogyny with a revised account of history. She battles prevalent ideals of courtly love and gender inequality as things that are not merely repulsive or immoral, but wholly heretical. Rather than focusing on historical accuracy, de Pizan uses the literary power of her narrative to …
Sex Education In France: An Imbalanced History, Marisa Peters
Sex Education In France: An Imbalanced History, Marisa Peters
Honors Theses
Although the history of sex education is relatively new, it is very complex. Enlightenment philosophers from Rousseau to de Sade had ideas on what the sex education of girls and of boys should entail, with Rousseau preparing her for marriage, and the latter preparing her to be a libertine! In the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were stereotypes too, of girls in the countryside learning about sex as a result of cramped living and proximity to farm animals. For young bourgeois women in the city, there were manuals on marriage and how to perform their wifely …
Deborah Mawer, Editor. Historical Interplay In French Music And Culture, 1860-1960. Routledge, 2018., Eric Touya De Marenne
Deborah Mawer, Editor. Historical Interplay In French Music And Culture, 1860-1960. Routledge, 2018., Eric Touya De Marenne
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Review of Deborah Mawer, editor. Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860-1960.
Hillary L. Chute. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, And Documentary Form. Cambridge: Harvard Up, 2016., Julia Watson
Hillary L. Chute. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, And Documentary Form. Cambridge: Harvard Up, 2016., Julia Watson
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Review of Hillary L. Chute. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2016.
Les Entretiens De Fontenelle: The Rhetorical Strategies Of A Cosmological Dialogue, Mark R. Komanecky Jr.
Les Entretiens De Fontenelle: The Rhetorical Strategies Of A Cosmological Dialogue, Mark R. Komanecky Jr.
Senior Theses and Projects
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle’s Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds is one of the first major works of the French Enlightenment. First published in 1686, the work is organized as a series of dialogues between a philosopher and a marquise who discuss scientific topics such as heliocentrism and the possibility of extra-terrestrial life. Treating these subjects was a risky affair; less than a century earlier Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake, and fifty years before Fontenelle, Galileo was arrested for “holding, teaching, and defending” heliocentrism. Fontenelle employed several rhetorical and stylistic strategies in the work: he wrote in …
Joan Of Arc And The Crusade: Memorizing Medieval Examples To Improve A Renaissance King, Lidia Radi
Joan Of Arc And The Crusade: Memorizing Medieval Examples To Improve A Renaissance King, Lidia Radi
Languages, Literatures, and Cultures Faculty Publications
In 1518, Le Penser de royal memoire was published in Paris by Guillaume Michel de Tours.2Thanks to the pioneering research conducted by Anne-Marie Lecoq in her monumental book Francois Ier imaginaire, this allegorical text has recently caught the attention of scholars as part of an important moral and political literary production that was published under the reign of King Francis I (r. 1515-1547). Lecoq's study and subsequent works, such as the critical edition of Jean Thenaud's Triomphe des Vertus by Titia Schuurs-Janssen, shed new light on the literature of propaganda addressed to Francis I, the king …
Dora Bruder And The Longue Durée , Susan Weiner
Dora Bruder And The Longue Durée , Susan Weiner
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Modiano's methods in Dora Bruder recall the Annales historiographer's rejection of the history of events in favor of the "long duration," but with human history as its object. Modiano's long duration draws out repetitions and variations between his own life and Dora's as he reconstructs and imagines it, between Dora and fictional characters, between Dora's story and the lives of Holocaust victims and survivors known and unknown. Moreover, the author encourages the reader to take part in the uncanny connections the novel makes, through movements of the imagination not unlike Modiano's own. In so doing, we approach Dora and those …
Modiano Historien , Richard J. Golsan
Modiano Historien , Richard J. Golsan
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Beginning with the "Trilogy" (La place de l'étoile, Ronde de nuit, and Les boulevards de ceinture) of his first three novels published in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the work of Patrick Modiano has been indissociably linked with the history and memory of the Occupation. Dora Bruder is of course no exception along these lines. What makes Modiano's Occupation novels distinctive is their combination of the "historian's" knowledge of the historical realities of the period and the novelist's or "poet's" talent for powerfully evoking the feel and ambiance of "les années noires." While Modiano's practice as …
Memoirs Of Louis Xiv To His Son, 1663/1667, Charles E. Reesink Mr
Memoirs Of Louis Xiv To His Son, 1663/1667, Charles E. Reesink Mr
Charles E Reesink
This word document is first step in rolling out corporate deluxe addition for international trade mission representatives who are fortunate enough to have a bilingual secret weapon in there sleeve like Canada. lol Exponential returns on your initial ROI,
The Double Writing Of Agota Kristof And The New Europe , Martha Kuhlman
The Double Writing Of Agota Kristof And The New Europe , Martha Kuhlman
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Agota Kristof, a native of Hungary who lives in Switzerland and writes in French, has written a trilogy of novels that explore the borderlines and fractured history of the "New Europe": The Notebook (1986), The Proof (1988), and The Third Lie (1991). Set in an unnamed Central European country, the novels traverse the three successive shocks of Nazism, Socialism, and Capitalism. Through the device of identical twin narrators, brothers Lucas and Claus, Kristof inscribes the story/history (histoire) with a "double writing" that opposes personal and official histories. But this opposition is not a simple one, for the two …
Body/Text/History: Violation Of Borders In Assia Djebar's Fantasia, David Waterman
Body/Text/History: Violation Of Borders In Assia Djebar's Fantasia, David Waterman
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Assia Djebar's novel Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (1985) can be read as a political novel which examines the permeability of borders, especially between Algeria and the female body. As the primary site of signification and meaning, the body becomes a text which attempts to circulate knowledge and encourage resistance outside a position of mastery, and the same body/text suffers as it is inscribed by the dominant power. The distinction between nature and culture is interrogated as the borders of the body/text overlap the borders of war, writing, history, and sexuality. Ultimately, given the position of the female body within the …
Travels Through Heterotopia: The Textual Realms Of Patrick Modiano's Rue Des Boutiques Obscures And Mikhail Kuraev's Kapitan Dikshtein, Vitaly Chernetsky
Travels Through Heterotopia: The Textual Realms Of Patrick Modiano's Rue Des Boutiques Obscures And Mikhail Kuraev's Kapitan Dikshtein, Vitaly Chernetsky
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Within contemporary prose, one distinct mode or paradigm that can be discerned is constituted by the texts that daringly tackle the dark, suppressed, erased parts of our history and mentality; however, they approach this task not by way of self-righteous denunciatory investigations, but by provocatively problematizing the most established everyday facts, by depriving the reader of the possibility of even conceiving any firm ground of the stable construct of an origin or a self-identification—historically and culturally. Their irreverent and playful deconstruction of the all-pervasive national cultural mythologies has mounted a powerful challenge to ideological constructs big and small. This article …
"A Myth Becomes Reality": Kaspar Hauser As Messianic Wild Child , Ulrich Struve
"A Myth Becomes Reality": Kaspar Hauser As Messianic Wild Child , Ulrich Struve
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The topos of the "Wild Child" occupies an important place in the mythic and literary imagination of the West. The European climax of a long line of wild children, Kaspar Hauser was a nineteenth-century German foundling whose fate has inspired a host of novels, dramas, novellas, poems, songs, and movies, even an opera and a ballet. It has been treated by Paul Verlaine, R. M. Rilke, and Klaus Mann, by the Dada poet Hans Arp, by the dramatist Peter Handke, and by the filmmaker Werner Herzog. This article offers a brief historical sketch of Hauser's life before discussing a key …
From Iron To Glass: Transparency And Pluralism, Maryse Fauvel
From Iron To Glass: Transparency And Pluralism, Maryse Fauvel
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
The author reads a number of recent architectural constructions in Paris (mainly the Louvre pyramid, but also the Musée d'Orsay and the Institut du monde arabe) and argues that they affirm the plurality of contemporary France while at once inscribing and subverting the conventions of its (once) dominant culture: the Arab world in the heart of Paris, the museum cum railway station as the focal point of conflicting tastes, the pyramid as both accomplice and critic of history. Their pluralism qualifies them as postmodern. These monuments also propose a new role for today's museum. The building itself becomes an art …
Althusser And History: A Review Essay, Eric Collum
Althusser And History: A Review Essay, Eric Collum
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Althusser and History: A Review Essay
Text And Subject Position After Althusser, Antony Easthope
Text And Subject Position After Althusser, Antony Easthope
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Althusser's achievement is that he redefined Marxism. He reconceptualizes history and totality in terms of different times, construes knowledge as the outcome of a process of construction, and interprets subjectivity as an effect of ideology and unconscious processes. Unfortunately, Althusser's functionalist view of ideology claims that the subject recognizes itself as a subject because it duplicates— reflects—an absolute subject. However, Lacan's notion of the mirror stage remedies this fault. Lacan's subject always misrecognizes itself in a process of contradiction that threatens the stability of any given social order. Moreover, unlike Foucault's subject, which is limited in that subjectivity is folded …
The Mother Tongue Of Leila Sebbar, Danielle Marx-Scouras
The Mother Tongue Of Leila Sebbar, Danielle Marx-Scouras
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Leila Sebbar grew up in French colonial Algeria where her parents taught French to the indigenous children. The daughter of a metropolitan French woman and an Algerian, Sebbar is a croisée. At the height of the Algerian War, Sebbar left her homeland to pursue her university studies in France. She became a French teacher and made France her home. Sebbar writes in her mother tongue, but she treats it like a foreign language. Although she never learned Arabic and left Algeria, her paternal identity haunts all of her writings. Anchored by the notion of exile, Sebbar drifts between two …
History, Violence And Poetics: Saint-John Perse And René Char, Nathan Bracher
History, Violence And Poetics: Saint-John Perse And René Char, Nathan Bracher
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
This essay explores the parallel yet opposite stances taken both personally and textually by Perse and Char with respect to drama of World War II. While Perse remained disdainfully aloof from public affairs after the defeat and proclaimed in his poetry his solidarity with all humanity, Char explicitly linked his writing to events, yet sought to create a human space removed from history's upheavals. Striving to transcend the vicissitudes of individual existence, Perse celebrates an epic vision of history that overlooks and even condones its violence. Focusing on the inconsistent, fragmentary nature of existence, Char prevents us from having any …
Reflections On Linguistic And Literary Colonization And Decolonization In Africa, Eric Sellin
Reflections On Linguistic And Literary Colonization And Decolonization In Africa, Eric Sellin
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Despite the cultural diversity found in Africa and the complexity ofthe psychology of the colonizer and the colonized, several fundamental facts emerge regarding the function of language and literature in recent African history. The colonizer sought to instill a sense of inferiority in the colonized as part of the dynamics of conquest, placing special emphasis on education and language. These notions, lucidly discussed by such social thinkers as O. Mannoni, Frantz Fanon, and Albert Memmi, have analogues in the defense of language everywhere where lingua-political oppression occurs, be it in colonial Africa or on an Arapaho reservation in the American …
Autobiographical Authority And The Politics Of Narrative, Renée Larrier
Autobiographical Authority And The Politics Of Narrative, Renée Larrier
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Autobiographical narratives, which include autobiography, autobiographical novel, memoir, and chronicle, constitute a major genre in African francophone literature. Informed by history, they do not celebrate personal accomplishment, but rather accentuate the group experience. These self-stories rely on realistic representation in order to document events for future generations and function to correct stereotypical misconceptions—therein lies their political consciousness.
Forgetting To Remember: Anamnesis And History In J. M. G. Le Clézio's Desert, Kathleen White Smith
Forgetting To Remember: Anamnesis And History In J. M. G. Le Clézio's Desert, Kathleen White Smith
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Unlike most of Le Clezio's previous works. Desert has a specific historical framework. The story of the young boy Nour records the struggle of the Saharaoui people of the western Sahara to claim their land from the French invaders of the early twentieth century. A second narrative, set in the present, continues that story through the experiences of Lalla: unlike the story of her predecessor, the narrative in which she figures has no clear reference to the current, militant political situation established in the western Sahara by the independence movement known as Polisario. Containing both story and document, text and …
Introduction, Lynn A. Higgins
Introduction, Lynn A. Higgins
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
From an issue of the Magazine Litteraire featuring the work of Fernand Braudel to an article by Hayden White on the "Absurdist moment" in criticism, it is clear that the disciplines of history and literary studies are converging. Historians like White and Dominick La Capra in the United States, and Michel de Certeau and the members of the Annales School in France are investigating the rhetorical modes of their craft and exploring implications of the fact that it is historians themselves who "make history." At the same time, literary scholars, emerging from Structuralism and the New Criticism, are seeking with …
Marguerite Yourcenar's Prefaces: Genesis As Self-Effacement, Colette Gaudin
Marguerite Yourcenar's Prefaces: Genesis As Self-Effacement, Colette Gaudin
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Most critics of Marguerite Yourcenar largely ignore the existence of the complex network of prefaces and postfaces which accompanies her fiction. On the basis of the success of her historical reconstitutions and of the classical perfection of her style they characterize her work either as the best illustration of a sexless literature or as a case of denial of femininity. But her prefaces cannot be read simply as an exposition of her thinking about history or as a linear history of her writing. While an authoritative voice exposes her method and asserts a will to aesthetic perfection, the writer as …
Language, The Uncanny, And The Shapes Of History In Claude Simon's The Flanders Road, Lynn A. Higgins
Language, The Uncanny, And The Shapes Of History In Claude Simon's The Flanders Road, Lynn A. Higgins
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
Asking whether it is possible to read The Flanders Road both as text and as history the essay studies repetitions that structure the novel as they relate to historical events evoked therein, from the Revolution to the Algerian War. The tangled and looped itinerary of a cavalry retreat finds its analog in the narrative "line"; generic variations emerge when (hi)stories are told again and again; these, and even certain kinds of wordplay make the novel, and ultimately history, seem uncanny. But it is the novel's self-conscious strangeness, as it enfolds historical knowledge, that constitutes a commentary on how history is …
Radiguet Revisited, Leon S. Roudiez
Radiguet Revisited, Leon S. Roudiez
Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature
A re-examination of Raymond Radiguet's novel, Le Diable au corps, from a textual point of view. Thanks to the knowledge made available by linguistic and psychoanalytic theories, we are now able to read this novel less as a study of adolescent love in its more or less universal aspects and more as the account of the destructive behavior of a troubled, narcissistic adolescent who is basically incapable of love. History is brought in only to show that, contrary to appearances, the story is set outside of history. Narrative, word, and letter patterns, in addition to symbolism, are used to …