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1996

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Articles 1 - 17 of 17

Full-Text Articles in Modern Languages

René Descartes (1596–1650), Thomas M. Carr Jr. Oct 1996

René Descartes (1596–1650), Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

Mathematician and founder of modern philosophy, known for his distrust of formal rhetoric. The Cartesian method and effort to achieve philosophic certainty are often cited as a challenge to rhetoric; yet, given Descartes's frequent deployment of rhetorical strategies, it is not surprising that his system makes provision for their provisional use. Furthermore, in spite of Descartes's aspiration toward a philosophy beyond rhetoric, postmodern critics find his system an entirely rhetorical construct.


Port-Royalists, Thomas M. Carr Jr. Oct 1996

Port-Royalists, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

Seventeenth-Century French Jansenists, authors of the so-called Port-Royal Logic and Grammar. Of the many textbooks written by the Jansenists with ties to the monastery of Port-Royal near Paris, two have significant rhetorical implications: Antoine Arnauld's and Claude Lancelot's General Grammar (1660) and, especially, Arnauld's and Pierre Nicole's Logic or Art of Thinking (1662). The Logic privileges a spare style in which any recourse to the figures must be justified by the subject matter, a distrust of rhetorical methods of invention, and an ideal of transparent language. This approach is born of a convergence of Cartesian epistemology and an Augustinian …


Sharing Grief/Initiating Consolation: Voltaire's Letters Of Condolence, Thomas M. Carr Jr. Oct 1996

Sharing Grief/Initiating Consolation: Voltaire's Letters Of Condolence, Thomas M. Carr Jr.

French Language and Literature Papers

The letter of condolence has generally been neglected by students of epistolary discourse in spite of being located at the intersection of a number of recent critical concerns. Interest among historians of death is shifting from the ars moriendi that prepared the dying for a holy death to the grief of those who mourn the deceased. Second, letters of condolence raise the problem of the representation of grief and the adequacy of language to convey it. Finally, a rhetoric of consolation is implicit in the topoi of condolence selected by the letter writer, and while the consolatory discourse of antiquity …


De Didascalie En Diégèse: Le Fantastique Moderne Et «Un Coeur Simple», Marshall C. Olds Oct 1996

De Didascalie En Diégèse: Le Fantastique Moderne Et «Un Coeur Simple», Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

Rattachée à l'étude des genres chez Flaubert, une question qui reste à approfondir concerne le soin qu'a mis le romancier à éviter l'anachronisme dans ses images diégétiques ainsi que dans ses diverses formulations de la causalité, les deux réseaux appartenant souvent à un même ensemble de données culturelles. On voit dans cette attention de Flaubert un souci d'exactitude historique, certes, mais qui va de paire avec le statut générique de son ouvrage. Déjà dans le conte oriental de sa jeunesse, Flaubert savait que c'était le cas pour le merveilleux: certains genres admettent volontiers l'intervention du surnaturel et se définissent même …


Scientific Verses: Subversion Of Cartesian Theory And Practice In The "Discours A Madame De La Sabliere", Russell J. Ganim Oct 1996

Scientific Verses: Subversion Of Cartesian Theory And Practice In The "Discours A Madame De La Sabliere", Russell J. Ganim

French Language and Literature Papers

Study of the relationship between science and La Fontaine's Fables has a limited, but thought-provoking past. Beverly Ridgely asserts that while La Fontaine represents himself mainly as an "artist" and "moralist" concerned with depicting the irony and comedy of life, he "also had a genuinely studious and reflective side... [with] a real aspiration to write scientific philosophical verse in emulation of such ancient masters as Lucretius and Virgil" (180). Ridgely analyzes the influence of late seventeenth-century cosmic theory on L'astrologue qui se laisse tomber dans un puits and L'horoscope. The two poems attack the concept of judicial astrology, which …


Appropriation And Gender: The Case Of Catherine Bernard And Bernard De Fontenelle, Nina Ekstein Oct 1996

Appropriation And Gender: The Case Of Catherine Bernard And Bernard De Fontenelle, Nina Ekstein

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

In 1757, Bernard de Bavier de Fontenelle, the well-known popularizer of scientific thinking, homme de lettres, and secretary of the Académie des Sciences, died just months shy of his hundredth birthday. In 1758, Volume 10 of Fontenelle's Oeuvres appeared, edited by Fontenelle's chosen literary executor, the abbé Trublet. Along with a number of other works, Volume 10 contains a tragedy dating from 1690 entitled Brutus. This play has had a complex and curious history. The year 1758 marks the first time that Brutus appears under Fontenelle's name, but hardly the last. In 1690, when the play was first …


Considering Moliere In Oyono-Mbia's 'Three Suitors, One Husband', Hélène Sanko Oct 1996

Considering Moliere In Oyono-Mbia's 'Three Suitors, One Husband', Hélène Sanko

Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures

No abstract provided.


Gabriel García Márquez Y El Cine: Un Matrimonio 'Mal Avenido', Pablo A.J. Brescia Oct 1996

Gabriel García Márquez Y El Cine: Un Matrimonio 'Mal Avenido', Pablo A.J. Brescia

World Languages Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.


Mallarmé And Internationalism, Marshall C. Olds Sep 1996

Mallarmé And Internationalism, Marshall C. Olds

French Language and Literature Papers

Bertrand Marchal’s welcome new edition of Mallarmé’s early correspondence will surely invite a fresh look at the often subtle intersections between text and hors-texte. The question is an engaging one not only because of Mallarmé’s own pronouncements questioning the mimetic function of literary language but because the oblique referentiality that does occur, sometimes in spite of the poet's overt intentions, points to unexpected structures of thought. I have shown elsewhere how these are at work in the verse, where Mallarmé’s cherished notions of friendship among poets and ideal readership play upon his use of the muse figure. A somewhat …


La Literatura Como Delincuencia: La Agresión Al Lector En Makbara Y Paisajes Después De La Batalla, De Juan Goytisolo, Estrella Cibreiro Apr 1996

La Literatura Como Delincuencia: La Agresión Al Lector En Makbara Y Paisajes Después De La Batalla, De Juan Goytisolo, Estrella Cibreiro

Spanish Department Faculty Scholarship

No abstract provided.


The Second Woman In The Theater Of Villedieu, Nina Ekstein Apr 1996

The Second Woman In The Theater Of Villedieu, Nina Ekstein

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

Best known for her prose fiction, Marie-Catherine Desjardins de Villedieu was also a successful playwright. Her three tragi-comedies (Manlius, Nitétis, and Le Favori), while significantly dissimilar in many respects, share an unusual feature. All three plays foreground the figure of the second woman, second because her role is clearly less central to the play's action than that of another woman character. In each case, the relationships between this second woman and the other characters of the play defy the traditional categories of the seventeenth-century stage. Furthermore, the second woman is not an object of desire. The …


Dissolving The Divine: The Tragedy Of Identity In Genet's "Elle", Brian G. Kennelly Jan 1996

Dissolving The Divine: The Tragedy Of Identity In Genet's "Elle", Brian G. Kennelly

World Languages and Cultures

In his recent biography of Jean Genet, Edmund White tells of the dramatist's fascination with the Pope. Genet purportedly revealed to Laurent Boyer, his "exécuteur testamentaire" at Gallimard, that if ever the Pope invited him to the Vatican, he would accept in a second. The ecclesiastical pomp of the center of power of the Catholic Church intrigued him to no end (Jean Genet 497). For those who know anything of the life or works of France's celebrated "poète maudit," it probably comes as no surprise that Genet never did receive such an invitation. He did, however, indulge his fascination—and …


The Unknown Role Of Madame In Genet's Les Bonnes, Brian G. Kennelly Jan 1996

The Unknown Role Of Madame In Genet's Les Bonnes, Brian G. Kennelly

World Languages and Cultures

The text of Jean Genet's Les Bonnes that is taught and performed most regularly is the shorter of the two versions of the play published side by side by Jean-Jacques Pauvert in 1954. It is considered the third and final acting script used in the first production of the play. Material from the earlier versions of the play, unused by Louis Jouvet who first directed it at the Thèâtre de l'Athénée in Paris in 1947, went unperformed and is, some fifty years after the premiere of Les Bonnes, essentially unknown. The first version of the play dates from 1943 …


Some Syntactic, Semantic And Prosodic Characteristics In British English Conversation, Philadelphia University Jan 1996

Some Syntactic, Semantic And Prosodic Characteristics In British English Conversation, Philadelphia University

Philadelphia University, Jordan

No abstract provided.


Sainthood And Psychoanalysis: Tirso's Santa Juana, Matthew D. Stroud Jan 1996

Sainthood And Psychoanalysis: Tirso's Santa Juana, Matthew D. Stroud

Modern Languages and Literatures Faculty Research

In his seminar of February 20,1973, entitled "God and the Jouissance of Woman," Lacan provocatively implies a connection between feminine sexuality and sainthood, using as examples two Spanish mystics, San Juan de la Cruz and Santa Teresa de Avila. He does not here discuss sainthood per se, but rather mysticism, with its emphasis on unity of the soul with God, noting that mystics are most often women or "highly gifted people like Saint John of the Cross," that is, men who have enrolled themselves on the feminine side of sexuality, in the "not-all" (Lacan 1982, 146-47). In the next seminar, …


On The Path To Paterson: Prose And The Search For The American Language, Mary Carolyn Click Jan 1996

On The Path To Paterson: Prose And The Search For The American Language, Mary Carolyn Click

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.


The Mysticism Of Socrates, Max Nelson Jan 1996

The Mysticism Of Socrates, Max Nelson

Languages, Literatures and Cultures Publications

According to Plato, Socrates had a tendency to stop and stand still for long periods of time in a sort of meditative state. These occasions seem less like periods of intense contemplation and more like mystical trances.