Modern Languages Commons^™

Concerning A Manuscript From A Moravian Immigrant’S Trunk: Postil By Johann Spangenberg (1557), Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

In Nebraska, a family of Czech ancestry possesses a precious and unusual family artifact—an antique early-modern book, which was passed down in the family from generation to generation as their most precious treasure, a book that is much older than most carefully investigated family genealogies. The book has neat calligraphy and prints, leather binding, and comprises more than a thousand pages, though the first batch of pages is missing. The inside of the cover bears a pencil-written date: 1542. There are no title pages, no forewords, and no introductory chapter(s). The family lore tells that they kept it hidden in …

Eda Kriseová And Her Prophecy Of The Velvet Revolution: “The Gates Opened” (1984), Hana Waisserova, Eda Kriseová

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This is an introduction to a story, “The Gates Opened,” which serves as a memento of a restrictive regime that banned freedom. It also shares a hope and vision that the gates would open someday—and all would be liberated (despite the chaos and lack of natural order). The story was written in 1984 (sharing a strong symbolic value with George Orwell’s masterpiece). Eda Kriseová shares this anecdote: Around 1984, she wanted to stop writing about the mental institution where she was working, while regularly providing a story to the underground monthly Obsah, and many of her stories were set in …

Thank You, Samizdat!, Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This autumn we celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, when a chain of events all across Central and Eastern Europe gradually brought the weakening yet persistent Communist system to its knees. Though the melt was paradoxically coming with Gorbachev’s reforms from the Kremlin, the Czech hardliners seemed to resist. They had a much stronger grasp over the society than the Communist governments of Hungary and Poland. Nevertheless, the domino effect was there and change finally came.

The geopolitics notwithstanding, sometimes we might forget that samizdat and independent literary culture played a major role …

Socialist Paradise, Sexual Paradise? Meditation On “Why Women Have Better Sex Under Socialism” (2018) By Kristen Ghodsee, Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Women have better sex under socialism claims title of Kristen Ghodsee’s recent book (2018) that highlights female economic independence as a main factor leading to greater freedom and thus more sexual pleasure for women in “socialist paradise”. This critical approach opens up new perspectives and frameworks to re-consider socialist advantages that benefit women, and it also invites further discussion of the thought-provoking premise of “female comfort and pleasure” in various socio-cultural and socio-economic orders. Though the text serves primarily as a critique of current capitalism, it also explores available frameworks and generates reasoning for current campaigns concerning women’s sexuality as …

Embodied Transitions In Michel De Montaigne, Nora Martin Peterson, Peter Martin

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Sixteenth-century French philosopher Michel de Montaigne was one of the first writers to reflect on embodiment. “I am myself the matter of my book,” he proclaims in the introduction to his Essays. Montaigne writes about various moments of embodied transitions: a near-death experience, reflections on aging and cognitive decline, and a lengthy discussion of how to cope in the face of devastating loss. Taking an interdisciplinary perspective by analyzing the relationship between embodiment, health representations, and geropsychological themes, this chapter analyzes Montaigne’s in-between moments, arguing that Montaigne’s essays—innovative in their own time—remain important in discussing embodied transitions today.

Sins, Sex, And Secrets: The Legacy Of Confession From The Decameron To The Heptaméron, Nora Martin Peterson

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

A quick digital search for the term ‘confession’ in Boccaccio’s Decameron yields 75 results (Decameron Web). Confession in Boccacio’s text is conspicuously present and, I argue, not coincidental: it highlights the increased attention to the sacrament after the Fourth Lateran Council made annual confession mandatory in 1215. Decameron 1.1 depicts a false confession performed by a wicked man on his deathbed. His confessor follows the protocol of confession manuals, which began to appear in increasing number following 1215, but his interpretive skills do not extend beyond the questions he is bound by protocol to ask. In Boccaccio’s world, …

Review Of Performing Captivity, Performing Escape. Cabarets And Plays From The Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto. Edited And With An Introduction By Lisa Peschel., Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Performing Captivity, Performing Escape. Cabarets and Plays from the Terezin/Theresienstadt Ghetto presents Lisa Peschel’s edited, revised, and translated into English Divadelní texty z terezínského ghetta/ Theatretexte aus dem Ghetto Theresienstadt, 1941-1945.

Terezín/Theresienstadt was unusual in that it served as a ghetto with an attached prison, as well as a concentration camp. The Nazi propaganda used this camp to convince the world that life was “normal” in this supposed Jewish resettlement area. For this reason, they allowed cultural life to take place. Peschel’s work is an anthology of selected texts originating there. It contains cabarets, puppet play scripts, as well …

Capitalismo, Esquizofrenia E Raça: O Negro E O Pensamento Negro Na Modernidade Ocidental, Ingrid Robyn

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Mbembe, Achille. Crítica da razão negra. 1. ed. Lisboa: Antígona, 2014. Tradução de Marta Lança.

Crítica da razão negra, de Achille Mbembe (original em francês pela editora La Découverte, 2013), é um desses livros que nasceu já clássico: clássico não no sentido de antigo, ou imune à passagem do tempo, mas no sentido borgeano de ter sido escolhido por uma comunidade de leitores como leitura obrigatória. E o livro é, de fato, leitura obrigatória não apenas para aqueles que se interessam pela questão do “negro”,1 mas para todos aqueles que, de alguma forma, se interessam pela relação entre raça …

What Women Know: The Power Of Savoir In Marguerite De Navarre’S Heptaméron, Nora Martin Peterson

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

The verbs savoir and connaître appear in central moments in the Heptaméron. Knowledge—as it appears in the frame narrative and in the novellas—can be a way for men and women to debate, among many other things, the relationship between the sexes. When women use this word, or when they demonstrate that they know something, it creates the space to participate – not always unambiguously – in otherwise male-dominated conversations. How Marguerite writes about the acquisition, possession, fragmentation, or loss of knowledge, underscores her interest in exploring the role of women in communities of knowledge.

Kořeny Stoleté České Tradice V Nebrasce, Hana Waisserova

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Do období po roce 1850 se datuje vlna české emigrace do tzv. Nového světa, tvořená především odpůrci rakouské monarchie, kteří nesouhlasili s konzervativním režimem. Migraci do USA motivovala rovněž možnost získat levně pozemky a usadit se ve svobodné zemi. V Nebrasce jako v mnoha jiných státech Unie byl vyhlášen tzv. Homestead Act, což znamenalo, že přistěhovalci mohli za malý administrativní poplatek získat pozemek, na němž museli v průběhu pěti let vybudovat dům a farmu. Pokud se jim to podařilo, pozemek si mohli nárokovat do svého vlastnictví. Tito přistěhovalci za nesmírně tvrdých podmínek budovali na prérii hliněné domy na způsob zemljanek …

Going Through The Trash: Meaning In The Cabaret And Cabinet Baroque Lyric, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Joan DeJean's recent book, The Reinvention of Obscenity, brings front and center issues of filth and impiety as they relate to cultural norms. DeJean's assertion that "Paris was the center for the production of dirty books and dirty pictures” in the Early Modern period underscores the extent to which obscene literature becomes a cultural referent, either open or clandestine. While her focus is on obscenity as it relates to the neo- Classical era, DeJean emphasizes that the Baroque period also contributed to the "reinvention" of smut that characterized a distinct element of literary and artistic production during the seventeenth …

Review Of Tristan L’Hermite: Oeuvres Complètes. Iii: Poésie (Ii). Volume Publié Sous La Direction De Jean-Pierre Chauveau, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This effort marks the second volume of poetry in a five-set edition of complete works consisting of Tristan’s prose, poetry and tragedies, as well as other plays and the Plaidoyers historiques. The present volume represents the culmination of an extensive undertaking by Champion and by noted Tristan scholars to render the Baroque author’s known works more accessible to researchers, students and the literate public. By any measure, the results are eminently satisfying both in terms of the volume in question and the entire project. This volume centres on texts composed and published mainly in the period afterwards. The principal …

Scatology, The Last Taboo: Introduction To Fecal Matters In Early Modern Literature And Art, Jeff Persels, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This collection of essays was provoked by what its editors considered to be a curious lacuna: the relative academic neglect of the copious and ubiquitous scatological rhetoric of Early Modem Europe, here broadly defined as the representation of the process and product of elimination of the body’s waste products (feces, urine, flatus, phlegm, vomitus). Our most educated forebears, different from ourselves, did not disdain it — if such proof may be found in the mere proliferation of examples — and, further, employed it in all manner of works, not just in the crude jokes of comic ephemera. This neglect led …

Pissing Glass And The Body Crass: Adaptations Of The Scatological In Théophile, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Examination of scatological motifs in Théophile de Viau’s (1590-1626) libertine, or ‘cabaret’ poetry is important in terms of how the scatological contributes to the depiction of the Early Modern body in the French lyric.1 This essay does not examine Théophile’s portrait of the body strictly in terms of the ‘Baroque’ or the ‘neo-Classical.’ Rather, it argues that the scatological context in which he situates the body (either his, or those of others), reflects a keen sensibility of the body representative of the transition between these two eras. Théophile reinforces what Bernard Beugnot terms the body’s inherent ‘eloquence’ (17), or what …

L’Excitation Insolite : La Perversité Amoureuse Chez Tristan, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

CET EXPOSÉ S’ATTACHE à poser les questions suivantes: En quoi consiste le désir chez Tristan? Et comment le désir s’exprime-t-il? Nous pouvons, dans un premier temps, discerner des parallèles très forts entre Tristan et certains poètes/amants de la Pléiade. En fait, le poète se voit souvent comme un amant maudit dont l’affection ne sera jamais partagée par sa bien-aimée ingrate. Mais au moment même où Tristan choisit ce portrait commun pour se dépeindre, il modifie l’image du poète/amant traditionnel en y ajoutant une dimension sinistre, voire perverse. Par moments, la passion chez Tristan se montre non seulement mélancolique mais violente. …

Intercourse As Discourse: The Calculus Of Objectification And Desire In The Novel And Film Versions Of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

The calculus of objectifi cation and desire in both the novel and film versions of Choderlos de Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses is derived in two principal ways. The first derivation, that of the Sadean will to objectify the other for erotic and intellectual satisfaction, precedes the second, that of the overarching wish to produce a written object announcing the conquest of the human object. Limited by the medium, the film adaptations of the Liaisons dangereuses cannot place as great an emphasis on the composition of letters. Nevertheless, they make allusions to it in such a manner that underscores this type of …

Views Of Kingship: Britannicus And Louis Xiv’S Mémoires, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This study situates itself within a current trend in Racinian scholarship to accentuate the political dimensions of Racine’s dramaturgy. Recently, Timothy Reiss, Suzanne Gearhart, and Alain Viala, among others, have emphasized the socio-political aspects of Racine’s oeuvre in part to counteract the mid twentieth-century notion that Racine’s classicism, if not his work in general, is based almost exclusively on the psychological representation of plot and character. I will argue that to a significant extent, the nature – «classical» or other – of Racine’s drama is also founded on a keen sense of the historic as it relates to the contemporary.

Review Of Julien Gœury: L 'Autopsie Et Le Théorème: Poétique Des Théorèmes Spirituels (1613-1622) De Jean De La Ceppède., Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Les lecteurs de La Ceppède seront contents de recevoir le livre de Julien Gœury car son étude représente une addition importante aux ouvrages récents sur le poète aixois. Faisant partie de la redécouverte critique des Théorèmes initiée par les travaux de Jean Rousset dans les années 50, L'Autopsie et le théorème jette un nouveau regard sur l'oeuvre laceppédienne en adoptant ce que l'on peut appeler une perspective néo-structuraliste. L'exposé se divise en quatre parties: 1) Morphologie, 2) Anatomie, 3) Physiologie et 4) Psychologie. Une telle répartition suggere le désir de dégager le caractère organique du texte dans le cadre d'une …

Through The Talking Glass: Translucence And Translation In The Condé Museum’S Psyche Gallery, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

The forty-four stained-glass windows (dating from 1540–44) that recount the mythological tale of Psyche in Chantilly’s Condé Museum present a unique semeiological challenge to scholars. Accompanied by lyric inscriptions of either four or eight lines, the panels reveal an image/text combination that represents a literal example of the Renaissance notion of ut pictura poesis. These seldom-discussed panels merit inquiry because they reflect certain historic, artistic, and literary trends that illustrate factional and intellectual movements crucial to understanding France of the early to mid-sixteenth century. In its examination of these issues, this essay asks three questions:
1) What is the political …

"Introduction" To The Shape Of Change: Essays In Early Modern Literature And La Fontaine In Honor Of David Lee Rubin, Anne L. Birberick, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Since Michel Foucault’s The Archeology of Knowledge gained widespread critical recognition in the late 1960s, the concept of change has held a privileged position in the discourse of literary and cultural studies. Concerned with disruptions, transformations, and upheavals, scholars have focused on those moments of rupture when the present breaks with the past, when originality displaces convention, when inventio repudiates imitatio. This emphasis on aesthetic and epistemic shifts has all too often resulted in the neglect of more traditional issues having to do with problems of cultural development, evolution, and influence. It has also overlooked the idea of reading and …

Variations On The Virgin: Anne De Marquets’S Depiction Of Mary In The Sonets Spirituels, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This paper explores the manner in which Anne de Marquets’s (1533– 1588) Sonets Spirituels (published posthumously in 1605) reshapes conventional portraits of the Virgin Mary. A Dominican nun at the Royal Priory in Poissy, Marquets, like many Baroque Catholic poets, follows Church tradition in glorifying Mary as a maternal symbol of chastity and faith. Yet, unlike Gabrielle de Coignard (OEuvres chrestiennes, 1594), Jean de La Ceppède (Théorèmes, 1613, 1622), or other of her lyric peers, Marquets depicts the Virgin as a subjective, intellectual near-deity whose role occasionally borders on the messianic. The basic approach of this …

Anus As Oculus: Satire And Subversion In Eustorg De Beaulieu's Du Cul , Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This study seeks to rehabilitate Eustorg de Beaulieu's (c. 1495-1552) Du cul (1537) in terms of the poem's satirically subversive nature. I choose the term "rehabilitate" in order to challenge certain aspects of Annette and Edward Tomarken's argument that the poem should be read more in terms of its commentary on the lyric genre of the blason than as a derisive indictment of social norms. I hold that on an implicit level, the poem does support the Tomarkens' contention that Beaulieu "push[es] to its ultimate limits the genre (i.e., the blason) with which he is working" (151). In the …

Book Review: Jean De Sponde, Méditations Sur Les Pseaumes. Édition Critique Par Sabine Lardon., Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

This edition of the Méditations is a noteworthy project that will prove a valuable research tool. Part of Lardon’s suc¬cess stems from the fact that she preserves the integrity of the original 1588 La Rochelle edition by making only the slight¬est and most obvious changes in orthography and punctua¬tion for purposes of enhanced readability. The volume is more remarkable, however, for the ways in which it goes beyond Alan Boase’s 1954 and 1978 editions of the Médita¬tions.

Book Review: Sabine Lardon. L’Écriture De La Méditation Chez Jean De Sponde., Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Sabine Lardon’s monograph commands attention for the precision with which it analyses Sponde’s rhetorical tech¬nique in his Méditations sur les Pseaumes. Basing the need for her book on the critics’ preference for writing about Sponde’s lyric offerings rather than his prose, Lardon pro¬duces a study that yields great insight into Sponde’s ad¬ap¬tation of language and form within the context of bibli¬cal exegesis. Lardon’s work makes a valuable contribution to Spondian studies, and will no doubt help renew interest in baroque devotional literature.

Manuscripts And Markets: The Case And Cause Of Authors In Search Of Publishers, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

In November 1996, the New Yorh Times ran a front page article dealing with the crisis in publishing monographs in the humanities. The piece opened with the experience of a young scholar in Oregon who had sent a book manuscript on Theodor Adorno to a major university press who refused to read it for reasons of "marketability" (Al). As the report continued, it outlined the economic and editorial reasons why many researchers in the humanities, especially at the beginning of their careers, encountered significant difficulty landing contracts at presses that would have published their work in the past. At the …

Locus Amoenus Vs. Locus Terribilis: The Spatial Dynamics Of The Pastoral And The Urban In La Ceppède’S Théorèmes, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

The opening sonnets of Jean de La Ceppède’s Théorèmes (1613, 1622) present an urban vs. rural conflict that mirrors the dialectic between sin and salvation running throughout the work. La Ceppède’s focus for this struggle becomes the stark contrast between Jerusalem and the garden at the Mount of Olives. Jerusalem, as the place where Christ is persecuted and eventually tried, represents a Babylon-like enclave of transgression, while the garden is portrayed as a site of purity and tranquil reflection. From a literary standpoint, La Ceppède’s emphasis on the clash between dystopian and utopian settings comprises part of his adaptation of …

Christ’S Body As Public And Private Signifier: A Study Of Blason In La Ceppède's Théorèmes, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

Much of the concept of space in La Ceppède's Théorèmes is defined in the portrayal of Christ's body. In this text, space appears as distances or gaps—between God and humankind, grace and damnation, poet and reader—which must be overcome by contemplation of Christ's redemptive act. Within the poet's meditative framework, Christ's body acts as a physical, intermediate space in which the metaphysical principles of celestial will take form. For the meditant, the knowledge gained from reflection on Christ's body allows the transcendence from the external, physical spaces of the material world in which s/he lives, to the internal, spiritual spaces …

Saisons Riches Et Fécondes: Education Et Identité Africaine Dans Le Cinéma D'Euzhan Palcy, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

La surprise est la réaction la plus fréquente des critiques lorsqu'ils découvrent que la réalisatrice martiniquaise Euzhan Palcy est la force créatrice derrière des films aussi différents que la Rue Cases-Nègres (1984) et A Dry White Season (Une saison blanche et sèche) (1989). Le ton et le style narratif sont si distincts dans les deux films que les liens existants entre eux restent difficiles à identifier. Pourtant, à l'examen des intrigues respectives des films, on remarque une nette affinité qui suggère que le deuxième film est analogue au premier. Ensemble, ils constituent un projet intégré sur l'éducation et …

A Kiss Is Not Just A Kiss: The Use Of The Baiser In La Ceppède's Théorèmes, Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

The combination of religious and erotic motifs plays a large role in shaping the artistic experience of the Renaissance. One thinks of paintings such as della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ (1540), as well as Michelangelo’s Last Judgment (1545). Lyric poetry also provides numerous examples of this aesthetic bond; among them Petrarch’s “Chiare fresche e dolci acque” and Ronsard’s “Je veux brûler, pour m’envoler aux cieux.” The lyric subgenre which perhaps most distinctly follows the trend of merging sexual and divine experience is the baiser, or kiss. Originally secular in nature, the baiser first appeared in epigram form in the …

Emblem As Meditative Icon In La Ceppède’S Théorèmes , Russell J. Ganim

Department of Modern Languages and Literatures: Faculty Publications

While full comprehension of the divine image in La Ceppède’s Théorèmes is at times quite remote, understanding of the human image is often more accessible. I will argue that many of La Ceppède’s sonnets can be read as emblems which, both didactically and aesthetically, reveal the human in the divine through the iconographic portrayal of images, either written or graphic. By icon, I refer to the sacred representation and interpretation of images for the purpose of collective worship. Icons become the artistic means by which a devout subject, either poet or meditant, may identify and envision a religious object. In …