Forest–water interactions: a multilingual perspective through six historical vignettes

Why Russians Should Not Read Sartre, or the Search For God In Two Extremities of Europe Yelena Mazour‐Matusevich “First I admired Dostoyevsky because of what he revealed to me about human nature, then I loved in Dostoyevsky the person who lived and expressed our historical destiny.”—A. Camus1 I do not know about you but French twentieth century literature puts me in a state of distress. Admiration and repulsion mingle strangely as I read. My admiration is for the witty work of art, the daring intellectual achievement, the twisted narrative behaving like an arrogant provocateur. The repulsion, on the other hand, comes with the “aftertaste,” as a hollow feeling inside. One cannot say it better than my beloved Camus: French literature is “exciting but deceiving.”2 Almost entirely negative, French modern literature is a work of destruction directed against its reader, whom writers seek to hurt, shake, insult, and humiliate. It is as if the grandeur and importance of a literary work were measured according to the strength of the shock it produces in the unsuspecting reader. Still, one thing appears particularly strange to me. The tormented writers who produced these dark and provocative pages created all this agitation by themselves alone, as if the authors had not lived in the blessed land of pleasant weather, excellent wine and deliciously smelly cheeses. The question is, why and how these French literary giants got to be so angry in such a nice climate. Or, in the simple terms of a Soviet‐born graduate student of French literature, “what’s their problem?” I propose that the answer to this puzzling question, which has tormented generations of French Literature’s foreign connoisseurs, lies in Russian literature, itself largely shaped by the French. In case you do not know, in the nineteenth century, French writers taught the Russian nobility and the intellectual elite many dangerous things, including a new literary genre, the novel. Russian soil turned out to be especially receptive to the import. Not even half a century later, talented indigenous apprentices presented the world with a new type of novel, the Russian novel, which, in turn, would have a great and lasting success in Europe in general, and in France in particular. French twentieth century literature can even be viewed as a response to the challenges set forth by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Roger Martin du Gard declared that the discovery of Tolstoy, whom he considered a master of masters, had the most enduring influence on his future as a novelist: “Compared to his vision, how our vision appears insufficient, superficial and conventional!”3 Andre Gide also regarded Dostoyevsky as the greatest of all novelists. Camus openly admitted that Russian literature shaped modern French writers to the larger extend than their national literature: “Our production, when worthwhile, can claim the paternity of Dostoyevsky rather than Tolstoy. There are big probabilities though that the real ambition of our writers consists, after the assimilation of The Possessed, in writing one day War and Peace.”4 However, regardless of all the admiration, Russian literature has also produced a sense of malaise in some disenchanted French souls. Russian writers used the new tool, the novel, for their own goals. The French malaise about Russian literature has been, once again, brilliantly expressed by Camus, the French Dostoyevsky (minus God and Orthodoxy): “In Dostoyevsky the introduction of the supplementary dimension, the spiritual one, is rooted in the notions of sin and holiness. But…these notions have been declared irrelevant by contemporary writers who retained from Dostoyevsky only the heritage of shadows.”5 Can one really agree with Camus that spirituality is merely a “supplementary dimension,” rather than a central one, in Dostoyevsky and by extension in Russian literature? To do so, would be to castrate the work. In the nineteenth century, the newly born Russian secular literature took upon itself the traditional moral mission, which the reforms of Peter the Great had deprived the Orthodox Church of a century earlier. While the Reforms of Peter the Great destroyed the Church’s leadership in society they left untouched the centuries long established hierarchy of values, and Russian secular literature, although clearly separated from and often opposed to the...

The French influence is observed in the novels and stories in Turkish literature after the Reform Era. The first name that comes to mind when we say the Reform novel is Ahmed Midhat Efendi. His life and his interest in French literature are some of the biggest factors in his inclination towards this area. Ahmed Midhat, who acted as a bridge between French and Turkish literatures, also played an important role in the emergence of Servet-i Funun (Wealth of Sciences) novel. Ahmed Midhat, who would be influenced by many French men of letters in later periods, learned Eastern literature from Can Muhtar and Western literature from Hamdi Bey during the time he spent in Baghdad. Ahmed Midhat Efendi, who presented many innovations, perfected the French literature line with his work “Hasan Mellah.” In this work, the influence of the thought that awakened in his mind after reading Le Comte Monte Cristo stands out. The simplicity that formed gradually in the works of the writers who were members of Reform Literature was also affected by French literature.

In Response to Denis Hollier's Blanchot, Speaking in Tongues: Otherness in Translation Janet Bergstrom Denis Hollier begins his text with a question that functions, it seems, as a pretext or perhaps I should say as a screen, namely: should French literature be taught in translation? I should specify that he is asking whether it should be taught in translation in French Departments in the U.S., since in the Cinema Studies Department where I sometimes teach French or German literature in connection with film, this question would never arise. From then on written Professor Hollier's essay deals with literary language and its irreducibility through a discussion of two essays by Blanchot, in 1932 and 1947. Literary language, or was that object of study that fascinated the Russian Formalists (a number of whom worked in the cinema as well) and was subsequently, if I am not mistaken, imported into France in translation and even by foreigners. Mainly, Professor Hollier poses questions that arise from the first of Blanchot's essays in which we learn (if we are not Blanchot scholars, and I am poetic language, not) that Blanchot rejected Curtius's history of French literature in an essay whose title already more or less announced his rejection: French Culture Viewed by a German. In 1932, then, Blanchot rejects Curtius's claim that he could understand the specificity of French literature, that he could understand its clarity, its transpar- as a Ger- valued German poetry in its alliance with philosophy over French prose wasn't in a position to have an opinion about French literature. I am led to wonder, at this point, to what extent we are talking about linguistic specificity and to what extent, as we follow Hollier with Blanchot, we are talking about cultural specificity. Did Blanchot believe that it was Curtius's strangeness to the French language that made him an unlikely candidate for comprehending the opacity hiding behind, or screened by, the seeming clarity of Racine's or La Fontaine's writings or was it the fact that, as a German, he could never understand this literature from the cul- ency. By this, Blanchot apparently meant that Curtius man who presumably

Historical vignettes are often included in scientific otological articles. However, they may contain inaccuracies and errors when authors use secondary or compiled texts rather than primary source material. Examples of errors arising from the use of secondary sources are obtained from compiled works in comparison with original publications, with a particular focus on Hildanus' speculum. Different types of inaccuracies may be found in historical vignettes. In Hildanus' works, two different specula are depicted: one was described by himself during his lifetime, and the other after his death, probably by his publisher. Only the posthumous description of Hildanus' speculum has been retained historically, but it is uncertain that it was really developed by Hildanus himself. Other such inaccuracies exist because of confusion with the original terminology of referring to an instrument, such as the otoscopes of Toynbee and Brunton, inaccuracies in dates, misinterpretation of the original text, such as the attribution to Charcot as the first to propose the intracranial division of the eighth nerve in Menière's disease, and problems of translation (e.g., the different translations of the book titled Diseases of the Ear by Wilhelm Kramer). These different examples of inaccuracies show the common problems encountered in writing a historical report. Authors must be aware of such errors and work almost exclusively with original references. Secondary and compiled references should be reserved for a background of discussion and not as a source of direct support.

Reviewed by: Geo/Graphies: Mapping the Imagination in French and Francophone Literature and Film Vinay Swamy Geo/Graphies: Mapping the Imagination in French and Francophone Literature and FilmEd. Freeman G. Henry Spec. issue of FLS 30(2003):1–217. This volume of French Literature Series, the 2002 proceedings of the University of South Carolina French literature conference, sets itself an ambitious goal in exploring imagined geographies in/of French and francophone literature and film. As indicated by the title, and explained by Jeanne Garane's introduction, the fifteen articles are inspired by the relationship between the two elements of the word geography ( Geo—the earth and Graphein—writing) that defines the "textualization of space as those signifying practices, which while [mimicking] reality, also constitute it" (ix). In this, the move to include nonhexagonal francophone works on an equal footing with metropolitan French production is welcome, as is the attempt to dedicate an entire volume to "representation of place in a variety of texts" (ix). The intended scope of the volume is also, however, one of its weaker points. An all-inclusive gesture, in order to level the playing field, can run the risk of diluting the importance and specificities of the conflicted politics and encounters (many of which have to do precisely with questions of speaking for and about space) that emanate from the various francophone (postcolonial) discourses. While the brief evocation of Edward Said's imaginative geography and Homi Bhabha's notion of third space has the distinct merit of referencing hallmarks of postcolonial theory and thus anchoring these contributions in such discourses, it does not do justice to the complexities of recent dialogues between cultural geography and literary studies. Also, the possible articulations between writing and geographies require a more detailed and systematic introduction than the four pages given, two and a half of which summarize individual articles. For example, the key title term, "mapping," is too often used by literary scholars to mean generally—as here—the writing of space. Subjectivity and construct are implied—few scholars assume that space in text is an unproblematic calque of the external world—but the word "mapping" would nevertheless greatly benefit from a clarification of some theoretical parameters, unfortunately not provided either in the introduction nor in many of the essays. As is sometimes the case with anthologies, the clarity of the essays is varied. Roughly half the articles are on metropolitan texts. Perhaps of greater interest to a postcolonial/African studies scholar are A. James Arnold's study of exoticism and the geography of colonial and postcolonial cultures and the two articles on African cinema. Anny Dominique Curtius explores postcolonial intercultural dialogues in [End Page 171]Mweze Ngangura's Pièces d'identité(Congo/Belgium, 1998), whereas Sheila Petty teases out the relationship landscape and alienation in Clando(Cameroon, 1996) by Jean-Marie Teno. Other essays include articles on Montaigne's Essais(Colin Dixon), Aristotle and Renaissance travel narratives (Todd Reeser), Le sophaby Crébillion Fils (Sharon Diane Nell), La bête humaineby Zola (Michael Lastinger) La petite Fadetteby George Sand (James Hamilton), the writer as nomad in Le Clézio's works (Isa Van Acker), a well-argued essay on Mérimée's Carmen(David Ellison), and a thorough exploration of Perec's urban Parisian geography by Derek Schilling. Jacqueline Dutton documents representations of Australia in French texts and Thomas Vauterin on the representation of the forest in French-Canadian novels of the 1930s; Annie Jouan-Westlund analyzes Doubrovsky's writings as a Frenchman living in the US, while Claire Keith examines a French textbook's use of cartographic imagery to teach primary school children language and literature. Vinay Swamy University of Washington-Seattle Copyright © 2004 The Indiana University Press

This chapter presents examples of a poetic tale, poetic dramas, and a lyric poem dealing with Samson taken from English, German and French literature. What did Geoffrey Chaucer, Hans Sachs, John Milton and Alfred de Vigny do to Samson? Why did they choose Samson of all biblical characters? The chapter tries to find answers to this. The General Prologue introduces the Monk as a stately appearance and a man ignoring the statutes of monastic orders. The Monk wants to relate a number of tragedies, which used to be a narrative, not a dramatic genre in the Middle Ages. The first two short tragedies deal with Lucifer and Adam, the third is about Samson. Hans Sachs's epilogues present a piece of wisdom or warning to the audience that was illustrated by the play. This Epilogue offers an interpretation of the Samson story in terms of a New Testament perspective. Keywords: Alfred de Vigny; biblical characters; English literature; European literature; French literature; Geoffrey Chaucer; German literature; Hans Sachs; John Milton; Samson

The Smell of Books investigates the ways in which the olfactory sense has manifested itself in Italian, German, French, Russian, and English literature of the past 150 years. Against a broad interdiscriplinary backdrop that includes linguistics, psychology, aesthetics, and sociology, Hans J. Rindisbacher takes a new approach to literary history - one centered on the sense of smell. Rindisbacher examines the works of the German Expressionists and of Baudelaire, Huxley, Rimbaud, Wilde, and Turgenev, as well as Holocaust memoirs and contemporary German books such as Patrick Suskind's Das Parfum and Christa Wolf's Storfall. He demonstrates that the sense of smell, which has heretofore occupied a position at the bottom of the sensory hierarchy, plays a consequential role in romantic, modern, and contemporary European and Russian literature.

The main task of the work is to characterize the array of foreign-language literature of XIX — middle of XX centuries of the funds of the Vasyl Stefanyk Lviv National Scientific Library of Ukraine. The foreign-language fund’s research includes a general analysis of the printed documents, establishing a history of existence and preserving the units of the collection, as well as the revealing of provenances and proprietary inscriptions that appear on editions. The fund of the sector of foreign-language literature of XIX — middle of XX centuries is analyzed on the basis of rarity and value criteria. The linguistic components of the corpus of publications are highlighted: Polishlanguage literature — about 30%, literature in German — about 40%, literature in French — about 25% and 5% in other languages. The work on printed documents explores and describes provenances and proprietary inscriptions that indicate the history of existence and preservation. Due to the work with printed documents, membership of private libraries and book collections, libraries of educational establishments of different levels of subordination, public libraries, reading rooms as well as membership of religious, social and political, military organizations was established. Thematic content of publications is elaborated according to the branch and printed documents on astronomy, mathematics, physics, chemistry, linguistics as well as on religious, local, legal, juridical (normative documents), didactic and military literature are allocated. Fine literature, as a rule, is represented by lifetime editions and republications. When working with the fund, there are single copies of printed documents that are not displayed in open electronic sources. Thus, in the process of work on the formation and revealing of the fund, interesting patterns of Halychyna’s cultural heritage and samples of Western European literature were explored. Scientific and bibliographic description and analysis of the book array that have been conducted will become a common source of library and book research. Keywords: publication, provenances, proprietary inscriptions, stamp, theme, Halychyna.

Reviewed by: Translation's Forgotten History: Russian Literature, Japanese Mediation, and the Formation of Modern Korean Literature by Heekyoung Cho Kelly Y. Jeong Translation's Forgotten History: Russian Literature, Japanese Mediation, and the Formation of Modern Korean Literature by Heekyoung Cho. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016. Pp. xiv + 242. $39.95 cloth. Heekyoung Cho's Translation's Forgotten History presents a study of "the role of translation in the formation of a modern literature by examining how colonial Koreans appropriated Russian literature, through the medium of Japanese relay translations, while in the process of building their own modern literature in the early twentieth century" (p. x). It also "provides a broader East Asian perspective from which to understand the formation of modern literatures" (p. xi). The author's research suggests that "Russian literature became one element in a form of anti-imperial cosmopolitanism in East Asia" during this period (p. xii). Cho thus presents the underexplored history of localization and indigenization in the formation of modern Korean literature, in which foreign literature, ideas, and images play a pivotal role. This book is a much-needed work that fills a gap in knowledge in the study of the relationship among Russian, Japanese, and Korean modern literatures. Due to Cold War politics as well as the linguistic challenge of being familiar with all three languages, this book is the first of its kind (p. 27). Cho's book is informed by meticulous research. Its author's insights include the fact that literature is a "dynamic process of negotiating various foreign and local values" (p. 27) and that Korea's encounter with foreign texts during the formative years of its modern literature is a site where modernity, colonialism, and nationalism intersect (p. 95). Cho also effectively cites works of several Korean literary historians and theorists, connecting her own scholarship with theirs. Since Cho views literature as a process rather than a monument, it is not surprising that she critiques the pervasive amnesia about the impure origins of national literature and the negotiated and hybrid nature of national languages, as well as the erasure of translated foreign literature from mainstream national literary history. This criticism reminds the reader of several other Korean-studies monographs that focus on similar contexts to explain how postcolonial, postwar South [End Page 292] Korea's national literature is partly established through a denial and erasure of leftist and North Korean literature.1 These books also discuss ways in which translation becomes an essential element in constructing a hegemonic national literature and its history in the modern era. In her analysis, Cho borrows Naoki Sakai's concept of "the regime of translation" to explain the relationship between Japanese and Russian literatures and the formation of modern Korean literature, arguing that "national literature has inherently been comparative literature" (p. 6). Also at stake in Cho's book is the cultural politics of a subjugated Korean culture in the colonial era. Following Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Cho claims that a "translator's 'choices' and ensuing 'differences'—and distortions—made in the translated text were ethical in a subjugated culture because indigenization itself was one way of demonstrating agency under cultural and political dominance" (p. 22). As an example, Cho notes the irony of typical "relay translations" in colonial Korea—these works are translations into Korean from Japanese, but their originals are actually Russian—and points out that this kind of translation leads to the construction of the Korean language as an "equivalent linguistic entity vis-à-vis the colonizer's language" (p. 23). Thus, colonial Korean intellectuals' process of making their own modern literature was "doubly complex" (p. 25) in a fashion typical of a colony; they took Western literature as their model but viewed Japanese literature as a kind of sieve that, ultimately, they wanted to discard. Therefore, as Cho points out, this "social context legitimizes liberal and unfaithful translation as a disruptive, if not subversive, practice, and complicates the judgment about the ethics of literal translation in colonial Korea" (p. 25). With this context in mind, she uses the term "translation" to refer to two things. First, "it denotes a broad spectrum of substantial practices and texts. It includes types...

In children, Graves' disease is rare: according to the American literature, for 1,512 cases of the disease in the Mauo Clinic, there were only 5 in children under 10 years of age, which is equal to 0.3%. Klein cites at 3,477 cases of 184 in children under 15 years of age, equal to 5%. The French literature, according to Barret, describes 100 cases of basid disease in children under 15 years of age, including 64 cases between 10 and 15 years of age, 28 between 5 and 10 years of age, and the rest before 5 years of age. In the German literature, according to Sattler's data, for 2,934 cases collected by him from the literature and his own through 1910, 184 cases fell in childhood, i.e., 6.3%; of which there were 11 cases between 0 and 5 years of age, 54 from 5 to 10, and 129 from 10 to 15 years of age. In Russian literature we have found only a few cases of the disease in children.

Phantom Time: Literary History at the Edge of the Nation

Sustaining a resilient and reliable water cycle is a global challenge, which inevitably needs proper understanding and action at many levels. One quarter of the world’s population depends on water from forested catchments, where behavior of atmospheric water nonetheless governs the forest-water interactions and thus the ultimate water availability. As per a coarse estimation the water vapors comprise one quarter of 1% of atmospheric mass being equivalent to just 2.5 centimeters of liquid water over the entire Earth. Such water availability raises more tangible concerns for most people than do temperature and carbon. Ever escalating populations and living standards are badly impacting the earth’s surface in variety of ways, as 1.5 million Km2 of dense tree cover were reported to be lost between 2000-2012, leading to highly impeded access to fresh water. Majority of studies of how forest land use and its change influences climate and hydrology rely on models (mostly imperfect owing to pitiable/incomplete process understandings and poor parameterization). It is projected that land cover changes have caused a 5 to 6 % reduction in global atmospheric wetness. A plethora of alike estimations/inferences are included herein to offer relevant R&D insights on core theme of this paper, by encircling reviews of few global observations and findings towards forest influences on quality and quantity of water. With increasing demand for agricultural and urban land (owing to population/affluent life-styles) majority of forests are put under pressure. At this juncture tropical regions like India remains more crucial, as their water and land use policies are often influenced to big extent by many perceived effects from hydrological functioning of forested catchments. This paper offers certain food for thought by summarizing relevant scientific consensus of key aspects of forest-water relationships and couple of wider aspects towards ‘forest-water interactions’ and ‘water quality and pollution facets. Apprehensions and knowledge gaps about hydrological impacts of forest management and also the emerging futuristic R&D issues are elaborated with specified line of sights on effects of forests and forest management on various stream flow parameters, soil erosion, stream sedimentation, water quality, landslides and water uses. Owing to their inherent capabilities and capacities, the forests govern available moisture for tree growth, evapotranspiration (ET), soil infiltration, ground water recharge, and runoff; hence could be projected as futuristic ‘water towers’. Hydraulic redistribution of water in soil remains other important activities by the forest, where tree root structures plays a vital role to facilitate both upward and downward water dynamics. Even under low to intermediate tree cover each tree remains capable to improve soil hydraulic properties even up to 25 m from its canopy edge, with higher hydrologic gains in comparison to associated additional losses (transpiration and interception). Among most profound and alarming insights offered by this write up are; critical knowledge gaps on understanding importance of forests to water, trends of findings from a few catchments based hydrological experiments on water yield, roles forest may play in regulating water fluxes and rainfall patterns. Other key messages offered for water and forest policy makers includes issues like water use by forests, flood flows, water quality, erosion, climate change, energy forest, and forest water productivities.

This article is dedicated to the questions of intertextual dialogue in modern Russian literature on the example of allusions to the novel “Froth on the Daydream” by Boris Vian in the novel “Planet Water” by B. Akunin. The object of this research is the game with audience used by B. Akunin, which allows broadening the context of perception of the novel through intertextual links. The subject of this research is the forms and ways of manifestation of intertextual dialogue of the two works – “Planet Water” and “Froth on the Daydream”, as well as their interaction through the literary works of antiquity and Japanese legends. The authors examine the references to B. Vian’s novel, describing their role in text of the narrative. The article employs comparative, contextual,l and hermeneutical analysis. The interaction of the corpus of texts about Fandorin with the works of Russian, English and Japanese literature is subject to detailed analysis. The texts of B. Akunin about Erast Fandorin abound with various references to the Russian and foreign literary works. The scientific novelty is define by the fact that this article is first to draw parallels with the French literature. The article determines and substabtiates intertextual links of “Planet Water” with “Froth on the Daydream”, which manifest through the key images and onomastic system of the novel. These links should attributed to hidden, encrypted intertext, cryptotext; in order to grasp such text, the reader must be familiar with the primary source. The presence of intertextual dialogue broadens the context of perception of the detective story and associate it with the genre of dystopia and parody.

er-Risâle dergisi Ahmed Hasan Zeyyât editörlüğünde 1933-1953 yılları arasında haftalık olarak çıkartılan edebî bir dergidir. Alt başlığında kendisini edebiyat, sanat ve bilim dergisi olarak tanımlamıştır. Derginin editörü ve sahibi olan Ahmed Hasan Zeyyât, Ezher'de ve Mısır Üniversitesi'nde eğitim almış, Edebiyat Fakültesi’nden sonra Fransız Hukuk Okulu'nu bitirmiştir. Mısır'da bulunan Mecmau'l-lugati'l-Arabiyye’de, Şam'daki el-Mecmau'l-ilmiyyu'l-Arabî'de, el-Mecmau'l-ilmiyyu'l-Irakî'de, Lecnetü Mu'cemi elfâzi'l-Kur'ân, Lecnetü'l-lehecât, Lecnetü'l-Mu'cemi'l-vasît gibi Arap dili ile ilgili çalışmalar yapan önemli kurullarda üyelik yapmıştır. Vahyu'r-Risâle kitabıyla devlet ödülü ve Mısır'da edebiyat dalında devlet takdir ödülü kazanmıştır. Ahmed Hasan Zeyyât’ın sahibi olduğu er-Risâle dergisinde dönemin en önemli edebiyatçılarından olan 'Abbas Mahmud 'Akkâd, Ahmed Emin, Tâhâ Hüseyin, Tevfik Hakîm, Ali et-Tantâvî ve 'Abdülvehhâb 'Azzâm gibi isimlerin yazıları yayınlanmıştır. Ayrıca Mısır dışındaki Arap ülkelerinden de pek çok yazar bu dergide makale kaleme almıştır. Böylece er-Risâle tüm Arap dünyasına hitap eden bir dergi olmuştur. Dergi Arap edebiyatının yanı sıra Batı edebiyatına ve Doğu edebiyatına da yer vermiştir. Doğu edebiyatı köşesi genelde 'Abdülvehhâb 'Azzâm tarafından yazılmış ve bu köşede Hint edebiyatı, Fars edebiyatı, Uzak Doğu edebiyatı ve Türk edebiyatı ele alınmıştır. Bu çalışma, derginin editörü ve dergi hakkında genel bilgiler verildikten sonra, derginin ilk yılında Doğu edebiyatı köşesinde yayınlanan yazıları ele almıştır. Doğu edebiyatı bölümünde İran ve Türk edebiyatına ağırlık verildiği görülmektedir. Bu makaleler eleştiri ve tahlil yazıları şeklinde değildir. Tarihi bilgi aktaran ya da örnek metinlerin tercümesini veren didaktik yazılardan oluşmaktadır.

In this detailed thematic study of Jean-Martin Charcot's cultural legacy, Bernard Marquer analyses the impact of the famous neurologist's medical theories on the literary imagination of the fin-de-siècle. By combining a thorough socio-historical presentation of Charcot's work and of the gradual elaboration of his medical empire with a sensitive reading of the literary texts influenced by the ‘Maître de la Salpêtrière’, Marquer's work highlights the tremendous cultural impact of Charcot's medical praxis as it was developed during the famous ‘leçons du vendredi’, and, more importantly, the way in which his theories were simultaneously adopted and subverted by contemporary writers. Without minimizing the impact of Charcot's efforts to annex the sphere of literary and artistic production by asserting the importance of clinical exactitude in aesthetic representations (Les Démoniaques dans l'art), Marquer convincingly argues that in adopting the nosological figure of the ‘grande hystérique’ as it had been developed by Charcot, novelists were not slavishly conforming to his medical doxa, but reinventing it to suit their own aesthetic ends. Through in-depth analyses of certain key texts such as Zola's Lourdes, Lemmonier's L'Hystérique or Maupassant's Le Horla, Marquer shows how writers used the suggestive image of feminine hysteria as it had been ‘staged’ by Charcot in order to vent deep-seated anxieties about national decline, the corrupting influence of urban life, and about the ever-present threat of madness and of subjective fragmentation. Charcot's precise medical type was thereby transformed into a convenient screen onto which authors could project their own phantasms, including their ambivalent attitude towards a feminine nature seen as both alluring (the hysteric as a ‘cataleptic Venus’ (p. 341)) and profoundly threatening (the hysteric as a demonic femme fatale (p. 199)). Simultaneously informative and engaging, this study further commends itself by the richness of its primary and secondary source material; Marquer draws on medical texts by Charcot, his disciples and his rivals, on the work of historians and critics like M. Gauchet, G. Swain, M. Dottin-Orsini, G. Didi-Huberman, J. Goldstein or J. Rigoli, as well as on a wealth of literary material: Zola, Lemmonier, Claretie, Maupassant, Mirbeau, Lermina, Lorrain and Huysmans are studied alongside less well-known writers like André Dubarry, Henri Nizet, Léo Trézénik or Daniel Lesueur. One could perhaps deplore the absence of any photographic illustrations in the section devoted to the (in)famous Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, and the very limited use Marquer makes of iconographic sources as opposed to novels: only once does he base his analysis on a drawing, an 1887 newspaper illustration by Daniel Vierge (pp. 140–41). The intricate structure of the study could also be considered to detract somewhat from the work's overall coherence, by making the thrust and flow of the argument less apparent. On the whole, however, this is a very rich and well-written study which should appeal not only to those interested in the cultural impact of nineteenth-century science, but, more widely, to anyone working in the field of fin-de-siècle French literature.