Aesthetic Ideals Research Articles

Ascetismo y espiritualidad en la anorexia nerviosa: Un análisis psicosocial histórico

Resumen Introducción. El ascetismo se relaciona profundamente con la espiritualidad y las prácticas de ayuno que han sido observadas en la anorexia nerviosa (AN) a lo largo de la historia. Objetivo. Se realiza un análisis psicosocial de la espiritualidad y el ascetismo en el contexto histórico de la AN, desde la Edad Media hasta el siglo XXI, comparando la anorexia santa con la anorexia contemporánea. Se describen casos ilustrativos ad hoc. Método. Se realizó una búsqueda bibliográfica de la evidencia sobre el ascetismo y la espiritualidad en la AN y su desarrollo histórico mediante las bases de datos Medline/PubMed y textos de consulta especializados. Resultados. Desde una perspectiva histórica, el ascetismo de las santas medievales (anorexia santa) y de las anoréxicas modernas, exhiben rasgos comunes, aunque orientados a distintas metas: espiritualidad versus apariencia mundana, respectivamente. El puritanismo contemporáneo y la AN comparten rasgos distintivos de la ética protestante, principalmente autodisciplina, autocontrol, abnegación, racionalidad, eficiencia y obtención de logros. El ascetismo se relaciona significativamente con sentimientos rabiosos, rasgos de inmadurez y conductas purgativas. Discusión y conclusión. Muchas mujeres místicas medievales mostraron características similares con la AN actual, sin embargo, mientras el ascetismo en las santas se orientaba al logro del encuentro divino, la motivación por adelgazar en las jóvenes anoréxicas contemporáneas se relaciona más bien con ideales estéticos socioculturales. La ocurrencia atemporal de la esencia patogénica del síndrome anoréxico sugiere que factores como edad, personalidad y/o entorno psicosocial lo modelan patoplásticamente.

Triangulating an Ethos: Ethical Criticism, Novel Alterity, and Mori Ōgai's “Stereoscopic Vision”

This essay offers a new reading of a pivotal and controversial novella, “Gan” (“The Wild Geese,” 1911), by major modern Japanese writer Mori Ōgai. Scholars (such as Dennis Washburn and Shiokawa Tetsuya) have argued that Ōgai's formal experimentation and aesthetic ideals led him to discover deep flaws in the novel's capacity for mimesis. I agree, but not with their conclusions that he therefore abandoned the form. On the contrary, I suggest that it was the very power of the novel to hold competing conventions of representation in tension, and to work through the epistemic and ethical problems of perspective raised by the act of narration itself, that also epitomized the strengths of the genre for Ōgai. His work throughout his career engages readers in moving stories of ethically complex interactions, while at the same time demanding a reflexive critical consciousness that disrupts the very illusion of mimesis on which those stories depend for their effects. In “Gan” and other works, Ōgai does not merely fail to produce an aesthetically coherent world in the process of telling an ethically unsatisfying story. Rather, he explores the ethical and aesthetic limits of the conventions of novel narration itself, with unnerving success. “Gan” represents a culmination of his critical explorations of the ethics of novel form, and not the radical break from his former methodologies that has been theorized. This essay examines the method of self-conscious critique Ōgai employs in “Gan” to suggest its benefits as a model for contemporary ethical criticism in Western academia. Ōgai's reflexive experimentation in this work shuttles readers between absorption in novelistic pathos and reflection on its ethos, exploring both the possibilities and limitations of immanent ethical self-critique in the novel. Rather than taking up “Gan” as an object of ethical inquiry, then, I propose that we compare its reflexive mode of self-critique with the methods employed by ethical criticism today. Contemporary theories of literary ethics in the West often turn to the novel for its representations of alterity—its compelling portraits of others. They generally share a tacit assumption that the novel presents a site of immersive experience whose powerful pathos requires critical intervention to elucidate in ethical terms. Attending to the “ethics of self-consciousness” in modern Japanese novels might help Western critics rethink these assumptions, while at the same time it may revise conventional wisdom about Ōgai's career trajectory.

Dada and Surrealism Faced with Colonialism

Dada and Surrealism Faced with Colonialism Martine Antle (bio) Despite the numerous exchanges and multiple echoes between dada, surrealism and other cultures, European surrealism rarely took hold abroad, whether in the diasporas or in the United States. A fundamental question posed in 1997 by Henri Béhar is still relevant today: did surrealism support non-European cultures or was it simply inspired by them in a universal, non-culturally specific way?1 A first approach to answering this question consists in revisiting the political views held by André Breton and other members of the surrealist group, including those who, like Breton, were first involved with dada. There is no doubt that Breton and other surrealists consistently spoke out against colonization and oppression. Even though it was absent from the first two “Manifestoes of Surrealism,” criticism of colonialism truly marked the history of the movement. The surrealists took strong positions against colonial domination, particularly by France, with regard to a variety of former colonies that gained independence over the course of the twentieth century, including Indochina, Algeria, Haiti and Martinique, and also Cuba. But what happened when surrealism found itself confronted with other cultures? Did surrealism truly engage with those cultures? What did it make of the range of cultural particularities and political realities the surrealists encountered in their travels? When compared with recent studies on post-colonialism, surrealism’s ideological position loses moral power because it remained essentially self-involved and disengaged with the specific struggles and needs of the people they had hoped to inspire. The greatest impact their interactions with distant cultures had was on themselves; what they sought most was confirmation of their own ideas and aesthetic ideals, which they often found more readily abroad than at home. For despite their faith in their ideology of liberation and their immense and openhearted fascination with other cultures, the surrealists often saw those cultures as exotic objects rather than collectives of real human beings with whom they might productively enter into true dialogue. For example, Mexico struck Breton as magical and a place of true revelation because it appeared to him as an idyllic version of a place in the world that he had previously only imagined. Mexico confirmed Breton’s own vision of surreality. It was in pursuit of this vision that he had traveled [End Page 116] there. Unfortunately the surrealists rarely heard the writings and sentiments coming from the cultures they admired fully, except insofar as those writings and sentiments confirmed their own ideas. In terms of surrealist production, the corpus of texts dedicated to territories outside of Europe remains relatively meager. Breton’s journeys to Prague, Haiti, or Mexico were motivated primarily by political exile, meetings, conferences, or exhibitions, which he attended with missionary zeal and the intention of bringing the surrealist world to the uninitiated. Another case in point— Antonin Artaud’s initiatory voyage to Mexico was planned as a voyage of spiritual discovery for himself and his search for a new “truth” to be used for the benefit of his own psychic growth and then brought back to France for the purpose of transforming his own culture rather than for the purpose of staying and engaging more fully with Mexican culture, the way fellow surrealists Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo did.2 These two friends developed their own strain of surrealism while living in Mexico and engaged fully with a community that was inclusive of Mexican artists and writers in addition to their own ex-patriot circle of friends. Their work flourished well beyond the fleeting influence that Breton exercised around the time of the international exhibition of surrealism in Mexico City in 1940. Where surrealism had a definite impact was on poetry and art produced by writers and artists in other countries, as examples of cross-fertilization and cultural exchange confirm. But these exchanges were predominantly artistic and not political and did not find their way into the movement’s representative political texts. As a result, the internationalization of the movement and its aftermath abroad raises once again the question of “importation” of a European movement into a foreign land. And we also have to take into account the obvious linguistic...

A Postcolonial Reading of Lesia Ukraïnka’sOrhiia

ABSTRACT:Lesia Ukraïnka’s Orhiia [The Orgy] (1913) is traditionally read as an anti-colonial allegory for Ukraine’s subjugation to Russia, an approach supported by Ukraine’s history and Ukraïnka’s biography. Such readings highlight the plight of the male hero, whose aesthetic ideals are inextricable from his loyalty to his nation. The aim of the present article is to offer a new interpretation that focuses, rather, on the marginal characters previously dismissed as “cultural renegades,” who aligned themselves with Russian culture. Grounded in postcolonial feminist theory, this close analysis reveals the tensions between national loyalty and sterile parochialism and between cosmopolitanism and aesthetic integrity. By placing Ukraïnka’s Orhiia in the Second-World context, the article invites further inquiry into Eastern- and Central-European modernist drama that re-enacts important aspects of these nations’ colonial experience, particularly the effects of the imperial male gaze on colonial women artists.

Традиционное и индивидуальное в древнерусской словесности: библейская цитата-топос в Сказании о Борисе и Глебе

The problem of this article is considered by the relation of topic, which is dictated by tradition and individual beginning in ancient hagiography. This problem is also guided by the canon, on the principles of "aesthetic identity." As an example, the quote from the Gospel of Matthew (5: 14-15) is a hagiographical topos, which is analyzed. It is shown that the originality of the text lies in its variation. Obviously, a such variation is typical for topics in ancient hagiography, as in traditionalist literature in general.

The Transcending Power of Goods: Imaginative Value in the Economy

What do we value? For markets to operate and for economies to grow, producers must attract purchasers to the products they offer. In advanced capitalist economies, market saturation and decline of demand are constant threats to markets. But how do we understand why actors desire the things whose value they reveal in the purchase? In this article I distinguish between three types of value: Physical value, positional value and imaginative value. Based on Durkheim’s sociology of religion, I argue that imaginative value emerges from the imaginative connections made between goods and socially rooted values, as well as the aesthetic ideals held by the purchaser. The article explores how the connection between objects and their symbolic meaning is created and maintained, and why the symbolic valuation of objects changes. By arguing that the imaginative value of goods is closely linked to social values, I suggest that consumption is not the expression of a hedonistic individualism but inherently connected to the social and moral order of society. Durkheim’s sociology of religion is thus read as a sociology of valuation.

African Traditional Sculpture and Aesthetic Realism

Traditional African sculpture which is one of the essences of modern art movements in the world of art has not been attributed with that aesthetic identity. However, a close look at the traditional African sculpture reveals the artistic and aesthetic qualities. African traditional sculpture was regarded as mere objects or crafts. That possibly was due to the evaluation of traditional African sculptures with the standard of other cultures. This paper therefore, examines characterizations; identify the elements of aesthetics in relation to traditional African sculptures and the intellectual and creative ingenuity of the African traditional sculptor. The study applied the exploratory approach and it is hoped that the observations made on aesthetics on traditional sculpture will shed some light on the general concept of aesthetics. This is to provide a contributive account to the existing literature on African aesthetics.

Related Research of Femininity, Aesthetic Values and Clothing Education Psychology: A Case Study of Chongqing Females

Female’s clothing psychology is the explicit display and representation of femininity and aesthetic values, which affects female’s clothing choices and dressing behavior. This paper adopts questionnaire sampling with 791 females in Chongqing city as the representative and continues to the research of the mutual relationship between trait, aesthetic values and clothing psychology through 788 valid questionnaires except invalid ones. The conclusions are as follows: (a) vigorous, beautiful and upright are the most typical group traits among Chongqing females, and diligent, intelligent and capable are the most representative traits of themselves; (b) a majority of Chongqing females have a demand for beauty in the work or shopping, and kindness, sincerity, wisdom are the top three aesthetic ideals; (c) Chongqing female’s clothing needs more emphasis on comfort, practicality and style, so fashion, elegant and sexy rank the top 3 of dressing style. (d) The person who “doesn’t consider” the beauty in the work and shopping at the lowest ideal standard or the scale of the realm to judge things of beauty or ugliness. And they all base on their interests and hobbies. In contrast, the person who “always consider” beautiful is most based on an ideal standard or the scale of the realm as aesthetic judgment standard in the work and shopping. The person who “sometimes considers” in the work and shopping is most affected by public opinion and popular fashion and is least influenced by an ideal standard or the scale of the realm. (e) “vigorous” ranking the first in Chongqing female’s group traits has an extremely significant positive correlation (P<.001) with “fashion” ranking the first in dressing style, and has a significant positive correlation (P<.005) with “sexy” which ranks the third in dressing style; “elegant” ranking the second in dressing style has an extremely significant positive correlation (P<.001) with “upright” and “diligent”.

The Lot of the Beautiful: Pragmatism and Aesthetic Ideals

This article focuses on the intimate relationship between German aesthetic theory, particularly the philosophies of Kant and Schiller, and the pragmatic tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that many aspects of Kantian aesthetic theory – his development of reflective judgement, genius, and common sense – are reflected in the thinking of C. S. Peirce. I conclude, however, that such a comparison risks selling short the way that German idealism influenced American thinkers and instead suggest that it is more fruitful to concentrate on ‘aesthetic experience’. I argue that attending to the aesthetic dimensions of experience might re-orient contemporary approaches to pragmatism that continue to focus on the way that pragmatism might intervene in debates in epistemology and philosophy of language.

Musical Practicing: A Hermeneutic Model for Integrating Technique and Aesthetics

Successful performances of Western classical music exhibit both technical mastery and aesthetic insight. While legacies of music teachers have distilled schools of technique and stylistic performance practices, the aesthetic components of interpretation have not received systematic treatment. This may be due to inherent difficulties with teaching aesthetics: musical meaning is hard to express in words, and even demonstrating for students does not guarantee their understanding. Some teachers, like Theodor Leschetizky in the above quote, believe aesthetics cannot truly be taught because it reflects a musician’s personal voice. according to this view, teachers can only encourage those who have musical aptitude and should not impose their own aesthetic ideals onto students.2 Yet practical observations about aesthetics are readily available in writings and interviews of renowned performers. Based on their commentary, i propose a model for learning piano that combines technical and aesthetic elements.3 The model reveals how the practicing habits of professionals shape their individual interpretations, and it can serve as an example for students. i begin by defining aesthetics from the pianist’s perspective, and it is typically considered in three overlapping contexts. The most common is the perceived effect on listeners (usually called musical affect), where music is often described in terms denoting character, emotion, or a program. For example, andras Schiff’s observations about Ludwig van Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Op. 27, No. 2, includes these attributes: The first movement is akin to a dramatic scene in a story, specifically, “the moment following the murder of the Commendatore in Mozart’s Don Giovanni.” The second movement on

The Disenchantment of the Wonderful - A Doll’s House and the Idealist Imagination

During the course of the nineteenth century, the notion of imagination under- went a radical redefinition. From being the highest, divine, power of man to being subjected to a growing pathologization and degradation, the redefinition of imagination played a central role in the transition from idealism and roman- ticism to the emerging modernism and realism. Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) may be read into this particular context with its ‘disenchantment’ of the ‘wonderful’ – a word which Georg Brandes termed the very keyword of romanticism. Focusing on the specific Scandinavian context, where idealist aesthetics continued to be particularly strong, I will examine A Doll’s House from the perspective of the contemporary spectator in the context of an on-going Nordic aesthetic dispute. The contemporary Scandinavian reviews will serve to bear evidence of this dispute. In the article, I analyse how the play thematizes imagination and employs recurrent references to idealist culture in order to disenchant the romantic imagination of the wonderful. The analysis will focus in particular on the representation of the characters of Nora and Helmer, but also comes to implicate the spectator of the play.

When (or how) do the Olympics become ‘stale’?

This paper presents a discussion about the ongoing search for seemingly faddish new events in the Olympic programme, such as golf, rugby, and BMX cycling, which may be intended to liven up the Olympic Games to maintain public appeal. Whilst programme space may be a logistical concern, there is also an aesthetic debate over how the avant-garde in sporting events may take precedence over the classic, more established events with which we are familiar. Consequently, a number of questions are posed in this paper which explores the aesthetic and commercial implications of Olympic taste through the selection and rejection of Olympic events. The paper concludes that the current popularity of the Olympic Games may hang upon a frail sequence of dependencies: an overburdening commercial interest resting upon an ill-defined aesthetic purpose or identity.

Review: The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town, by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2012, 348 pp., 88 color and 202 b/w illus. $65 (cloth), ISBN 9780300152012 In the illuminated distance of Elias Martin’s 1769 View of Hanover Square , Trinity Chapel sits on the horizon line. A Protestant edifice situated at the end of a long axial view across this new London square, it is a counterpoint to the imposing facade of St. George’s Church. This painting suggests that streets were designed to converge perspectivally on this diminutive chapel, a fact borne out by contemporary maps. Trinity Chapel was a recent addition to London’s cityscape and was made to replace a temporary wooden chapel on wheels. The wooden structure was replaced by a “chapel of ease,” shown in Martin’s image, and was designated as such by the Parish of St. Martin’s in the Fields. Its parish church was overflowing with new members after the construction of sophisticated London squares in the West End.1 Trinity Chapel was hence a product of the city’s expanding population and the new geography of parish life responding to the construction of London’s ubiquitous squares. Martin’s image serves as the cover for Todd Longstaffe-Gowan’s The London Square: Gardens in the Midst of Town , and although the image is briefly described for its representation of the new Hanover Square, Trinity Chapel is nowhere mentioned in the text. Longstaffe-Gowan’s book is not about painting, nor is it about London’s myriad churches, and yet not discussing a central aspect of the book’s cover image—a chapel so implicitly woven into the narrative of landscape, urban development, and the outcomes of London’s rampant square-building—is the sort of omission that occurs too often in this large and well-illustrated text. For many images, the author provides little interpretation, and there are contradictions, especially in the early chapters, between images and text. Within the text itself, each chapter has its own host of loose threads: topics never fully …

Protocolo para el diagnóstico de las alteraciones del peso en la adolescencia

The weight changes are important to assess physical, mental and social health of adolescents. The weight is closely related to body image (BI), and this with the aesthetic ideals, self-esteem, self-image and self-concept. All these perceptions have an impact on the establishment of habits, customs and lifestyles. Nobody discusses the influence of the consumer society and market, through advertising and stereotypes, in the desire for a body capable of achieving social success. The body mass index (BMI) is a parameter of great epidemiological, quick and easy to obtain without cost interest.The assessment of the BI in consultations with adolescents is a useful, effective and efficient for tool health promotion, health education and primary prevention of multiple eating disorders.

Global facial beauty: approaching a unified aesthetic ideal.

Recognition of facial beauty is both inborn and learned through social discourses and exposures. Demographic shifts across the globe, in addition to cross-cultural interactions that typify 21st century globalization in virtually all industries, comprise major active evolutionary forces that reshape our individual notions of facial beauty. This article highlights the changing perceptions of beauty, while defining and distinguishing natural beauty and artificial beauty.

Lanzarote, “l’isola differente”. Turismo, place branding e la creazione della "Marca Lanzarote”

The article deals with the influence that Lanzarote-born artist Cesar Manrique has had on the development of tourism in Lanzarote from the 1960s on, and in particular, with how his aesthetic ideals have affected the appearance of the Island today. The article aims at demonstrating that the peculiar tourism development that occurred in Lanzarote can be considered as a pioneer attempt at enacting a particular marketing strategy today known as “place branding”. Considering the effects caused by Manrique’s work and by his environmental ecologic activism, it is evident how the marketing of Lanzarote as an Island with no equals has highly influenced its appearance, in accordance with the image that was created for it. Undoubtedly, this process has differentiated Lanzarote from other destinations in the tourist market; yet, as a result, a conflict between identity, authenticity and thematization has arisen, culminating in the creation of the so-called “Lanzarote trade-mark”.

Literary cinema? 2 or 3 things I Know about Anne Hébert’s Le Premier jardin

This essay explores the narrative connections between Jean-Luc Godard's cinema (mostly represented by 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d’elle, 1967) and Anne Hébert's complex novel, Le Premier jardin (Éditions du Boréal, 1988), and establishes that the style of the latter is inextricably linked to the cinematic techniques of the former. These connections transform Hébert's writing into a surrogate visual narrative. Literary and visual narratives overlap in the work of both authors, though, which leads to an aesthetic identity crisis for both novel (writing) and film (filmmaking).

Van Go’s Pharmakon : “Pharmacology” and Democracy in Percival Everett’s Erasure

Long overdue are scholarly close readings that shed light on the irreverent homage to the Ralph Ellison pervading Percival Everett’s Erasure , a novel less about Everett than about Ellison’s democratic aesthetics. Narrator/protagonist, “Monk” Ellison, keeps faith with his esteemed precursor’s aesthetic idealism until his writing career is on the verge of collapse, his ensuing disillusionment perverting his idealism into vengeful, comically villainous malice against an American public that confines black novelists to the role of feeding its addiction to the “drug” of bestial black stereotypes—a poison not a remedy to an ailing democratic body according to Ellison.

New Palatal Distraction Device by Both Bone-Borne and Tooth-Borne Force Application in a Paramedian Bone Anchorage Site

Maxillary constriction is a very common pathology with implications on dental occlusion, temporomandibular joint dysfunction, nasal breathing, and impairment on the smile and face esthetic.New techniques for expansion of the maxillary bones are particularly useful in relation to the new esthetic ideals of smile and face beauty.To achieve a bodily expansion of the maxillary bones, we developed a new rigid palatal distractor device with both tooth-borne and paramedian bone-borne anchorages to achieve a safe and simple anchorage site suitable also for orthodontic appliances.The reported cases show good results, with bodily maxillary expansion and cross-bite correction without any problems or complications. Substantial advantages of this new device and technique, in comparison with other commonly used palatal distractors, consisting of bodily maxillary movements, avoidance of relapse risks, and safe and simple screw insertion site for bone anchorage also suitable for orthodontic movements, are discussed.

The Later Novels of Victor Hugo: Variations on the Politics and Poetics of Transcendence par Kathryn M. Grossman

Reviews 221 monnayeurs by stating:“Nous vivons pour manifester.”His later reportages from Africa should have been discussed to underscore the earnestness of this statement. Clotilde Landais insightfully explores how Stephen King’s fictive writers discredit the institutional distinction between high and popular literature. Unfortunately, no overview or synthesis unites these essays. Because the editors concentrate on professional writers and their associates, dating from the advent of the mass market for prose narratives, the volume offers workers in that market the dreary fascination of shop-talk and professional gossip. It has relatively little to offer to students, teachers, and critics of French and Francophone culture. Oberlin College Affiliate Scholar (OH) Laurence M. Porter Grossman, Kathryn M. The Later Novels of Victor Hugo: Variations on the Politics and Poetics of Transcendence. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. ISBN 978-0-19-964295-3. Pp. xii + 285. £64. This study announces an ambitious double goal: first, to read Hugo’s final three novels within the Second-Empire context of their creation and initial reception; and second, to read Hugo “today” (meaning in the post-9/11 world) in order to explore “our own moral, political, and aesthetic challenges and to put them in a wider perspective ” (5). The second goal seems to be a response to the (truly worrisome) dearth of recent publications on Hugo’s novels: according to Grossman, apart from her own works, there have been only four major books devoted to Hugolian narrative since the 1960s (6). Yet Grossman’s work tends to be more convincing and interesting when it focuses on how Hugo responded to and attempted to shape events in his own time. Grossman argues that together, Les travailleurs de la mer (1866), L’homme qui rit (1869) and Quatrevingt-treize (1874) blend poetic and historical discourse in ways that reflect the aging Hugo’s preoccupations with revolutionary violence, with an ideal vision of social justice, and with his own legacy, both literary and political. This focus on the contemporary context yields some solid insights. For instance, Grossman convincingly demonstrates that the introductory “travelogue” chapter of Les travailleurs de la mer does not merely describe the geography and communities of the Channel Islands, but also mobilizes a subtle critique of Louis-Napoléon’s France. In her analysis of L’homme qui rit, Grossman interestingly applies critical theories of George Sand’s idealism to Hugo’s work, looking past overstated gendered distinctions between realist and idealist aesthetics. Her analysis of Quatrevingt-treize compares double identities of characters, objects, and places in order to talk about the complex role of history in a novel that brings together past Terror with a utopian vision of the future, in an effort to confront the recent events of the Paris Commune. By seeking always to prove the existence of an all-encompassing unity of vision that transcends the “superficial chaos” (7) of Hugo’s oeuvre, Grossman tends to downplay or gloss over some of the tensions and contradictions that make him (to some readers) so compelling. I appreciate more Grossman’s attention to small details. For instance, a reference to “Hugue(o)nots” living in the Channel islands demonstrates Hugo’s habit of slyly alluding to himself through coincidences of sound; as Grossman asks,“What better way to signal his status as a (political) protestant?” (47). These clever close readings make The Later Novels of Victor Hugo memorable and fun. Arcadia University (PA) Kate M. Bonin Harrington, Katharine N. Writing the Nomadic Experience in Contemporary Francophone Literature. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2012. ISBN 978-0-7391-75712 . Pp. 147. $60. The introduction, which explores the changing significance over time of such terms as nomadism, diaspora, and exile, sets the stage for a thought-provoking discussion of several well-known contemporary Francophone writers and the narrative conceptualizations of place and identity in their respective oeuvres.As Harrington posits, a primary aim of the volume is to “widen the scope of the study of nomadism in contemporary French and Francophone literature” (12) through her selection of four authors with complex bicultural and/or bilingual backgrounds who “envision writing as a way to anchor themselves in their uncertain position between nations, cultures, languages, and even between the...