Dans La Vie Research Articles

Plea for a Collective Genetics

Abstract The study of the early manuscripts of the great authors most often becomes a process of monumentalising or (re)legitimising their work. The recent publication of two of Sartre's early manuscripts – first Empédocle (Empedocles) in 2016 and second, in 2018, his dissertation for his graduate diploma (diplôme d’études supérieures or DES), L'Image dans la vie psychologique (The Image in Psychological Life), both texts written in 1926–1927 – encourages us to propose another type of genetic reading that insists on the collective conditions of the production of knowledge, including philosophical knowledge. Such a collective genetics, applied to Sartre's intellectual formation during the interwar years, allows us to highlight some of the little-known forms of Parisian intellectual societies (the activities of the International Information Group of the École Normale Supérieure, the critical logic of the psychology journals, the regular meetings of the cenacles, and the literary and philosophical research groups). It also reveals, at the same time, the original relationship between Sartre's thought and the German literature and philosophy mediated to him by Bernard Groethuysen, Stefan Zweig and Alexandre Koyré.

Un début dans la vie par Mathieu Bermann

Reviewed by: Un début dans la vie par Mathieu Bermann Ann Williams Bermann, Mathieu. Un début dans la vie. P.O.L, 2022. ISBN 978-2-8180-5521-2. Pp. 176. Questioning one's own perspectives is never easy but is necessary, as human interactions show time and time again. Un début dans la vie reminds readers of this from the outset and quickly pulls us out of complacency and into self-reflection. Readers soon discover that the narrator is a writer himself and quite introspective, and they realize that this novel will not simply guide them through a Balzacian plot or character development (despite the hommage in the title). There will be much more. The intertwined stories of all the characters focus on a provincial French family drama, with at its heart, Malo, a horrid child. At four and a half years old he already has a vile reputation that has reached even the narrator, a close friend of Valentin, the creature's uncle. In the hands of a less-gifted writer the rather banal plot twists would not excite. The real richness of the book, however, resides in the questioning of perspectives that Bermann proposes throughout. At first glance, it seems he is giving us permission to judge his characters quite harshly. In the first chapter, "La barbarie," he sets up Valentin as the gossiping and somewhat unkind uncle responsible for the narrator's negative preconceptions of the little boy (whose actions, nonetheless, deserve the criticism they receive). He gives little quarter to Marie, Malo's mother, narcissistic and inattentive to her two children, and in the second chapter, aptly entitled "Disparaître," she does just that; she runs away, leaving her parents to watch over her children. But here's the rub: the author-Bermann does not let the narrator-author-maybe-Bermann get off scot-free. Malo, Marie, and all the characters have redeeming qualities, reasons for being who they are. And the narrator sees that he can't just go with what he's been told. And so, neither can we. By the time we get to chapter four, "Le roman de Malo," we know that there is a self-reflexive writer in charge of this book, and we see that he's taken over the literary encounter we're having. The somewhat disconcerting switch from the first-person narrator to an omniscient one was heralded by the chapter title, but we do have to pause to adjust as we read Malo's story and follow him through episodes in his life unknown to our initial narrator. In chapter five (and at this point, readers are sincerely grateful for the chapter divisions), our first narrator returns, and we relive moments, even with similar wording, from the beginning of the novel. But, and here's where Bermann excels, we cannot help but have a different perspective. In a sense, we know too much. The narrator-author takes responsibility for writing this life and even proposes a series of ninety-nine numbered optional events that Malo might live. The novel's last chapter explores the question "Pourquoi écrit-on?" (167) and the effect that writing has on reader and writer alike. One certainty? In writing this book a very real author takes us on a literary adventure that we will not soon forget. [End Page 220] Ann Williams Metropolitan State University of Denver (CO), emerita Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Social origins, track choices and labour-market outcomes: evidence from the French case

This paper examines the labour-market returns to different high school tracks in the French context. We use rich nationally representative longitudinal data running from the beginning of secondary education until entrance into the labour market: the Panel d’élèves du second degré, recrutement 1995 combined with the Entrée dans la vie adulte-EVA follow-up survey. Analysing these data, we are able to identify the consequences of track placement in high school on various labour-market outcomes controlling for social and academic selection into tracking. Our results show that academic diplomas offer higher labour-market benefits than vocational diplomas, even when adjusting for selection into tracks based on prior school performance, family background and other socio-demographic characteristics. The advantage of the academic track stays large, both for the whole group of upper secondary graduates and for those who have not achieved a tertiary degree. Our results further indicate that academic qualifications are even more rewarding for service-class graduates. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of our results for processes of intergenerational reproduction.

Review: Marianne Tansman's "La guitare dans la vie d'Alexandre Tansman" (2018)

This is a review of Marianne Tansman's book La guitare dans la vie d'Alexandre Tansman, written in 2018. The book consists of a chronological account of the composer's relation with the guitar and with the guitarist Andrés Segovia, and produces remarks both on the style and particularities of Tansman's works for guitar as well as broader considerations on Tansman's artistic point of view. By the end of the text, it is compared to other works on the issue of the guitar in the life of Tansman, and some directions for further research on the subject are suggested.

Compte-rendu deThe End of British Party Politics? de Roger Awan-Scully

The Guardian a recemment commente les changements dans la vie politique britannique : It is sometimes claimed that a Brexit vote in June could lead to the break-up of Britain. Yet in politics, something of that break-up has already occurred. […] The devolved elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a week from now are likely to reflect that new diverse reality still further. We all need to get used to the fact. There is no such thing as British politics any more. C’est precisement l...

Fiat Lux: Raoul Dufy and Robert Mallet-Stevens’s Palais de la Lumière (Palace of Light)

The Palais de la Lumière or Pavillon de l’Électricité (Electricity Pavilion), built by Robert Mallet-Stevens with interior design by Georges-Henri Pingusson and housing the mural La Fée Électricité (The Electricity Fairy) by Raoul Dufy, was erected for the 1937 Exposition internationale des arts et techniques dans la vie moderne (International exhibition of art and technology in modern life) in Paris (fig. 1).1 This event marked a new relationship between the fine arts and industrial society, at least in France, in the sense that it offered an opportunity for the leading figures from the worlds of art (architects and artists) to meet with the leaders of business, the economic sphere, and engineering. The understated yet innovative Electricity Pavilion was a showcase for new technology in two senses: the interior space displayed a range of new appliances and machines, while the long, curved façade of the building served as a screen onto which the first Technicolor films were projected. The pavilion, therefore, presented a range of recent applications for electricity and lighting, while building a bridge with tradition and, above all, establishing the necessary priorities for further synergy between the fields of art and technology. In this respect, it represented the realization of longstanding reflections about the so-called unity of art and technology, which had underpinned much aesthetic debate since the mid-nineteenth century. Finally, it reflected the spirit and central aims of the 1937 exposition and its stated ideals of political humanism.2

Henry Prunières (1886–1942): Un musicologue engagé dans la vie musicale de l'entre-deux guerres ed. by Myriam Chimènes, Florence Grétreau, and Catherine Massip

Henry Prunieres (1886-1942): Un musicologue engage dans la vie musicale de l'entre-deux guerres. Edited by Myriam Chimenes, Florence Gretreau, and Catherine Massip. (Publications de la Societe frangaise de musicologie.) Paris: Societe frangaise de musicologie, 2015. [584 p. ISBN 9782853572460 (paperback), varies]. Illustrations, bibliography, index. No musicologists of the current age can count to their credit multiple monographs, senior editorship of a composer's complete works, scholarly articles, countless pieces of high-quality musicological journalism, the organization of a successful concert series supporting contemporary musicians, founding membership in international musicological societies, and the creation of a music journal that stood for decades as a juncture between academic study and an interested public readership. Yet this list summarizes only highlights from the career of Henry Prunieres. The volume under review is a collection of essays about his work and how it shaped French musicology and the perception of French music abroad. It is unusual for musicologists to study other musicologists rather than musicians or music. But Prunieres was an unusual figure, and the outlines of his career reveal a great deal about the development of the field. He got an auspicious start when he won the favor of Swiss musicologist Romain Rollanti, who shepherded him through a dissertation at the Sorbonne and guaranteed him access to the necessary Italian archives for his probing research. Prunieres completed his dissertation in 1913 and saw it published the same year as the successful book L'Opera italien en France avant Lulli (Paris: E. Champion). Despite this early success, Prunieres did not secure an academic position, and his career took the many winding turns of an entrepreneurial public scholar. His greatest accomplishments were participating in a cultural network that included artists and scholars from across Europe, undertaking projects such as a two-volume history of music and the critical edition of the complete works of Jean-Baptiste Lully, and creating and overseeing La revue musicale for twenty years. In order to capture the contours of Prunieres's varied career and checkered record of success, the editors of the present volume have taken a kaleidoscopic approach. After Rene Prunieres, Henry's son, donated his father's archives to the Bibliotheque nationale de France, the Institut de Recherche en Musicologie (IReMtts) organized a yearlong seminar on the musicologist in 2009-2010. Although the present collection contains the most outstanding papers from that event, the results are as checkered as Prunieres's own professional efforts. The topic is in line with the Societe franchise de musicologie's politic of valorizing French contributions to musical culture, and with the many titles in the Editions Symetrie catalog that center on non-composer participants in French musical life (e.g. Yannick Simon, Jules Pasdeloup et les origines du concert populaire [2011]; Delphine Grivel, Maurice Denis et hi musique [ 20 111; and Brigitte Cormier, Ewa Podles, contralto assoluto [2015]). But while the method ensures that the object of study is presented in his many facets, it provides only a surface level of critical understanding. What were Prunieres's motivations, and how did these inflect his work? Did he steer French musicology or did it steer him? These questions and their answers are missing from the book. The book's twenty-nine articles touch on the three areas in which Prunieres achieved personal success and advanced the mission and visibility of French musicology: his relationships with artists and scholars, his academic work, and his contributions to the Revue musicale as editor and critic. The first, Myriam Chimenes's biographical sketch, introduces Prunieres's unique story and perspective on both history and contemporary music. Chimenes draws on the rich documents at her disposal as research fellow at IReMtts to provide not just the contours of Prunieres's career but to explain his motivations and misgivings as well. …

A Word About Bioidenticals

A Word About Bioidenticals

Le repaire des solitudes par Danny Émond

in the novel who do their utmost to avoid looking at the truth, we allow ourselves to hope that the description of Philippe and Claire’s adolescent bedroom is without importance (34) and that the photo of Claire, Philippe, their mother, and the infant Marie is just a family portrait (42). And then there are the drops of blood (57). Un été en famille is, among other things, a mystery novel whose ending needs to be discovered, not revealed. Read to the end, if you can. Metropolitan State University of Denver Ann Williams Émond, Danny. Le repaire des solitudes. Montréal: Boréal, 2015. ISBN 978-2-76462363 -3. Pp. 160. $20 Can. Literary newcomer Émond’s dark side has a heart, even if in the path there is all horror and loneliness. Take the narrator of “Manque d’oxygène,” whose mother has just committed suicide. Every night for three months, he dreams of her hanging from the kitchen ceiling, her mouth gripping a light bulb that casts a blue light on her face: “Je vois bien qu’elle voudrait me parler de mon père, mais l’ampoule l’en empêche” (101). Next, her eyeballs fall out of their sockets and drop into his bowl of cereal, followed by her skin and organs. She remains a skeleton, and the light bulb goes out. She laughs, and he wakes up. Gruesome. Then comes the heart. Alone on his twentyfifth birthday because all the people he knows are“plus ou moins fous”(103), he blows out the candles on the cake he has bought for himself. His birthday wish: head to the dépanneur to buy some lottery tickets. “Sans oser dire à la fille derrière le comptoir à quel point je la trouve jolie,”he says in the story’s final sentence,“même si elle ne sourit jamais”(104). Émond has a gift for this double-punch. It works like this: first, a glimpse at the off-kilter life of a depressed or marginal character. Usually it is in a story’s first sentence: “Mon père avait des seins et ma mère, une moustache” (11); “La pauvreté, c’est moche”(23);“Dans le cirque de la drague, je suis le clown qui mange des claques sur la gueule”(89). The character’s surroundings are almost always equally edgy: dirty apartments, the back seats of cars, Tim Hortons stores late at night, garages, alleys outside nightclubs. Émond’s descriptions are wonderful: in“Les lèvres anonymes,”the narrator foreshadows an illicit encounter by describing a woman’s hair as “si crépue et foisonnante qu’elle pourrait sans peine y cacher un dildo. Ou une machette” (61). Sex and violence intermingle a lot in Émond’s more figurative language, but nimbly— it’s like watching a train wreck about to happen but knowing that there will be something slapstick about the way things will knock into one another. This style feels like a form of kindness. As gruesome or pornographic as his stories can be on the surface, their depths always bend toward the humane. After a surprisingly gratifying tryst with a stranger, a narrator sighs: “La vie n’est qu’une série de départs, n’est-ce pas?” (45). An old man exhibits his ugly, still-scarred tattoo to anyone who will look, prompting the narrator to note, “on s’accroche à ce qu’on peut, dans la vie, surtout 260 FRENCH REVIEW 89.4 Reviews 261 quand on n’a rien” (59). The book’s final tale imagines a couple’s life together as a series of physical breakdowns, of a march toward a near-oblivion in which“on existera, c’est tout” (151)—after which, we turn the page to see, in “Remerciements,” Émond thanks his parents—for the second time in the book (153). Even in their obvious darkness, these characters and situations suggest a deeply empathic storytelling impulse. University of Wisconsin, Madison Ritt Deitz Garcin, Jérôme. Le voyant. Paris: Gallimard, 2015. ISBN 978-2-07-014164-7. Pp. 185. 17,50 a. This novel centers on the rather incredible life of Jacques Lusseyran, a man whose relatively brief existence...

Un faux pas dans la vie d’Emma Picard by Matthieu Belezi

Reviews 255 just eighty-odd pages (and sparsely furnished ones, at that), organized in twenty-three very brief chapters. Barely enough room to tell a story about brothers, let alone a story about the sea. Almendros stakes his minimalist wager with a great deal of conviction, however, and he displays considerable resourcefulness in the way he keeps his reader off balance, as if on a swaying deck in a rising swell. Whether we eventually find our sea legs or not will be a matter of individual constitution; but the voyage will not be long enough to test us beyond endurance, and at its end there is the shining promise of land,“ferme et rassurante” (24). University of Colorado Warren Motte Belezi, Matthieu. Un faux pas dans la vie d’Emma Picard. Paris: Flammarion, 2015. ISBN 978-2-0812-9365-6. Pp. 255. 18 a. After C’était notre terre (2008) and Les vieux fous (2011), Belezi’s latest fiction (based on true facts) closes a trilogy devoted to Algeria. The reader hears exclusively the voice of the main character, Emma. Given the miserable circumstances of the widowed Emma and her four sons Charles, Joseph, Eugène, and Léon in Alsace, they take the challenge and move to colonized Algeria to work and prosper. At the end of the 1860s, the French government of the Third Republic promised them and many others four acres fertile to cultivate in Algeria. This was the plan of the French colonists to repopulate Algeria, which had lost 17% of its population, between 1866 and 1868, from a series of disasters. The reader hears one voice under two types of juxtaposed narrations. The first one is of the past in short segments by Emma in a captivating monologue addressed to her youngest son, recounting their move to the Algerian countryside between Mascara and Sidi Bel Abbès, the adversity of the circumstances of a woman’s life from the time they were offered the plot of land, the scarcity of water, the grasshoppers’ attack on the crop, the famine, and the earthquake. The second narration is also in the voice of Emma, directly talking to Léon in the present time, commenting rather than narrating and asking him rhetorical questions about his health and wellbeing. The latter is presented in italics, making it easier for the reader to distinguish between the two. The narration as well as the story rely on the strong character of Emma, a solid, maternal and independent figure who faces one disaster after another marked only by a brief respite, a short love story that helps her gather strength and face reality. Both narrations are interlaced and presented without punctuation , making the story move fluidly from past to present through the strength of the oral form that makes the events seem immediate and direct. In Emma’s tragic story of destitution despite her hard work in harsh conditions, the question remains: Who is really responsible for the tragic events in Algeria, the attitude of superiority of the white Christian colonizers, and the tragic conditions of life of the colonizers and the colonized in the promised land full of injustices? “On nous a jetés, nous les colons, abandonnés à notre sort de crève-la-faim sur des terres qui ne veulent et ne voudront jamais de nous” (253). It is ultimately a nightmare that started as a journey, a dream, and a promise of happiness. St. John’s University (NY) Zoe Petropoulou Bordage, Pierre. Les dames blanches. Nantes: L’Atalante, 2015. ISBN 978-2-84172718 -6. Pp. 380. 21 a. Sunrise in Nueil-les-Aubiers, sometime in the not-too-distant future. On that fateful morning, Léo looks out the kitchen window and spots a mysterious giant“egg” lying in the field just beyond the garden gate. The three-year-old alerts his mother, Élodie, still sipping her morning coffee and hardly interested in playing along with her son’s latest shenanigan. But looking out across the yard, there it is: a massive sphere. Léo darts out the front door. By the time an out-of-breath Élodie reaches the field, standing face-to-face with the enormous...

La mort de Laclos by Didier Laroque

Reviews 259 come. In addition, there are places in her novel far below the reading level of the layman . The author should rewrite and attempt at least two if not three separate works from this one. Alliance Française de Santa Rosa (CA) Davida Brautman Laroque, Didier. La mort de Laclos. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2014. ISBN 978-2-87673931 -4. Pp. 159. 15 a. By the early 1800s the intellectual and often libertine values of the Enlightenment were well on their way to being superseded by Romanticism’s exaltation of emotion, nature, and love. Choderlos de Laclos’s Liaisons dangereuses (1782) somewhat belatedly epitomizes the former, while Rousseau’s Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761), though published earlier, represents the latter and, in fact, was a major factor (along with Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther) in creating the Romantic movement. Laroque’s very late entry into this field alludes to both of these French epistolary novels. Rousseau’s Saint-Preux and his beloved Julie are evoked by the names and feelings of Laroque’s protagonist and narrator, Benjamin Saint Trois de Becq, and the woman he loves, also named Julie; further, both couples’stories echo that of Abélard and Héloïse. Laclos himself represents the Enlightenment, appearing in person at the novel’s conclusion. The narration evokes eighteenth-century fiction, as do the diaries and letters, which flesh out the story; the vocabulary and style downplay exciting events while insisting on the power of love and the joys of the countryside. Saint Trois, a light-cavalry lieutenant, wants to leave the army of Napoleon to pursue a “destin contemplatif”(120), but he must overcome inertia and find enough money to live on. He is the sort of figure Joseph Campbell wrote about in The Hero with a Thousand Faces: his father is unknown, and he is sent on a dangerous journey. Helped by a series of mysterious guides, he undergoes a painful mutilation—though not, fortunately, Abélard’s—and at the end discovers his true self. At the start he gloomily “devine le monde parvenu à sa fin”(23),but at the end,“un souffle impétueux [l]’enthousiasm[e]” (158) as he starts his new life. On the literal level of the plot, while Saint Trois is stationed in Dijon in 1803, he is ordered to deliver a sealed letter to Laclos, who has recycled himself as an artillery general and is stationed near the toe of Italy’s boot, where he may be involved in a conspiracy to restore the power of the Pope over the Catholic church in France. Because the packet might contain the conspirators’ plans, Saint Trois is menaced by the anti-clerical faction, and he is also the victim of Julie’s brother, who resents his sister’s secret marriage to a man of lower birth. No supporter of the papacy and repulsed by libertinage,Saint Trois is exalted by German romanticism. In fact, he has already published a Traité de la grandeur in Berlin which, not coincidentally , has almost the same title as a previous book by his creator, Laroque, an architect by profession. This, Laroque’s first novel, is an ambitious attempt to write history and philosophy in the form of fiction. If it is not entirely successful as a novel, it is provocative and engaging. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Leclair, Bertrand. Le vertige danois de Paul Gauguin. Arles: Actes Sud, 2014. ISBN 978-2-330-02775-9. Pp. 182. 19 a. En novembre 1885, à l’âge de 36 ans, Gauguin quitte la France pour rejoindre sa femme et ses cinq enfants à Copenhague, où il restera jusqu’en juin 1886. Que s’est-il passé pendant ce court séjour nordique, peu traité par les biographes de l’artiste? C’est ce que Leclair explore dans ce roman tout à la fois biographie, étude psychologique et essai sur l’art. Leclair présente cette époque comme un tournant dans la vie d’un homme tiraillé entre son devoir familial et son désir—voire son besoin—de peindre. Ce n’est que depuis peu que Gauguin a abandonné son travail de courtier en bourse...

L’indulgence du soleil et de l’automne par by Patrick Besson

Reviews 261 is apparent in the glee both men take in anagrams. To the question,“que devient Estella Ribstone?” (73), the answer is “Bret Easton Ellis” (74). Given this delight, American readers will wonder at the name“Vlad Eisinger,”since for most of us the only Vlad we are familiar with is Vlad the Impaler. This curiosity is only piqued by the novel’s last sentence, an exchange between Dan and Vlad: “tu as des nouvelles de Vlad Eisinger?” (287), demonstrating that at times a good con is an intriguing pleasure. Florida State University William Cloonan Besson, Patrick. L’indulgence du soleil et de l’automne. Paris: Fayard, 2015. ISBN 9782 -213-62965-0. Pp. 112. 13 a. Besson is an author who does not take the logistics of our existence too seriously. Human history serves as a draft that can be deconstructed and reassembled, and that goes also for our everyday life. The result is often funny, at least noteworthy, as can be read in Besson’s new collection of nine short stories. The title of the small volume is a quotation from a letter by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who—as we learn from Besson—had a son with a French woman from Perpignan.Why not? There is nothing wrong with rewriting history as long as this revision provides us with some matière à rire (to quote the title of a book by Raymond Devos). The following seven texts serve as good examples of Besson’s sense of humor: the comical effect is often reached with the help of the bizarre, grotesque, and eerie. However, like in a classical comedy, the stories tend toward a certain moral or a lesson of the human condition. “La traductrice sikh” describes the vanity of a less than mediocre author and his strange metamorphosis.“Jean-Paul et Rihanna” presents a philosophy professor with a famous first name and the singer Rihanna. The story conveys the following idea: when two people have the same dream, the dream becomes reality. The author creates a play with two realities: dream reality and the reality experienced by the mind when one is awake. Dreams can become real—in this case a wishful dream of erotic content dreamt by two people at the same time. Comparable to a professional stand-up comedian, the author is in“La joueuse russe”constantly working to deliver the comic effect, as can be evidenced in the quick, yet solid construction of facts and action, i.e., in his choice of style, play on words, and provocative fantasy including the grotesque. “Tous ses amants s’appelaient Patrick” presents the case of Sarah Wittgenstein (obviously named after another philosopher) and her harsh revenge for an act of rape she suffered many years before. “Singto” is basically a joke about gender identity. “Le voyage des comédiens”makes reference to a historic event which took place in March 1943 when a delegation of French movie stars accepted the invitation of the Nazi regime to come to Berlin.“La nuit de Cancún”is a fascinating work of magical realism about the Mexican death cult Santa Muerte. The last and longest contribution to this collection describes the unusually twisted and complicated identity crisis of a man who eventually finds out who his real parents are and what he had done many years ago to a playmate his age (“Le marché des enfants-rouges”). It seems that the author wanted to outdo himself in the closing story in regard to his presentation of the unusual and unforeseen. Besson’s volume offers a fine collection of reading material, to enjoy not just in the sunshine or in the fall. Ocean County College, NJ (emeritus) Gert Niers Blais, Marie-Claire. Aux jardins des Acacias. Paris: Seuil, 2014. ISBN 978-2-02116642 -2. Pp. 272. 18,50 a. This author astounded the literary world when she won the Médicis at the age of twenty-seven for Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel. Now living in Key West, and in her seventies, she focuses on a story of redemption. In a forty-two page interview at the end of the novel, this French Canadian explains: “Je me...

Physiological effect of olfactory stimuli inhalation in humans: an overview

The importance of odorants in human life has long been recognized. Literature contains different approaches of physiological and psychological effects of odorant compounds, fragrances and essential oils. This work discusses odorants inhalation effect, based on an overview of major studies in humans. Beneficial effect of fragrances is mainly related to human behaviour. Studies document odorants influence in sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and neurophysiological brain activity. Moreover, odours compounds can act on the neuroendocrine system, neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, influencing psychological behaviour as well as body function. Odorant inhalation modulates physiological pathways, and in some cases, results in skin function regulation. The mechanism is incompletely elucidated. These findings suggest that olfactory system plays a role in central nervous system function beyond that of smell. In this overview, it was observed that odour compounds influenced stress biomarkers, dehydroepiandrosterone, oxidative stress, estradiol, dopamine, cutaneous barrier, sebum secretion and cutaneous immune system in humans. Some can be related with skin function. As the skin is associated with an extensive biochemical cascade and has complex mechanisms, studies have far to go, as there are processes not yet investigated related to skin that may be affected through olfaction. Future researches are needed to further understand and describe the mechanisms of action of physiological effects in fragrance compounds.

Against Écriture Féminine : Flaubert's Narrative Aggression in Madame Bovary

Against Écriture Féminine:Flaubert's Narrative Aggression in Madame Bovary Ashley Hope Pérez "Avec rage": Flaubert's Revenge "J'ai rempoigné la Bovary avec rage," Flaubert wrote to Louis Bouilhet two months after the end of his relationship with Louise Colet, the woman who had been lover, correspondent, and—perhaps most importantly—rival writer in Flaubert's eyes until the couple separated definitively in 1854.1 The letters to Colet, written over nearly a decade, attune us to the height of Flaubert's artistic aspirations and the extent of his insecurities. They also reveal the degree to which questions of aesthetic power and artistic identity become embroiled in Flaubert's problematic construction of the feminine, a construction that culminates in his writing of Madame Bovary as a portrait of female artistic failure. Throughout the letters, Flaubert expresses his desire to remake Colet in his image. "Je ne veux de toi, comme femme, que la chair. Que tout le reste donc soit à moi, ou mieux, soit moi, de même pâte et la même pâte," he writes, adding some months later, "Oh si je pouvais faire de toi ce que j'en rêve, quelle femme, quelle être tu serais!"2 Flaubert did not, however, get his wish. Although Colet's letters to Flaubert have been lost, the stylistic elements of her published works demonstrate her refusal to conform to the edicts and declarations he directed at her.3 Principal among these pronouncements was Flaubert's railing against the excessive effusiveness and fluidity that he associated with her womanhood. "Tu t'abîmes avec l'élément femelle," he warns, and he counsels elsewhere, "tu arriveras à la plénitude de ton talent en dépouillant ton sexe."4 Even more scathingly, he criticizes what he saw as her stylistic faults by accusing her of excessive femininity: "Il ne faut pas, quand on est arrivé à ton degré, que le linge sente le lait . . . comprime les seins de ton coeur, qu'on y voie des muscles et non une glande."5 Later, we [End Page 31] will see how Flaubert's focus on excess in Colet's writing—and her linen—points to his anxiety that there might be a whiff of milk from his pages as well. For now, though, Flaubert's basic message is plain: if Colet was to be any kind of writer, she ought to write like a man, preferably like Flaubert himself. Yet Colet continued, vexingly, to be a writer and not to be Flaubert. Failing to rewrite Colet or shape her aesthetic convictions after his own, Flaubert wrote Emma Bovary with a vengeance. Indeed, Janet Beizer argues persuasively that Madame Bovary is Flaubert's "most bitter note of revenge" to Colet, "his longest letter in a correspondence already officially ended."6 Written from the start as what Jacques Rancière calls the "embodiment of the wrong way," Emma the failed writer functions as a critical element in Flaubert's elaborate attempts at self-definition against "feminine" writing.7 If Flaubert permits a reading of Madame Bovary as "the portrait of an artist . . . as a young woman," as Naomi Schor suggests, this is nevertheless a degraded portrait strategically conceived so that more credit and acclaim can accrue to the male author.8 Put another way, Flaubert presents Emma as an incompetent writer so as to highlight the unique accomplishments of his narrative technique. Madame Bovary as a showpiece of originality, then, depends for its success on the denigration of a degraded representation of écriture féminine as literary practice and performance. "Les océans laiteux": Emma's Models The novel's thematic treatment of sentimental narratives—specifically as a force that destroys originality and artistic potential—is one of Flaubert's strategies for ridiculing the inferior literary company pursued by women, as exemplified by Emma. Flaubert first figures her bad taste and laughable fantasies in his depiction of her growing disillusionment with her marriage: "Emma cherchait à savoir ce que l'on entendait au juste dans la vie par les mots de félicité, de passion et d'ivresse, qui lui avaient paru si beaux dans les livres".9 This passage introduces the thread...

On Love: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Adam, Achard, Richard, and Godfrey of St. Victor

On Love: A Selection of Works of Hugh, Adam, Achard, Richard, and Godfrey of St. Victor

Facing Hitler’s Pavilion: The Uses of Modernity in the Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 Paris International Exhibition

Overwhelming the Trocadéro’s majestic esplanade, the Soviet and German pavilions faced each other in a commanding gesture across the central axis of the Paris ‘Exposition des arts et des techniques dans la vie moderne’ – the last French World’s Expo in the twentieth century. More often than not, the two pavilions have been dismissed in architectural terms as having merely ‘competed in archeological rhetoric’. In this article I argue, with a primary focus on the Soviet Pavilion, that far from displaying such reductive and unambiguous architectural qualities, each pavilion offered, in two very different ways, a complex response to the challenges of an exhibition dedicated to ‘modern life’. The two instrumentalized for their own political purposes both modernity and historicism. From two radically different ideological starting points, the pavilions exploited some significant aspects of the defunct avant-gardes, while reaching out, in different degrees, for stabilizing references to classicism. Frank Lloyd Wright’s unwavering admiration for the Soviet Pavilion, the main topic of this article, resonates with the astonishing discovery of white Suprematist ‘Arkhitektoni’ by Malevich’s disciple, sculptor Nikolaj Suetin gracing the interior of the Soviet Pavilion. The legacy raises the question of thus far unsuspected survival of the architectural avant-garde deep into the years of Stalin’s totalitarian terror.

Terms of Engagement: Algeria, France and the Middle East in Barbet Schroeder's L'Avocat de la terreur and Philippe Faucon's Dans la vie

Recent research at the intersection between postcolonial and Holocaust studies has drawn attention to the composite, hybrid nature of cultural memory and the connections forged in post-war French film and literature between violent phenomena that have frequently been approached as discrete, such as colonialism and fascism. Such studies have dwelt in particular on the relationship between French colonial repression in Algeria and Nazi anti-Semitism and genocide. This article considers instead the less often discussed links between the Franco-Algerian conflict and the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian crisis through lenses provided by contemporary French cinema. In Barbet Schroeder's documentary L'Avocat de la terreur and Philippe Faucon's film Dans la vie, both released in 2007, these two ostensibly separate histories of violence overlap with each other in ways that may not always have been consciously intended in the course of production. I argue that, in their juxtaposition of these histories, Faucon and Schroeder offer contrasting perspectives on the validity of purportedly universal humanist conceptions of justice and the capacity of empathy to transcend racial differences. In spite of these distinctions, however, both films point to the difficulty of reconciling the competing ethical obligations placed on us by memories of diverse twentieth-century manifestations of terror.

Les Romans de la Salpêtrière: réception d’une scénographie clinique: Jean-Martin Charcot dans l’imaginaire fin-de-siècle by Bertrand Marquer

others argue for a particular interpretation), there are sure to be interesting intersections with other topics (authors, movements, historical moments). Fans of decadence will rejoice. Texas A & M University Melanie Hawthorne MARQUER, BERTRAND. Les Romans de la Salpêtrière: réception d’une scénographie clinique: Jean-Martin Charcot dans l’imaginaire fin-de-siècle. Genève: Droz, 2008. ISBN 978-2600 -001153-2. Pp. 424. 49,65 a. Examining novels that run the gamut from the well known to the relatively obscure, from Realism to the Fantastic, Marquer traces Jean-Martin Charcot’s journey from eminent neurologist to cultural icon. Assuming that “la littérature, reflet de son époque, intègre les espoirs et les angoisses que la figure saillante du médecin peut engendrer” (12), he gauges Charcot’s influence on the popular imagination through the optic of the romans de la Salpêtrière, texts that integrate various facets of his work with hysterics. In the nineteenth century, hysteria was often linked to extremes of female sexuality—those suffering from the disorder were either over- or under-sexed (i.e., prostitutes or repressed virgins). Not surprisingly , then, novelists found “dans la vie mouvementée des hystériques une trame incitant à la fiction en transposant le savoir faire que la Salpêtrière entend rendre accessible” (160). At the same time, Marquer brings to light the way in which literature shaped Charcot’s clinical methods. As much a man of letters as a neurologist, Charcot understood the possibilities that literary devices offered the emerging discipline of psychiatry; his clinical writings on hysteria and other neurological disorders benefited from his creative use of narrative perspective. Endowed with a “parole pittoresque,” Charcot was “plus peintre qu’orateur,” (116) his often poetic descriptions more vivid and full of life than the photographic portraits of his patients that made him famous. Many of the novels in Marquer’s study target the unenlightened beliefs about hysteria that the anticlerical, republican Charcot sought to dispel, such as the association between hysteria and diabolical possession. He argues that Marie de Guersainte in Zola’s Lourdes exemplifies the Catholic Church’s view that hysterics were “des possédées corps et âme” (203) while the character of Geneviève in Jules Lermina’s Les Hystériques de Paris confirms that “la ruse principale de l’hystérie est, comme pour le Malin, de faire croire à sa non-existence, en substituant constamment à sa réalité la comédie d’un rôle qui pourtant le signale” (199). Nonetheless, both works implicitly credit Charcot with convincing clinicians and laypersons alike that hysteria was a medical, not a spiritual, concern, its treatment best undertaken by physicians instead of priests. What makes hysteria unique among psychological disorders is that the majority of its symptoms are external, manifesting in behaviors that are discernable even to the untrained eye. In part 3, “L’Esprit de Charcot: autopsie du regard clinique,” Marquer explains that Charcot’s “theater” was frequently filled not only with medical practitioners but with members of the general public. What is more, actors such as Sarah Bernhardt and novelists such as Léon Daudet visited La Salpêtrière seeking artistic inspiration in the “performances” provided by Charcot’s hysterics. In giving his patients a voice and medical practitioners a methodology, he presented artists and writers with “la structure d’un drame 596 FRENCH REVIEW 84.3 intérieur, et [a] offert un cadre dramatique à de nombreux récits exploitant la dimension proprement subjective d’une contemplation pathologique” (366). Marquer’s nearly encyclopedic knowledge of the romans de la Salpêtrière affords him a deep understanding of the place Charcot and his patients occupy in fin-de-siècle literature and culture. The more familiar novels Marquer examines —Zola’s Lourdes, Huysmans’s Là-bas—benefit from a fresh reading while the more esoteric ones—Léo Tréznik’s La Confession d’un fou, Jules Claretie’s Les Amours d’un interne—prove that the romans de la Salpêtrière were something of a literary phenomenon. Thanks to Marquer’s top-notch analysis and documentation , the reader comes away with insight into the myriad social changes...

Newfangled Computers and Old-Fashioned Romantic Comedy: You’ve Got Mail’s Futuristic Nostalgia

Tom Hanks et Meg Ryan interprètent deux propriétaires de librairies rivales de l’Upper West Side de New York dans You’ve Got Mail (1998), la comédie romantique de l’ère Internet de Nora Ephron. Les opposants ne réalisent pas qu’ils sont aussi des amis virtuels, aussi chers qu’anonymes, échangeant des confidences de plus en plus intimes et qu’ils sont destinés, par les conventions narratives de la comédie romantique, à consommer leur romance dans la vie réelle tout comme dans la vie branchée avant la fin de la dernière bobine du film. Cet article questionne la façon avec laquelle ce qui n’est d’abord qu’un terne conflit économique peut se transformer en un récit de comédie romantique à succès, proposant que ni une nostalgie toute de rose teintée (pour le film de l’âge d’or hollywoodien dont il est une nouvelle version), ni un futurisme techno-déterministe (mis en évidence par la place qu’occupe le dispositif de messagerie électronique) ne peuvent en rendre compte. Plutôt, le film d’Ephron déploie ultimement aussi bien le futurisme que la nostalgie, de façon sélective, pour rendre le cadre narratif plus actuel, et donc plus acceptable pour l’audience, et faire une intrigue romantique plus plausible.

Les ‘Mardis’ de Stéphane Mallarmé: mythes et réalités by Gordon Millan

250 Reviews aesthetic values such as: the relationship between art, the canon, and a national literary identity in the lightof Franco-Prussian tensions; sincerity,authenticity, and genius versus influence, imitation, and pastiche; the hesitations between artistic theory and practice, myth and modernity, idealism and materialism; the overlaps between sculpture, painting, music, and poetry; the antagonism between an elitist, staunchly apolitical art and bourgeois society; and the limits of teaching, analysis, and criticism itself.Given thatmany of these have emerged as central themes in studies of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, andMallarme in recent years, this excellent critical edition deserves to inspire fresh research on Banville's verse, theatre, and prose, since itreveals just how much he can contribute to our understanding of the central enjeux of nineteenth-century French literature. University of St Andrews David Evans Les 'Mardis' de Stephane Mallarme: mythes et realties. By Gordon Millan. Saint Genouph: Nizet. 2008. 134 pp. 13.50. ISBN 978-2-7078-1305-3. The regular Tuesday meetings at the Rue de Rome apartment that Stephane Mal larme occupied from 1875 until his death in 1898 have taken on amythical status over theyears, with Mallarme emerging as a figurewho prepared his conversations about literature and the arts, and delivered them in a masterful manner. Gordon Millan sets out to unpack a number of assumptions about the 'Mardis', while also exploring why certainmyths came about. Reliable documentary evidence about the 'Mardis' is difficult to come by. In some cases, only anecdotal evidence reported several years later by 'Mardistes' such as Camille Mauclair or Henri de Regnier remains. Reconstructing what happened during the 'Mardis' over a fourteen-year span (the first 'Mardi' having taken place in 1884) is, therefore, an unenviable task.What Millan has achieved here is to bring together in one place a range of documentary evidence drawn from correspondence, memoirs, and even novels. Notwithstanding this broad base of documentation, the resulting study still comes in at just over 130 pages, ofwhich eighty pages reproduce the source material which Millan uses to reconstruct the 'Mardis'. Millan acknowledges this stumbling-block, calling it a 'difficulte majeure' (p. 13) while also recognizing that the very nature of the 'Mardis', as evenings for conversation, means theywere ephemeral. That Millan has generated a study of this length from such elusive source data, then, is a remarkable feat.Other Mallarme scholars have touched only briefly on the 'Mardis', and Millan rightly aims to rectify this,providing scholars with amanual towhich they can refer in order to establish more clearly what took place on a specific 'Mardi'. To this end, Millan contests the erroneous assumption that the 'Mardis' had a similar character over the years; instead he explores the evolution of the evening meetings, according towho came in and out ofMallarme's home (whether fleeting visitors such as Oscar Wilde, or regulars such as Villiers de LTsle-Adam). Dividing his study into two clear sections,Millan firstof all offersa brief biographical synop sis of how the 'Mardis' came about and an analysis of how themyth of the 'Mardis' MLR, 105.1, 2010 251 was formed, followed, in the second section, by a chronological reproduction of all the source data he has been able to locate. This second section will be ofmost value to theMallarme scholar wishing to discover the kind of topics that seemed to be of importance toMallarme at a particular moment in time. It is the first section, however, which is themore engaging read, and will be of interest to those who are less familiar with Mallarme's world. In it, Millan raises questions about the nature of performance, the role ofwomen in the 'Mardis', and the type of figures from the world of literature, art, and music that frequented Mallarme's home. Millan posits an intriguing suggestion in the closing pages of his analysis: that the purpose of the 'Mardis' was pour faire entrer la poesie [. . .]dans la vie de tous les jours' (p. 46). It is a shame, however, that this idea is not wholly confirmed by the evidence that remains, since many of the accounts of the 'Mardis' tend to focus more on who was present on a particular evening rather than providing any detailed rendition of...