La Force De Research Articles

«Bleuet» by the Guillaum Apolliner`S poem: the first war song by Francis Poulenc

Relevance of the study. The vocal miniature Bleuet is one of the pearls of Poulenc's chamber and vocal work. This is evidenced by its numerous performances at concerts dedicated to the remembrance of those killed in the First World War. However, even on the pages of the fundamental monographs of the leading European researchers of Poulenc's work, this opus is given literally a few lines, and it’s absolutely absent in the Ukrainian musicological space. The lack of research on the vocal miniature Bleuet, its indisputable importance for a deeper understanding of the whole artistic world of Francis Poulenc, as well as the exceptional topicality of the subject of this mélodie in the modern Ukrainian context determine the relevance of its research.
 The main objective of the study is to reveal the specificity of Francis Poulenc's creative awareness of the war’s subject through Guillaume Apollinaire's poetry in mélodie Bleuet ("Cornflower").
 The scientific novelty is determined by the fact that Francis Poulenc's chamber-vocal miniature Bleuet by the Guillaume Apollinaire’s words is being investigated in Ukrainian musicology for the first time.
 The methodology of the article is based on historical, biographical, phenomenological and genre-stylistic research methods of analysis.
 Results / findings and conclusions. Bleuet (1939) is one of the most inspired mélodies in the work by Francis Poulenc. A moving epitaph to a young recruit, imbued with a sense of humility and tenderness, it’s the first creative realization by the compositor of the Second World War’s tragedy. This miniature appears in the same row as the great compositor's monumental works, which reflect his spiritual search and are an echo of the deep religious consciousness. Patriotism is interpreted through the sacredness of the sacrifice of a young man who "knows death better than life." The lyricism that permeates the mélodie is extremely intimate in its essence.
 To some extent, the autobiographical nature of the recruit's image (due to the events of the First World War in the life of the composer) is significantly strengthened by the commonality of the situation's archetype with Blanche de la Force (the main character of the opera Dialogues of the Carmelites), with whom Francis Poulenc personified himself while working on the opera. This proves that Poulenc never sought to separate his creativity from his own “I”.
 Regardless of the specifics of the chamber genre mélodie and the brevity of Bleuet (54 measures), due to the multi-layered and meaningful poetry by Guillaume Apollinaire, Francis Poulenc's miniature impresses with its depth, semantic polyphony, a kind of "crucifixion" between the verbal series and the musical text.

Miracles of Love: French Fairy Tales by Women

Miracles of Love: French Fairy Tales by Women

Metamorphosis: Embodied Narrative at Play in the Seventeenth-Century Fairy Tale

Abstract: This article discusses how the seventeenth-century French fairy tale investigates embodiment through the figure of metamorphosis in the examples of Charles Perrault's "The Mirror or the Metamorphosis of Orante" (1661), Charlotte-Rose de La Force's "Les jeux d'esprit" (1701) and "Plus Belle que Fée" (1698), and Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy's "La Chatte Blanche" (1696). These fairy-tale metamorphoses do not present a rich embodied language, but rather invite us to reconsider the dichotomies between mind and body, at stake in Cartesian philosophy, and between cognition and culture, central to today's conceptualization of the mind as "extended" beyond the body. Deploying the marvelous in playful ways, the conteuses take embodiment beyond the limits of everyday mimesis.

New Books across the Disciplines

New Books across the Disciplines

Excalibur, Durendal, Joyeuse: La force de l'épée by Martin Aurell

Reviewed by: Excalibur, Durendal, Joyeuse: La force de l'épée by Martin Aurell Jodie Miller Martin Aurell, Excalibur, Durendal, Joyeuse: La force de l'épée (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France/Humensis, 2021), 320 pp., 16 ills. In the medieval imagination, stories of the sword engendered awe, wonder, and superstition. Not only did the sword hold mysterious powers that exerted influence over the fate of its bearer, but it was also imbued with a soul and a personality. The possessor of the sword and the weapon coexisted in a spiritual symbiosis that could lead to victory or defeat. The courageous chevalier touted an unbeatable blade, whereas the coward found himself abandoned by his weapon in the thick of battle. In Excalibur, Durendal, Joyeuse: La force de l'épée (Excalibur, Durendal, Joyeuse: The power of the sword), Martin Aurell provides an impressively thorough analysis of the supernatural dimension of the sword. The title reflects three of the most legendary swords and their bearers—King Arthur and the mythical Excalibur, Roland and his beloved Durendal, and Charlemagne and the unrivaled Joyeuse. Emphasis is made on the sword's symbolism, both religious and [End Page 221] secular, as seen in sources from the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The work is separated into four chapters: the blacksmith's trade, the marvel of the sword, the sword as the symbol of chivalry, and the two swords of Christianity. In the end, the story of the sword is just as much the story of the individuals around it: the forger, the knight, the lady, the king, the preacher, and even the fairy. The first chapter introduces the reader to the blacksmith's trade by means of research in the field of experimental archaeology, whereby medieval smithery practices are tested using lower temperatures (only above 1,538 degrees Celsius / 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit does iron liquify, allowing it to flow into a mold). Before the fourteenth century, the creation of a metallurgic masterpiece was beholden to the quality of the iron ore due to the lack of technology creating temperatures hot enough for the iron to melt. The medieval blacksmith needed exceptional savoir faire to carry out the trade. The myth of the blacksmith is essential to better understand the nostalgia of chivalric glory evoked by the sword. For example, Aurell traces the figure of the blacksmith back to the legend of Völundr, the mythical forger of swords, along with the blacksmithing dwarves of Germanic legend. Once adopted into the Christian context, the blacksmith was demystified and subsequently demonized as a maleficent figure. For example, the French enfer (hell or the underworld) is connected to en-fer (made of iron). Like alchemy, blacksmithery depended on the transmission of secrets, often considered to be sorcery. In consideration of the sword as an artifact, Aurell mentions the twelfth-century chanson de geste dedicated to Raoul of Cambrai, which takes an ekphrastic form in its description of the sword's perfection. The aesthetic focus often falls on the hilt, the rigidity and radiance of the blade, and the luxury of the baldric (a belt worn over the shoulder to which the scabbard is attached). In turn, these qualities reflect the status of the sword's possessor. However, the sword can also hold other symbolic importance, that of a warning system, a religious signpost, or the mark of belonging. For example, in Norse and Celtic mythology, the blade sometimes has its own luminescence. In the biblical account of the garden, Adam and Eve are kept out by cherubim with a flaming and flashing sword. The bestowal of the baldric, as seen in Chrétien de Troyes's thirteenth-century text La Quête du saint Graal, is a reference to the dubbing ceremony of Roman legionnaires. Overall, this chapter shows that the mythology surrounding the sword indicates how the medieval mindset is constantly bent on better understanding both the material and immaterial worlds. The second chapter considers the duality of the sword, at once a practical tool and an object of marvel (from the Latin, mirabile). The sword is the tangible proof of chivalric distinction and wonder. For example, the Chanson de mon Cid (ca. 1200) describes the...

Семейные стратегии 1680-х гг.

he article examines the case of the annulment of a marriage between Mademoiselle de La Force and Charles de Briou, which took place in 1687. Although contemporaries often discussed this scandalous incident, its causes are not completely clear. But the situation becomes more intelligible if we look at it from the point of view of the family strategy of different clans and the court policy of Louis XIV.

Muhammad ibn al‐Zain's basin (baptistère de Saint Louis)

AbstractThe traditional baptismal font of the kings of France for centuries, the so‐called baptistère de Saint Louis is part of 1750s–1900s French national legend. Against all evidence, the name suggests that it is the spoils of Louis IX's crusade of 1250–1254. In fact, that large, copper vessel of exceptional quality, with gold and silver figural decoration, was probably produced in Damascus or Cairo in 1320–1340, almost a century after French downfall at the hands of the Mamluks in Northern Egypt in 1250. As part of the crown treasure of France and because of its outstanding artistry, it is one of the most thoroughly researched Islamicate objects in the Louvre. The association with Louis IX is pure fiction that illustrates the nonsensical and yet persuasive economies of French national legends. Paradoxically, the ransom that the French army paid to leave Egypt in 1250 was one of the stepping stones for the rise of the Mamluk dynasty, renowned for gold and silver incrusted metalwork objects, such as the basin. In another paradoxical turn, the Mamluks who ruled the Central Islamic area from 1250 to 1517 are the military elite recruited from enslaved non‐Muslims, including Turkic and Christian populations. The basin invites us to connect the points on the archipelago that includes France, the Eastern Mediterranean (fall of Acre, 1291), Cyprus and Armenia under the Lusignans, Sicily, Naples, and the South of Italy under the Angevins. Further still, this splendid and still enigmatic work of art brings together Ming China, Mongol Persia, Mamluk Islam, and Gothic France. This paper includes the earliest French description of the basin, from 1606, published in 1642 and reproduced later, including in 1742 (Piganiol de la Force, 1742). The paper also discusses the French tradition of medievalists opposing white supremacist fantasy of white, Christian medieval origins of the French nation. Finally, the paper notes some differences between French and U.S. mentalités in relation to race, in the context of recent events (2019), based on the French ideal of republican universalism, citing such symptomatic events as the replacing of the word “race” by “sex” in the French constitution, the reluctance to base activism on collective identitaire claims, the reluctance to think in terms of race and use race‐related or communautariste terms with which to think about complex social, historical, or artistic rights and responsibilities, and the prohibition to collect race‐based statistics, but also, often in advance of similar laws enacted in other countries, such acts as the Taubira law of 2001 that recognizes France's responsibility for slavery and slave trade beginning in the fifteenth century as a crime against humanity and provides for teaching, research, and commemoration.

Les héritières de Psyché au XVIIe siècle: Parallèle de La Fontaine et de La Force

Late seventeenth-century France was fascinated by the myth of Psyche. The Greek princess inspired not only Jean de La Fontaine, who rewrote Apuleius’ original fable (1669); more indirectly, Psyche’s misfortune and happily ever after were a fertile base in the genre of the fairy tale. Whereas the influence of the myth of Psyche has been discussed for the famous fairy tales by Charles Perrault and the 'contes de fees litteraires' by Madame d’Aulnoy, this essay investigates its relation with 'Plus Belle que Fee' (1697) by the less known Mademoiselle de La Force. A comparison between the ancient myth, rewritten by La Fontaine, and the modern – and even subversive – fairy tale sheds light on the literary and socio-political tensions of the late seventeenth century, for La Force participates in the 'querelle des Anciens et des Modernes' and in the 'querelle des femmes'.

Abstracts

Reviewed by: Marges du premier Verlaine Jay Lutz Murphy, Steve. Marges du premier Verlaine. Romantisme et modernités 71. Paris: Champion, 2003. Pp. 423. ISBN2-7453-0866-1 Generations of readers have disparaged the literary capacity of Paul Verlaine in the 1880s during a period Alain Buisine terms the poet's "descente aux enfers" (Verlaine: Histoire d'un corps, 1995). At the same time, the appreciation of Verlaine's earlier poetry has been closely linked to the notion of the poet as mythical bohemian satyr hobbling from one café to another in the Quartier Latin of the 1880s and '90s. There are exceptions. It is to be noted that Eléonore Zimmermann explored all of Verlaine's periods with insight and care in Magies de Verlaine (1967, rpt 1981). Her study conceived [End Page 452] of Verlaine's poetry as being characterized by constant change and development. For many readers, however, the poetry of Verlaine has come to exude the enticing, but slightly stale, odor of "fadeur," term chosen by Jean-Pierre Richard for his influential and provocative study of Verlaine in 1955 (Poésie et profondeur). Richard makes a point in his study of stating that "fadeur" is not "insipidité." He writes: "c'est une absence de gôut devenue positive, réelle, permanente, agaçante comme une provocation" (éd. "Points" Seuil, 170). "Insipidity," "sickliness" and "pointlessness," however, are the translations found for "fadeur" in one French-English dictionary (Harrap's New Shorter, 1978); and, although le Petit Robert confirms Richard's notion of "fade" as "manque de goût," it also gives a second and figurative meaning: "qui est sans caractère, sans intérêt particulier." It is the latter, and common, definition of "fade" which Steve Murphy questions in his important new book Marges du premier Verlaine. In the spirit of Alain Buisine's reinterpretation of the biographical framing of Verlaine's work, Murphy gives readers a detailed and compelling study of the early Verlaine (1858-1871). Buisine notes in the forward to his study that a painting of the young Verlaine by Frédéric Bazille (Portrait de Paul Verlaine en troubadour, currently part of the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art) showing the poet with "[a]llure soignée, très fine moustache et léger collier d'une barbe naissante" inspired him to write his biography of "Pauvre Lelian" (9-11). Murphy, similarly, reminds us in the forward to his study that the Verlaine who met Rimbaud in 1871 was a young man recently married who was about to become a father and who enjoyed a certain reputation among the Parnassians and a rather enviable financial situation. "Ce n'est certes pas," he writes, "le Verlaine lâche, pour ne pas dire pusillanime, de la légende, ni un poète entiché de la fadeur, que Rimbaud chercha en Verlaine, mais un poète de la force" (11). Murphy then procedes to recreate this young and intelligent radical through a careful study of the poetry and parody published by Verlaine in his youth, as well as from early poems first published in the 1880s and from recovered early work left unpublished or forgotten. The study also allows Murphy to begin to write a new narrative of the Parnasse movement and period which, as the critic points out in the conclusion to his book, could lead to the reopening of a chapter in literary history which has been prematurely closed (395). Murphy provides new and original close readings of poems in Verlaine's first published volume, Poèmes saturniens. In analyzing poems such as "Après Trois Ans" and "Nevermore" ("Souvenir, souvenir, que me veux-tu? L'automne"), the critic makes a convincing case for the overwhelming influence of Baudelaire and shows how Verlaine tries to mediate between the compelling styles of Hugo and Baudelaire. The study also focuses upon Verlaine's political positions in poetry from an early age and the seeming renunciation of political discourse through participation in the Parnasse. "Monsieur Prudhomme," Verlaine's first published poem, serves as a convincing example of political engagement. Murphy then compellingly teases out a view of "l'Art pour l'Art" and the...

L'ange du patriarche by Kettly Mars

Reviewed by: L'ange du patriarche by Kettly Mars Linda Alcott Mars, Kettly. L'ange du patriarche. Mercure de France, 2018. ISBN 978-2-7152-4695-9. Pp. 304. In this latest fictional work by one of Haiti's most prominent female authors, that country's Voodoo culture and Christianity clash in a gripping modern-day tale of spiritual warfare. In the fast-moving narrative, we are presented with a family's tortured battle with a seemingly inviolable curse put in place by a malevolent angel. This malediction, due to a sacrifice gone wrong and initiated by one of the family's shortsighted and selfish ancestors, Horacius Melfort, drives the text from beginning to end. With a wide geographical reach, Mars's depiction of the physical and personal wreckage brought on by the curse touches family members both young and old alike living in Haiti, France, and the United States. The text's principal protagonist, Emmanuela, first must evaluate her own insouciance with respect to the risks this curse may have on her and her family, as well as filter through the contemptuous opinions of her lover, Serge, the voodoo counteractions offered by her best friend, Patricia, and the biblically-based guidance espoused by her elderly cousin, Couz, whose destiny as a spiritual servant is central to the text's conclusion. Focusing primarily on the threat of incestuous relations between witting and unwitting victims, Mars paints the consequences of the curse on multiple levels with powerful depictions of encroaching and unavoidable harm. A ticking time bomb of opportunity propels the text forward, ensnaring the novel's characters into its otherworldly wake. Emmanuela's son, Alain, who suffers from nightmares and insomnia, becomes especially vulnerable when Vanika, the daughter fathered in secret by Emmanuela's now deceased husband and Alain's father, André Lenois, sets her sights on Alain as a potential lover. The curse's malevolent hand is also imposed upon twins, Samantha and Beverly Longway, whose grisly death at age 17 is orchestrated by the evil spirits that have been prowling around their home, waiting to inflict "la dette de haine" (269) on their birthday. Indeed, sinister signs of pending demise proliferate in the novel, such as mysterious burnt odors, paintings regularly askew on the walls, and a computer screen taken over by invisible forces. As a counter to the mounting threats of annihilation, Emmanuela undergoes the voodoo act of "le lavé tèt" (91) and seeks refuge and strength from the Bible, reciting portions of psalms 23, 46 and 91, repeatedly referencing them as a call for [End Page 261] help to the Archangel Michael as Couz directed: "Quand je marche dans la vallée de l'ombre de la mort, je ne crains aucun mal, car tu es avec moi... Ces mots lui viennent à l'esprit et lui donnent de la force " (150). In the end, Mars completes the narrative as she often has done in other works by offering her readers a bit of shelter from the storm. From a broad lens perspective, her text emphasizes the religious complexities in Haiti which continue to influence many of its citizens. It also points to the highly charged energy with which contemporary Haitian authors portray their country's conflictual and/or complementary spiritual leanings. Linda Alcott University of Colorado, Denver Copyright © 2019 American Association of Teachers of French

Mécanismes de survie en milieu hostile par by Oliva Rosenthal

Reviews 281 Rosenthal, Oliva. Mécanismes de survie en milieu hostile. Paris:Verticales, 2014. ISBN 978-2-070-14634-5. Pp. 192.16,90 a. They say don’t judge a book by its cover, but the colorized still from the 1960 British sci-fi classic Village of the Damned gracing the cover of Rosenthal’s tenth novel gives a strong indication of the eerie, mysterious foreboding found inside.As the novel opens the reader is immediately immersed in a post-apocalyptic world in which the unnamed narrator leaves another female “abandonnée sur le bas-côté de la route, de toute façon je ne pouvais plus rester avec elle, ça devenait trop dangereux” (11). We never learn who these people are precisely, why one had to be left behind, and why the other is on the run. The only constant is fear and uncertainty: “[L]à-haut ils m’attendent, là-haut ils me tueront, je n’aurai pas la force de courir, ni de crier, ni de tuer alors qu’ici je peux reconstruire une dernière fois tout ce par quoi je suis passée avant de finir” (26). It is only over the novel’s five long chapters, and especially in the last one,“Le retour,”that the narrator and reader are finally able to piece together who these people may be and whether the abandoned girl on the first page is truly dead, dead to the narrator, or if perhaps there is no difference between those two states. Reaching the novel’s conclusion, however, requires a great deal of patience. Although aesthetically pleasing, the writing frequently turns overly abstract and opaque: “Je dois aplatir le monde. Dès que le relief s’abîme, on est moins exposé aux mauvaises surprises. Dans un monde en deux dimensions, il est rare qu’un être, un objet ou un événement imprévu surgissent” (55). This abstruseness and lack of narrative line are compounded by what initially appears to be a completely separate second text, interspersed within the first and demarcated by italics. These random paragraphs, whose subjects revolve around near-death experiences, crime scene investigations, and medical emergencies, are much more concrete and scientific. Eventually the two texts begin to intersect, albeit tangentially, and parallels can be drawn, ultimately creating a commentary on and development of the themes and actions presented in the primary narrative, with a concomitant increase in tension.As the narrative progresses through chapters describing an intense and traumatic childhood game of hide-and-seek or the protagonist’s relationship with her friends after her move to Paris at the age of 18, we learn that really all that we are—all our surroundings, friends, family, and foes—can be a “milieu hostile.” Should one leave everything behind and dedicate oneself to photographing the invisible, as one of the survivors of a near-death experience does, should the narrator try to “creus[er] un pli nouveau où me loger, un pli intérieur et hors de portée” (167), or can one find the means necessary to discover solace? Bradley University (IL) Alexander Hertich ...

Sur Les Transferts Juridiques: Une Analyse Conceptuelle (On Legal Transfers: A Conceptual Analysis)

French Abstract: Jusque dans les dernieres decennies, les effets de droit d’un transfert juridique appartenaient au champ d’investigation du Droit compare. La situation a change du tout au tout depuis. Une analyse de la terminologie est suivi par les developpements de technicite, pour en conclure par les contrastes, critiques, et alternatives dans le transferts de Droit. Finalement, la destinee des reformes modernisantes depend de la force selective du systeme cible, de plus l'environnement de ce dernier determiner le destin final du Droit. C'est le message qui peut aussi aider a exposer les directions, les differentes ecoles et les sujets d'actualite pour lesquels les etudes historico-comparatives et theoriques seront developpes dans le futur. Car c'est mieux de trouver ce dont le sol et son ecosysteme ont besoin, et le jardinier peut aussi passer derriere.English Abstract: In the age of globalisation, the issue of legal effects ending in the reception of complete texts has become a widespread phenomenon while its scholarly elaboration hardly keeps pace with this. Not only its conceptual framework is missing but its practical experiences still need to be clarified. Therefore common regularities underlying it are still to be described and the lessons are to be drawn from it. Not even its terminology is yet crystallized. Reception, octroi, export, transfer, borrowing, transplant, foreign aid, assistance, Law and Development, Modernisation through Law, droit du developpement are equally to conceptualise different characteristics from differing aspects. Therefore their critical overview allows theoretical foundations to be elaborated and the ontology of giving legal patterns to be drawn. The positivistic attitude that identifies law as a rule by in-law positivation, complemented by the law’s interpretative medium and the entire legal culture behind the entire social enterprise law, taken as one conglomerate in a totality approach, is thereby transcended. This perceives half the past century’s efforts at generating such legal effects as a process with obvious successes but also as accompanied by considerable failures. With regard to the self-assertion of interests in the background, the question itself is gradually elevated to social policy heights, with the aim and nature of globalisation in focus. After all, do we act narcissistically, inflicting our traditions on others, or can we support foreign peoples selflessly, helping them to find their own way to optimum improvements? Is our interest driven by mere selfish hunger for more power, or by helpful intention? Eventually, which pattern do we prefer from among the stunt of transference of will by a circus showman, on the one hand, or a gardener’s humility attending all round at all times, on the other? True, it may require sacrifices to withstand the temptation by the former, yet only a way leading back to the lessons drawn from experience can be successful in the long run. For ultimately the destiny of all modernising reforms is up to the selective force of the targeted system, moreover, the latter’s environment may determine the law’s eventual fate. This is the message that can also help to outline directions, schools of and topical interests in which historico-comparative and theoretical studies are to be developed in the future. For it is better to find out first what the soil and its living milieu need, and the gardener may also come afterwards.

Rival Sisters and Vengeance Motifs in the contes de fées of d'Aulnoy, Lhéritier and Perrault

It has often been acknowledged by scholars that Mme d’Aulnoy is like many of her contemporaries—Mlles Lheritier, Bernard, and de La Force, Mmes de Murat, and d’Auneuil—in that most of their fairy tales deal with heroines who dress as men, venture outside the house to redeem their families’ honor, and often question seventeenthcentury assumptions about invariable gender characteristics (Harries 39). But scholars have also pointed out the dubious manner in which the conteuses are serving women’s interests, especially considering the submission of the heroines to a male code, and the taming of female desire according to typical male views of female nature—all points which mark the morals attached to the end of almost every narrative, or else the conventional ending with a marriage.1 Although I

La balance des blancs by Jacques Henric

La structure du livre est à la mesure du sujet, puisque le texte, à l’image de ses personnages qui luttent contre l’ouragan, semble profiter du chaos polyphonique qu’il adopte comme contrainte pour entreprendre de dépasser l’éclatement . Le tout résulte en un chant cohérent et fort. La force de ce texte est de faire alterner des paragraphes appartenant aux fils narratifs distincts en maintenant l’intérêt des lecteurs pour chaque histoire sans que le dispositif textuel devienne trop lourd ou trop contraignant. California State University, San Marcos Marion Geiger HENRIC, JACQUES. La balance des blancs. Paris: Seuil, 2011. ISBN 978-2-02-104511-6. Pp. 232. 17 a. This story, resembling in turn a confession, a meditation, an essay, might best be described as an epic of the personal. It opens on 18 June 2007 as its author recovers from an operation he has just undergone. The date is an apt one, because what Jacques Henric offers here is a tale of resistance. In this case the invader is cancer, and more particularly prostate cancer, a disease that poses a special threat to this individual in view of his reputation as a ladies’ man. Henric takes it as an excellent omen that his surgeon should bear the name of one of his most cherished heroes, Casanova; moreover that figure (the Venetian memoirist, not the Parisian doctor) strides through these pages with authority, serving as the patron saint of the narrator’s postoperative progress. Henric sketches that progress in very considerable detail, sending back regular dispatches from the front, as it were. Different readers will react to that narrative strategy in different ways. We may be glad to learn, for example, that “Une demi-érection est de toute évidence un signe encourageant” (41), or we may feel that we have been given a bit too much information. When with admirable tact Dr. Casanova advises him that he will need a very patient, resourceful partner in order to return to full sexual activity, Henric coyly lets it be known that his life companion is Catherine Millet. Visibly relieved, his doctor predicts a quick and entire recovery. Indeed Henric muses at one point that a close rereading of La vie sexuelle de Catherine M. might itself suffice to set him back on the path to potency. Lest it be imagined that the narrator restricts himself to the domain of the crudely physical, it should be noted that Henric spends a great deal of time fretting about the image of himself that he has constructed over the years, “ma glorieuse image de porte-phallus” (88), and what is to become of it. Whether it engages the concrete or the abstract however, the fundamental rule of this narration is a simple one, and easily articulated: “Le totem Phallus toujours à la fête!” (157). Perhaps Henric eventually senses that his reader has become tired of such a feast, or perhaps he has found his own attention wandering; in any case his reflections occasionally do turn to other things, and in those moments his tale is of more general interest. He invokes Tintoretto painting Susanna and the Elders, for instance, and attempts to articulate the artist’s thoughts, as well as those of Giulietta, his model and mistress, and even those of Susanna herself. Ranging more broadly and calling upon literary figures from Dante to Cervantes to Montaigne, Pascal, Hölderlin, Tolstoy, Proust, Joyce, Nabokov, Pessoa, Guyotat, 988 FRENCH REVIEW 85.5 and Sollers, and upon philosophers like Kant, Schopenhauer, Hegel, and Marx, Henric reveals himself as a creature of the book. It becomes gradually clear, too, that his real obsession is the approach of old age and death. He broods over poets’ duels, literary suicides, the assassinations of writers, political violence, and the execution of traitors, or of people unjustly accused of treason. He dreams of the Orient and of Africa—most especially of Africa, “le continent noir de la sexualité féminine” (208). There, Henric’s encounter with a young woman named Lisa will facilitate his convalescence in ways that he might not have predicted. As he photographs her again and again, the blackness of her skin calls into...

The Fabulous Imagination: On Montaigne's Essays (review)

Reviewed by: The Fabulous Imagination: On Montaigne's Essays Kathleen Long Lawrence D. Kritzman, The Fabulous Imagination: On Montaigne's Essays New York: Columbia University Press, 2009, x + 227 pp. Quite simply put, The Fabulous Imagination is essential reading for any student or scholar of Montaigne's essays. Lawrence D. Kritzman analyzes the imagination, one of the intellectual faculties most theorized by early modern philosophers, as the hinge that both connects this seemingly distant period to our own and allows these periods to move together (and apart) in various revelatory ways. He consistently balances a profound understanding of Montaigne's essays with a broad and diverse knowledge of postmodern theory, in the process offering illuminating readings of these texts. The imagination both informs the constructions that Kritzman critiques—gender, sexuality, social identity, friendship, political hierarchies, cultural notions of death, family, illness, the law—and allows the subject to create his own narrative space relative to these, a space in which difference thrives. Kritzman begins with a meditation on the question of gender and Montaigne's critiques of the cultural construction of this category. This chapter offers cogent readings of the essays "On a Monstrous Child" ("D'un enfant monstrueux") and "On the Force of the Imagination" ("De la force de l'imagination"). Relative to the former, he demonstrates that the emphasis on the visual underscores the monster as an unclassifiable sign even as it reframes it as natural (rather than, as was often done in the early modern period, qualifying it as outside of the realm of nature). Similarly, a shepherd who cannot be classified as masculine because he lacks the appropriate sign (male genitals) nonetheless expresses a masculine sexuality, thus leading to a very different reading of masculine/ feminine difference seemingly contained within himself. In "On the Force of the Imagination," gender and sexuality seem largely driven by the imagination, and thus become unstable categories that shift with different circumstances and contexts. Given this instability, how can a fixed gender identity be established? Having already hinted at this connection in his first chapter, Kritzman extends this question to a broader epistemological realm in his second one. We engender monsters through "unbridled speculation" (Kritzman 54) and allow our reason to be dominated by the imagination, but not always in a liberating [End Page 258] way. We believe we know, in spite of the evidence of the instability of knowledge, and thus block the more pleasurable and creative aspects of the imagination in favor of a belief in the possibility of "absolute knowledge" (Kritzman 55). By questioning our understanding of gender identity, and of identity tout court, Montaigne counters our belief in the possibility of absolute, unchanging knowledge. In this context, Kritzman reads Montaigne's friendship with Étienne de la Boëtie as a relationship of constant revision and renegotiation (in the third chapter), and his understanding of death as a constant testing of hypotheses and a constant "working through" of something which cannot be represented in any adequate way (in the fourth chapter). As Kritzman's study progresses, it becomes apparent that the imagination not only misleads us, but diverts us from that which we cannot understand as well as that which we cannot withstand. The imagination becomes not only a way of working through, but of working around, and thus a survival strategy for harsh times. This valorization of difference, and of the imagination as the space of difference, allows Marie de Gournay to imagine herself as a writer—and thus to become one—because Montaigne has imagined her thus. Kritzman returns to the visual nature of difference, first evoked in the reading of the monstrous child, in his chapter on "On Physiognomy" ("De la phisionomie"): "For Montaigne, the appearance of a thing always already constitutes its otherness, since our perception constrains us and allows what is seen to be viewed equivocally" (Kritzman 137–37). Here, the process of reading liberates the self from an "imaginary superego" (Kritzman 153). The essay "multiplies physiognomies and therefore refuses to eradicate difference." As becomes clear in Kritzman's final chapter, "Of Experience" ("De l'experience"), this difference resides within the self as well as in external objects and in the interplay between...

Re-Branding Post 1945 Paris: Exhibiting Powers and Contemporary Art

This paper will examine the expanded role Contemporary art has assumed in rebranding Paris, France’s flagship capital, as a cutting edge, technological, innovative and competitive global city. Paris has effectively incorporated contemporary art into the fabric of the whole city with exhibitions such as those originating at the Grand Palais spreading to venues throughout the inner and outer ‘quartier’. France has used arts and culture to claim supremacy in the world whether colonial or local for centuries with Paris the ultimate ‘brand’. Post WWII Paris however, saw this brand diminished and claims to artistic supremacy replaced by New York. In an effort to regain some relevancy Paris, and by extension France, began the process of re-branding concordant with political, economic and technological advancement through the fervent promotion of contemporary art. Contemporary Paris through contemporary art aspires to a transnational and post-national site of spectacle; a leading locus for art to be consumed. Paris’s mass contemporary art consumption era began in 1972 with De Gaulle’s efforts to replace military and imperial power with cultural dominance (though the recent concurrent inaugurations of outposts for the French military and the Louvre in Abu Dhabi may suggest a ‘rapprochement’ of the domains), inaugurating a litany of new contemporary exhibitions, art fairs, monuments and museums. Furthermore, with the redefinition of contemporary French art from an art produced by French artists to art produced in the “territory of France”, this universalizing re-branding of contemporary art attempts to validate Paris’s claim to global cultural supremacy. I discuss particular events such as the art fair FIAC, La Force de L’ Art and Monumenta to illustrate the use of Contemporary art to shape and brand contemporary Paris.

Ararat and the Event of the Mother

Cet article emploie le concept deleuzien de l’événement comme modèle pour élucider le regard que pose Egoyan sur le génocide arménien dans Ararat. Comme l’événement deleuzien, l’événement de l’holocauste arménien échappe aux conditions rigides de la représentation. Son auto-génération et ses modifications continuelles se prêtent plutôt à un paradigme performatif capable d’expliquer le statu de non-complétude de l’événement : ses effets de réverbération dans le passé, le présent et l’avenir. Dans Ararat, la force persistante de l’événement ne se retrouve pas dans l’une de ses nombreuses manifestations médiatiques (film, conférence, photographie, peinture, vidéo), mais dans l’effet de réverbération de ces différentes reconstitutions. La force de l’événement se situe dans sa transitivité et sa dispersion, sa capacité d’exister dans plusieurs espaces et plusieurs temps simultanément. Ainsi, plutôt que de viser une actualisation fixe et restrictive de l’événement par l’intermédiaire d’une interprétation documentaire ou d’une représentation fictive des faits, Ararat « contre-actualise » le génocide arménien en convertissant cet événement en son noyau affectif: l’événement de la mère.

Montaigne's Stages, and Witches

Reading two of Montaigne's essays – I, 21: “De la force de l'imagination”, and III, 11: “Des boyteux” – this study argues that it is no longer urgent to construct Montaigne as a liberal free-thinker on witchcraft. Instead, it appears that he was deeply rooted in the conceptual turbulences of his own time. This rootedness, nevertheless, escapes the local and comes to its readers as general and powerful. How this happens, a wonder of reception history, involves moving his local witches onto a stage with its own historicity, a stage of the imagination itself.

Vera Philosophia and Law in Montaigne's "De la cruaute"

Vera Philosophia and Law in Montaigne's De la cruauté Sue W. Farquhar Montaigne's Essais are rarely included in the curriculum of philosophy outside France. With the exception of the "Apologie de Raimond Sebond," his essays are more readily seen by non-specialists as 'table-talk' than philosophy, recalling Plutarch's aphorisms in the Moralia or the witty, practical wisdom of an amateur like Benjamin Franklin.1 Recently, such an authoritative source as the Oxford Companion to Philosophy conceded that Montaigne's insights were "recognizably philosophical" yet reserved the distinction of "first French philosopher" for Descartes. Montaigne's popularity as a homespun sage stems in part from his conversational 'disorderly' style combined with an unrelenting hostility to all systems of thought, scholastic and ancient. For readers attuned to his diatribes against pedants and dogmatists, his sudden transformation in the "Apologie de Raimond Sebond" (II, 12)into "un philosophe impremedité et fortuite" is somewhatstartling.2 Having discovered by chance his new vocation, he impulsively embraces philosophy, not as a systematic search for universal and unchanging truths, but as a historical project. How, then, does moral philosophy in the Essais coincide with the aims of philosophy seen, not from a post-Cartesian perspective, but through the eyes of a sixteenth-century humanist like Montaigne whose training and professional experience were intimately bound with the law? Assuming that Montaigne's reflections on legal issues, or the rule of law, in private and public life involve more than a topical interest, I shall relate his personal inquiry to the prevailing legal philosophy of his time, acclaimed by leading French jurists as the vera philosophia, or in the words of François Baudouin, "the true and supreme philosophy . . . contained in laws which pertain to public action."3 Montaigne's ethical approach, while profoundly informed by the law, is also in striking ways the antithesis of the legal doctrine which extolled the laws as true philosophy. At stake is a certain conception of nomos, a normative world of law, held together by narratives which offer not only models for behavior and bodies of rules but also problems to be explored and "worlds to be inhabited."4 The aims of vera philosophia will be compared initially with Montaigne's notion of "la vraie philosophie," a term appearing in several essays, to show that his inquiry partly fits sixteenth-century [End Page 39] juridical definitions of a civil science yet differs markedly in tone and emphasis. Attention will then be directed in "De la force de l'imagination" (I, 21) to his theory and use of the fictional example, a key discursive strategy in the Essais, to suggest that he draws on a legal concept of fiction to redefine "vera philosophia." His own articulation of "la vraie philosophie" is of a humbler, more skeptical sort, embedded in ordinary practices and the historicity of events. As such, it opens his discourse in "De la cruauté" (II, 11) to questions of alterity and engages a sharp critique of the juridical ideology informing vera philosophia. In his study of human behaviors, Montaigne admitted that universalist assumptions and methods simply cannot account for the inconstancy of our actions. They seem not to "come from the same shop" so "strangely" do they contradict one other, making any systematic comparison impossible, "car elles se contredisent communément de si estrange façon, qu'il semble impossible qu'elles soient parties de mesme boutique" ("De l'inconstance de nos actions" [II, 1, 331A, 329A]). Instead he drew on a legal mode of reasoning, based on opinion or endoxa rather than apodictic knowledge. As André Tournon, Ian Maclean and others have recently argued, Renaissance jurisprudence served as a training ground for Montaigne's topical approach in the Essais.5 As a non-analytical method used by jurists for studying probable or plausible "truths," it allowed him to pursue a logic of difference. The infinite range of human variability experienced in ordinary lives, especially his own, was found to be irreducible to philosophical definition. Turning his back on classifications that presume a universal human nature, he opted somewhat sardonically for a legal approach based on a logic of distinguo: "Distingo est le plus universel membre de...

The Combative Text: Ronsard’s Poetics of Dissent (1562–1563)

In his introduction to Ronsard's political poetry of 1562-63, Paul Laumonier asks why France's most prominent court poet turned from pacificism to military propaganda at that point in his writing career. The anti-Protestant Discours des miseres de ce temps, Remonstrance au peuple de France, and Responce aux injures were all sparked by deeply personal interests, Laumonier argues. That is, in these poems Ronsard was defending his right to request and to receive material rewards from the Church in spite of mounting criticism by Protestants and reform-minded Catholics. The poet was also expressing the personal pain he had experienced upon witnessing and failing to prevent lootings and pillaging of Catholic churches in his native region. Such destruction was all the more unbearable for having been committed not only by heretic Frenchmen but by foreign mercenaries. (1) The dual menace of heresy and foreign influence (inevitably linked to Ancient and New World heathenism, in the sixteenth century) is what I propose to address in this essay. How does Ronsard's construction of the personal in his political poems articulate the poet's attachment to the past (regional nostalgia, greco-toman literary models) and his commitment to the future (promotion of the vernacular and of royal authority)? What role do foreign invaders play in the elaboration of Ronsard's textual persona? One may indeed read the political poems written by Ronsard between 1560 and 1563 as increasingly personal in nature. In the years immediately preceding the French wars of religion Ronsard had argued against armed conflict. His Elegie a G. des Autels, written in 1560, discouraged a policy of military action against Protestants, arguing instead in favor of diplomatic mediation. In 1562, however, the elegy was reprinted bearing textual additions in which Ronsard urged armed resistance against the Huguenot factions. The poet's political about-face becomes clear if one compares the two versions directly: (2) (1560) Ce n'est pas aujourd'huy que les Rois & les princes Ont besoing de garder par armes leurs provinces, Il ne faut acheter ny canons ny harnois, Mais il fault les garder seulement par la voix Car il fault desormais deffendre noz maisons, Non par le fer trenchant mais par vives raisons, Et courageusement noz ennemis abbatre Par les mesmes bastons dont ils nous veullent battre Ainsi que l'ennemy par livres a seduict Le peuple devoye qui faucement le suit, Il fault en disputant par livres le confondre, Par livres l'assaillir, par livres luy respondre (9-22) (1562). C'est donques aujourd'huy que les Roys & les Princes Ont besoin de garder par armes leurs provinces, Et contre leurs sujets opposer le harnois, Usant & de la force & de la douce voix, Car il faut desormais deffendre nos maisons, Et par le fer tranchant, et par vives raisons Et courageusement nos ennemis abbatre Par les mesmes bastons dont ils nous veullent battre. Ainsi que l'ennemy par livres a deduict Le peuple devoye qui faucement le suit, Il faut en disputant par livres le confondre, Par armes l'assaillir, par armes luy respondre (9-22) In 1562 and 1563, Ronsard's poetry is increasingly engage, that is, more overtly engaged with political issues of the day and more representative of the poet's personal concerns. For a court poet to write about current civil unrest was of course, in some measure, obligatory. His duty, in part, was to represent the interests of the monarchy. (3) A poet of renown such as Ronsard would bring all the rhetorical arsenal of the classical canon to bear on such an endeavor. Recent criticism of the Discours des miseres collection has focused on the diversity of oratorical registers deployed in these poems. (4) Ullrich Langer has argued that Ronsard's rhetorical construction of an Aristotelian/Ciceronian ethos, or ethical subjectivity in his political verse, helps the poet confront a national moral crisis as well as a precarious moment in his literary career. …