French Books Research Articles

Silver paints in medieval manuscripts: a first molecular survey into their degradation

The lack of comprehensive studies on silver paints in manuscripts is a handicap to new stabilization strategies and treatments. This work develops and tests a methodological approach for the study of the degradation of silver paints, at the molecular level, using as a case study a French Book of Hours dated from the 15th century from Mafra National Palace collection. In this paper, we show that the global equation commonly used by the cultural heritage community to describe the tarnishing of silver proves to be insufficient to understand the main factor causing its severe and extensive darkening in medieval illuminated manuscripts. This equation depicts the degradation of silver instantly with a sulphide containing species as H2S. Recent research has solidly proved that the first intermediate of silver oxidation is Ag2O. This theme will be presented in a forthcoming review. Within this framework, we selected four typologies of silver paints, all analysed by in situ techniques and four as microsamples; due to the very small size and fragility of the microsamples, new methods of sample preparation were developed and tested. The main research questions include: (1) understanding how silver-based colour are formed, disclosing its full stratigraphy; (2) define if the other compounds present, such as colour paints and the ground, may affect silver oxidation by stabilizing or accelerating it; (3) comprehend if it is possible to characterize the degradation products of silver paints with the methodology developed in this work, both in the bulk and at the interfaces between layers. Overall our results show that silver-based colours exhibit a complex stratigraphy that impacts its conservation condition. Further research at the molecular level is required on the correlation of the main components of the ground (binder and filler such as gypsum and calcium carbonate) and the paints that are applied as layers over or under the silver leaf. Our case studies have shown that both in situ analytical techniques and scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy analysis in the microsamples, provide relevant information on the silver colour stratigraphy. However, the information obtained studying cross-sections is more accurate. We consider that the study of the degradation mechanism of silver in medieval illuminated manuscripts will require the combination of both approaches; in situ methodologies support the relevance of the data acquired on the microsamples. Microsamples studies will make possible the acquisition of data that is fundamental to understand the darkening of silver paints and this, in turn, is essential to develop informed and sustainable conservation policies.

German Stories in Iranian Children's Literature

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Humor in a Time of Science Wars: Rereading Isabelle Stengers

Humor in a Time of Science Wars: Rereading Isabelle Stengers

Fortuna: Deity and Concept in Archaic & Republican Italy by D. Miano

Reviewed by: Fortuna: Deity and Concept in Archaic & Republican Italy by D. Miano Duncan E. MacRae Miano, D. 2018. Fortuna: Deity and Concept in Archaic & Republican Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. xiv + 242. ISBN: 9780198786566. US$78.00. In the post-war period, a group of French scholars of Roman religion dedicated themselves to the production of a line of monographic studies of individual Roman deities, which were often published by the École Française de Rome. The quality of these books varied, but they tended to offer the same basic formula: a history of the deity concerned (whether Apollo or Mercury or Ops) from Archaic origins through waves of Republican temple building and Hellenisation to an Early Imperial ‘settlement’. As Daniele Miano observes in the introduction of his own monograph on an individual deity (p. 12), this habit died out in the 1990s and 2000s. The problem with the French books on Roman deities, though, had been clear already for some time. As Mary Beard put it in 1983 in a JRS review of two examples, ‘our understanding of Roman religion will not advance far, so long as specialists concentrate on monographs of ill-documented, individual gods and goddesses . . . we ought to think in broader terms about its characteristics [End Page 215] as a system, not about its individual symbolic figures’ (p. 216). The central failing was essentialism: the authors tried to pin down the basic character or function of a deity, not infrequently on grounds of Latin etymology, and then explained the often slim evidence in light of that alleged essence. But the field might be witnessing a reemergence of the single-deity monograph. Alongside the book under review on Fortuna, Harriet Flower published a monumental study of the Lares in 2017 (The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden, Princeton) and it is easy to imagine that we will see more of them in the coming years. Miano himself has published several article-length studies of other deities.3 This renaissance of the genre can be related to a general ‘theological turn’ in the study of Roman religion, as scholars have become increasingly aware of ancient discourses on the nature and identity of the recipients of cult as fully part of Roman religious life.4 In other words, the gods mattered to the Romans. In this light, it is certainly justified to return our attention to the deities themselves. Significantly, however, both Flower and Miano avoid the mistakes of their predecessors by avoiding essentialism, and focus instead on the variety of social and historical contexts in which the Lares or Fortuna were present and meaningful. This picks up a second trend in the study of Roman religious life: an interest, pursued recently particularly by the research group led by Jörg Rüpke at Erfurt, on the discrepant experiences of historical actors in relation to the divine. At the outset of the book, Miano signals this focus: ‘the aim of this book is to study the ways in which individuals, groups, and communities interacted with Fortuna and ascribed different meanings to her during the Roman Republican period’ (p. 2). In the compact seven chapters that follow, he traces the evidence for Fortuna at Praeneste, elsewhere in Italy, and at Rome, while also taking into account change over time in the various geographic contexts. The later chapters treat the translation of Fortuna into Greek as Tychē, and Tychē as Fortuna, with particular attention to the southern Italian ‘contact zone’, and discussion of literary passages, from both dramatic [End Page 216] and philosophical texts in the second and first centuries, where the status of Fortuna as a deity is deprecated. The author concedes that this organisation ‘may look excessively fragmented’ (p. 14), but this is, of course the point: it is this fragmentation that he has set out to map. In practice, the chapters are composed of discussions that concentrate on the individual pieces of evidence and their interpretation. To pick some personal favourites, Miano’s discussion of the fourth-or third-century inscribed lot that is kept in the museum at Fiesole and might allude to the story of Servius Tullius is an excellent exposition of...

Renaissance Manuscripts. The Sixteenth Century by Myra D. Orth

Reviewed by: Renaissance Manuscripts. The Sixteenth Century by Myra D. Orth Susan Broomhall Orth, Myra D., Renaissance Manuscripts. The Sixteenth Century (A Survey of Manuscripts Illuminated in France, 4), London, Harvey Miller, 2015; 2 vols; hardback; pp. 339 and 382; 55 colour, 321 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €250.00; ISBN 9781872501307. These volumes represent a lifetime’s contribution and dedication to the field of sixteenth-century manuscript illumination studies by their author. Myra D. Orth, who passed away in 2002, was a specialist in the French book arts whose doctoral research focused on the 1520 Hours Workshop, now known as the group around Antwerp-trained Noël Bellemare. At the time of her death, Orth had completed much of the catalogue and text, but in the subsequent years Joanna Fronska and Mary Rowse have supplied additional research, and Dierdre Jackson and Julie Hrischeva editorial support. Orth’s work displays her immense depth of knowledge for the period roughly contiguous with the reign of François I. Analysis of production in this period occupies the vast majority of the introduction, although the catalogue’s scope covers manuscript illumination up to 1570. The introduction does not discuss [End Page 231] developments that took place in these later periods after the 1540s, nor explain why 1570, rather than the end of Charles IX’s reign, forms the latter bookend. Orth argues that manuscript illumination warrants a significant place in the history of French art and seeks better collaboration between print and manuscript research. She emphasizes though that manuscripts were not simply pre-print works, with clear evidence that some authors actively preferred circulation by manuscript long after the arrival of print—a point now well acknowledged in the field of scribal studies. Moreover, the coming of the illustrated print book made luxury manuscripts the commissions of a courtly and ecclesiastical elite. As leaders of fashion, these clients demanded works that displayed arts at their height, and evidence of their engagement with authors demonstrates interests for new texts, and for interpretation of the new intellectual movements of the age through commissioned translations of classical and humanist texts. Sixteenth-century illuminations, therefore, combined native visual traditions with adoption of Italian art and literature, due to increased French interactions during the Italian Wars, as well as Flemish influences stemming from other figural art forms such as stained glass and tapestry. In the first volume, Orth also includes analysis of frames and borders, charting the artistic shift from tabernacle borders common in books of hours through to strap-work borders by the 1540s. She canvasses scholarly treatments of borders, of their interaction with the main image, their scope of artistic freedom and as an important intellectual apparatus to the text they accompanied. This is followed by a series of images discussed further in Volume 2’s catalogue entries: thirty-three full-page colour plates of key illuminations, and 270 monochrome images. Thirty-three black and white comparative illustrations are added, with the numbers of the catalogue entries to which they relate. A further section to Volume 1 includes short biographies, firstly of artists and scribes, then of authors and translators, and of patrons, dedicatees, and first owners of the manuscripts. Each is appended with available documentation and relevant literature. Finally, six full-page family trees are presented. Volume 2 is substantially concerned with the catalogue proper, including just four black and white illustrations. Here one hundred manuscripts are carefully presented, grouped by name of artists and in approximate chronological order. The examples represent both outstanding artistic merit and the nature of the subjects of interest at this era. As might be expected given Orth’s own expertise, a substantial number, twenty-one, concern the Bellemare group. The catalogue documents bindings, descriptions of miniatures with the text that they introduce, frames and borders, text decorations and any decorated initials, manuscripts’ collation, some samples of the text content, knowledge of a print publication, then descriptions of the script, page layout, and any irregularities or missing leaves. A further detailed commentary showcases Orth’s enormous knowledge, discussing the commission, author, date, and character of each text. She considers the sources of miniatures and offers stylistic comparisons, highlighting specific...

Интерьерные палимпсесты французской книжной иллюстрации XVIII века: проблема распознавания

Интерьерные палимпсесты французской книжной иллюстрации XVIII века: проблема распознавания

The Le Corbusier Scandal, or, was Le Corbusier a Fascist?

In 2015 an essay by the architect Marc Perelman was printed in Le Monde claiming Le Corbusier was a fascist and that the French academy had whitewashed this from architectural history. The 2015 exhibition Le Corbusier: Mesures de l’homme, a major retrospective of the architect, held at the Centre Pompidou was adduced as evidence since it did not mention Le Corbusier’s politics, despite three French books on Le Corbusier’s fascism appearing in 2015, and the scandal that erupted around them. The letter was signed by myself, Zeev Sternhell, Xavier de Jarcy, Marc Perelman, and Daniel de Roulet; and reprinted in English by Verso in January 2017. The Fondation le Corbusier, who are unhappy with this turn of events, wrote to me asking me why I signed the letter. This essay will attempt to answer the question by evaluating the French quarrel, on both sides, and allegations about Le Corbusier’s fascism.

O culto aos mitos sobre as altas habilidades/superdotação?

O tema das altas habilidades/superdotação e as pessoas que apresentam esse comportamento são há muito tempo objeto de mitos e crenças populares que fazem do tema um tabu e que invisibilizam essaspessoas. A ainda tímida produção científica brasileira e a crescente visibilidade que o tema vem adquirindo na educação brasileira, principalmente por força das normas educacionais mais recentes, que preveem o atendimento educacional especializado aos alunos com altas habilidades/superdotação em todos os níveis, etapas e modalidades da Educação, faz que aumente a procura por publicações estrangeiras, muitas vezes, elaboradas por pessoas que não possuem formação teórica ou experiência na área. O presente artigo faz uma análise crítica do livro francês A cultura dos superdotados? (Bergès-Bounes & Calmettes-Jean, 2010), com o objetivo de mostrar como os mitos e crenças populares sobre as pessoas com altas habilidades/superdotação, compilados por Pérez (2003), recriados e reafirmados na publicação, podem conduzir à criação de uma imagem patologizada e deturpada desse ser humano diferente, negando-lhe, em últimainstância, o direito de construir uma identidade sadia.

Two new French books about invasions

Two new French books about invasions

Resistance strategies in distribution channels: a view from the French book trade

PurposeThis paper aims to focus on resistance strategies in distribution channels. The concept of resistance has received much attention in organization theory, but it has been rather neglected in corporate strategy. Only a few works dedicated to distribution channels explicitly use the notion of resistance strategy. These works provide a view of resistance as an inter-organizational phenomenon between companies (i.e. buyers and suppliers) but limit resistance strategies to merely confrontation strategies between channel members. This paper studies resistance strategies in a more open perspective considering that resistance can coexist with collaborative relationships, as part of a specific societal reality.Design/methodology/approachTo capture the deep variety of resistance strategies, from the most active to the most passive, a qualitative research was carried out in France in the context of the book trade, based on 15 semi-structured interviews. The discourse analysis provides insights into the social reality of an organization and also the reality of changes in inter-organizational relationships. The interviews were conducted with 15 different companies representing a significant share of the French market.FindingsThe paper shows that channel members successfully develop resistance strategies of logistical nature, based on the efficient monitoring of flows, both inside the company (logistics rationalization) and within the supply chain (control of interfaces). Channel members who implement a logistics rationalization and a control of interfaces succeed not only in containing the power of their powerful partners but also in benefitting from new sources of profitability and improvement of customer service.Originality/valueThe French book trade is an illustration of the role played by logistical aspects in the power exercised by a supplier and resistance strategies that buyers develop in response as part of buyer-supplier relationships. Indeed, it is because they have a strong logistical expertise that dominant actors are capable, step by step, to place dominated actors in a situation of strong dependency, by using for that purpose their logistical means. In turn, dominated actors seek to develop logistical responses to rebalance the buyer-supplier relationships in their favor.

Vladislavić in the French Book Market: A Comparative Analysis of the South African and the French Paratexts of The Exploded View

This article presents a comparative analysis of the paratexts of the French language and South African editions of a contemporary work of South African fiction by Ivan Vladislavić. The work in question is The Exploded View, translated into French by Christian Surber with the title La vue éclatée published by Swiss publisher Editions Zoé. The analysis concerns the packaging of the novels: the imagery and design of the covers – the publishers’ paratexts – which are used to promote the novel in their various market contexts. The analysis reveals the South African and French versions of the novels frame the novel in different ways and take different approaches to the selling of the ‘same’ material. The cover of the South African version of The Exploded View presents the novel to South African readers as a marked departure from the overtly political themes that have dominated South African literature for decades. On the cover of the South African version, Vladislavić is hailed for exhibiting an aesthetic and thematic freshness which moves his writing beyond the traditional preoccupations of local fiction. The cover of La vue éclatée, in contrast, makes use of a quite opposite strategy. The publisher of the French version makes clear use of discourses about South Africa which have become symbolic of the country in the French imagination. The French version highlights the grand themes of racial inequality, violence, poverty, political strife and segregation and the struggle against these iniquities with which South African literature has long been inextricably associated in the French press. Neither of these approaches is a neutral representation of the content of the novel (no presentation could ever be). Both represent an intervention by the publisher to emphasise those elements of the novel which respond to the perceived mood and preoccupations of the target readers: for French readers, a continuing fascination with apartheid and its after-effects, black and white, rich and poor; for South African readers, weary of grand historical narratives and wary of simplistic binaries, a minute dissection of the contradictions, anxieties and complexities of daily lives in 21st century Johannesburg.

Publishing Africa in French: Literary Institutions and Decolonization 1945–1967. By Ruth Bush

This is a valuable contribution to the sociology of books in both French and African literatures. Engaging with postcolonial studies and the theories of Pierre Bourdieu and Pascale Casanova on cultural fields, and building on Gisèle Sapiro’s research on authorship and world literature, Ruth Bush examines the material conditions of African letters in post-war France. She demonstrates convincingly how, in the context of decolonization, the history of African literature is intertwined with the history of French literature. In six concise chapters, Bush details the historical and cultural conditions that contributed to the particular ‘dynamics of French and African literary history’ (p. 4) and discloses the ensuing complex literary logics and interrelated practices that have transformed, over the years, into norms and prescriptions for and by African writers. Key to Bush’s argument is the delineation of conflicting literary dynamics and ideological pronouncements shaping African letters, derived from the shifting literary processes and communities of post-war France, the persistence of static representations of Africa in the French imaginary, and claims and manoeuvres for a renewed ‘French universalism’. Bush’s impressive research in the archives of Le Seuil, Présence Africaine, and Gallimard, among others, and her thorough investigation of readers’ reports, editorial correspondence, and literary-prize cultures, allow her to discern the ‘uneven’ (p. 179) mediating role played by literary institutions in the social lives of African texts. Such mediating processes, Bush argues, have been facilitated by the contributions and multifaceted interventions of literary figures such as Paul Flamand, Alioune Diop, Léopold Senghor, Michel Leiris, Frantz Fanon, Léon Damas, and Jean-Paul Sartre through editorial initiatives, recommendations, rejections, prefaces, essays, collections, series, and anthologies. In addition, Bush’s stimulating analyses of narratives by Hamidou Kane, Abdoulaye Sadji, and Malick Fall provide nuanced readings of literary processes and narrative modalities often assumed coercive or perceived as hegemonic. The study brings new insights on issues of literary value of African narratives, authorial authenticity, and African subjectivity by opening new avenues for literary interpretations. It demonstrates that taking into account the ‘material circumstances of textual production’ (p. 226) is crucial to an understanding of how, during decolonization, African writers and mediating institutions attempted to accommodate ‘political and aesthetic differences’ (p. 217) through subtle ‘regimes’ of writing (p. 153) defined by adopted and valorized narrative configurations, aesthetic obligations, and linguistic imperatives. Importantly, Bush contends that these regimes are also characterized by strategic narrative modes of resistance to the universalist tendencies that hindered the production of African letters. There are criticisms of Bush’s study: its accumulation of biographical details about mediators; its disregard for the role of academic institutions in the making of African letters at the moment African literature becomes a discipline; its concentration on Senegal while overlooking other African territories with ambitious literary policies. Nonetheless, Bush’s study is innovative and lucid in depicting the ‘complex portrait of the French-language publishing scene’ (p. 251) in which African letters contributed to shift the ‘Parisian capital of the world republic of letters’ (p. 195).

Denis Sauvage, the 16th-Century Editor of French Historical Texts

르네상스 시대 유럽에서 편집자는 상업적인 인쇄 출판의 발전과 더불어 출판업계의 중요한 인물로 부상했다. 르네상스기의 편집자는 주로 휴머니스트로서 라틴어와 그리스어 텍스트 및 전문 서적들을 검토, 수정, 편집하는 일을 담당했다. 그런데 고전 텍스트의 경우와는 달리 프랑스어 인쇄본에서는 편집자가 대부분 익명으로 출판업에 종사했다. 이들의 이름과 작업 내용은 16세기 중엽부터 책의 속표지에서 자세하게 소개되기 시작했다. 16세기의 필리프 드 코민의 󰡔회고록󰡕 출 판의 역사에서 보이는 것처럼, 책의 속표지라는 물질적인 차원에서 나타나는 이러한 변화는 프랑스어 텍스트 편집자의 위상 제고라는 시대적인 변화를 단적으로보여준다. 드니 소바주는 16세기 중엽에 두드러지게 부상한 전문 편집자들 중 하나인데, 특히 그는 중세의 역사 텍스트를 편집해서 출판했다는 점에서 독특한 위치를 차지하고 있다. 소바주의 역사 텍스트 편집은 르네상스기 프랑스 편집자들의 작업 내용과 방식을 잘 보여준다. 편집자는 텍스트를 단지 배열하고 교정을 보아 인쇄하도록 하는 작업만을 하는 것이 아니라, 장과 절을 나누면서 각 장의 제목을 붙이거나 내용을 요약하고, 방주와 후주를 통해 관련 사료를 제시하면서 저자의 원 문에 대한 의견을 제시하며 때로는 저자가 저지른 오류를 지적하고 수정하기도했다. 필사본 원전으로의 회귀를 추구했던 드니 소바주의 프랑스 역사 텍스트 편집 작업은 기존의 주장처럼 프로테스탄티즘에서 영향으로 간주하기 보다는, 고전텍스트를 출판하면서 원전 연구에 몰두했던 전통적인 이탈리아 휴머니즘의 영향을 받은 것으로 보는 것이 더 적절할 것이다.In Renaissance Europe, editors have emerged along with the development of commercial printed book market. The editors were mainly humanists who examined and made corrections on Greek and Latin texts, as well as scientific texts. Unlike the editors of classical texts, most editors of the French books worked in the publishing industry anonymously. It was only from the mid-16th century that the French books began to print the names of editors on their title pages and even went on to present their editorial works in detail, ultimately alluding to the elevation of the stature of the French texts’ editors. The 16th-century editions of the Mémoires of Philippe de Commynes, including those of Denis Sauvage well exemplifies this change. The case of Sauvage also presents the editing method of medieval history books by a Renaissance French editor. He not only arranged the text for printing, but also divided it into chapters and sections by titling each chapter, and at the same time summarized the contents. Furthermore, he annotated the text in order to add suggesting comments, occasionally pointing out and correcting errors committed by the author. In fact, his editorial works in pursuit of the original manuscript source seems to have been influenced not by the Protestant belief, but by the classical humanist tradition.

Re-viewing the world: appropriations of travel writing in the French periodical press (1780–1820)

ABSTRACTThis article analyses practices of appropriation at work in French travel book reviews at the turn of the eighteenth century. It establishes six categories of appropriation, consisting of rhetorical, literary and formal devices, which entail different ways of altering, sometimes radically, sometimes almost imperceptibly, the value and functions of the travel texts. The article argues that travel book reviews operated to alter the representation of travel, in a form of journalistic criticism which sought not only to review a book, but also to remediate and appropriate a set of experiences, thus re-viewing the world described by the travelogue. The analysis of these appropriative practices sheds new light on the role of the French press as an actor in the public discourse on travel, history and geography, in a period where non-fictional travel writing was immensely popular among the reading public.

Les Réseaux d’édition française en Asie 1840 – 1940

ABSTRACTThis article traces the history of French publishing houses in Asia in order to highlight their involvement in the emergence of Francophone communities among cultures classified as non-Francophone. It aims to examine the origin of French publishing houses from their initial appearances in Asia, the history of the publishing houses founded by religious communities in various cities in Asia, as well as the nature of books they publish will be studied.Next to be examined is the secular milieu, with the arrival of the first chain of publishing houses that fall within professional editorial organizations. The case of Albert Nachbaur and Georges Bigot will be examined as a prototype. This brief look at French publishing in Asia invites the reader to consider future discussions of other partners involved: members connected to book networks, such as the French Alliance, whose libraries cover major cities in Asia. This article is only an initial clarification on the networks/movement of French books in Asia.

Recent Books

Artists and Others. The Imaginative French Book in the zist Century: Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands. By Paul van Capelleveen. Nijmegen: Vantilt Publishers. 2016. 216 pp. €29.50. isbn 978 9 46004 268 3. The Dutch engineer Louis Koopman's collection of livres d'artiste and special editions of French literature is one of the major collections of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. By the time of Koopman's death in 1968 it comprised some 6000 books, and a fund to enable its continued development has allowed it to grow to 10,000 today. This book celebrates some of the more recent additions to the collection, in the various forms of artist's book to have emerged from France since 2000. Profusely illustrated throughout, the book is divided into four sections by nature of collaboration: close collaboration between printers and artists, artists who print their own books, publishers who create books with authors and artists, and artists who collaborate with many others to produce books. The conceptual bases for these creations are highly varied, and this guide includes some reflections on the theoretical background to the work.

Paul van Capelleveen, Artists & Others : The imaginative French book in the 21st century. Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands. Nijmegen, Vantilt Publishers, 2016, 215 p., ill., bibliogr., index.

Paul van Capelleveen, Artists & Others : The imaginative French book in the 21st century. Koopman Collection, National Library of the Netherlands. Nijmegen, Vantilt Publishers, 2016, 215 p., ill., bibliogr., index.

The Questing Beast and the Noise of Adventure

Thomas Malory’s Questing Beast, a noisy monster whose significance goes unexplained, reveals how unstable language, or ‘noyse,’ both threatens and perpetuates chivalry. As scholars show, the hybrid Beast reflects fragmentation in Palomides, the kingdom, and Malory’s sources, but the creature also echoes language’s fragmentation, a challenge which knights must constantly negotiate.

Henry James: Écrits sur la peinture ed. by Thomas Constantinesco

Reviewed by: Henry James: Écrits sur la peinture ed. by Thomas Constantinesco Marie-Odile Salati Thomas Constantinesco, ed. Henry James: Écrits sur la peinture. Lyon: Fage Éditions, 2014. 144pp. 22€ (Hardback). As increasing interest in translations of James’s writings has been shown on the French book market in recent years with the publication of the complete edition of his short stories in the prestigious Bibliothèque de la Pléiade under the supervision of Annick Duperray and Evelyne Labbé (2003, 2011) and of Jean Pavans’s translation of The American Scene in 2008, it is worth mentioning as well the 2014 release of a collective academic project at Université Paris Diderot, supervised and edited by Thomas Constantinesco, Associate Professor in American Literature. The book, entitled Henry James: Écrits sur la peinture, offers a selection of fourteen James essays on painting hitherto unpublished in French and mostly known to anglophone readers from John Sweeney’s The Painter’s Eye. It is a most pleasurable object to handle, a hardcover printed on glossy paper, with a full-face charcoal portrait of James by John Singer Sargent on the front cover and a large number of paintings interspersed throughout the text inside. This is an unprecedented venture and invaluable help to Jamesian scholars and art historians as James’s essays have never been published along with reproductions of the artworks commented on. The choice of essays is quite judicious since it highlights the versatility of a writer mostly known in France for his novels and short stories. The collection covers a variety of different artists and painting schools on both sides of the Atlantic at different periods of art history, ranging from Rubens through French caricaturist Honoré Daumier to Whistler, but it also presents a documentary interest regarding art exhibitions held in James’s day in the U.S., Great Britain, and France and the art policies and public attendance of museums in the three countries, as well as major critical responses to the artists discussed. Not least among the merits and original features of this remarkable achievement is the fact that the translation has been established by a class of postgraduate students specializing in British and American visual arts and is the fruit of the collective work conducted during Thomas Constantinesco’s translation seminar related to aesthetics [End Page E-16] and art history. It should be noted that Constantinesco used the text of the original James essays, the sources of which are specified for every single piece in an initial footnote.1 The meticulous translation does perfect justice to the slightest semantic nuances and gropings of the syntax and metaphors, even the most startling ones, while the charm of the elevated, old-fashioned language is masterfully preserved, as is the delightful irony of the “restless analyst” (CT 361). The edition of the essays includes well-documented footnotes, which supply information about the historical or artistic figures, the works, exhibitions, and places mentioned by the author. The notes are generally quite to the point, dense and efficient, and restricted in number and space so as not to impede the reading. Special mention should be made of the amount of research that went into the identification of all the artworks, considering that a fair number of them are listed under a different title today or have even been attributed to other artists since James’s time. A complete index of the names and works cited is provided at the end of the book. The signal feature of the publication is the ongoing dialogue between the Jamesian critical text and the many paintings reproduced in direct relation to the author’s comments. It proves particularly helpful to be able to follow his detailed descriptions of some of the works step by step, referring to the inserted picture in order to grasp what exactly caught his discerning eye and most pleased his aesthetic sense, especially when it comes to minor realist canvases that have not outlived the fame of the day like the war scene in Le matin avant l’attaque (1861) by Paul Alexandre Protais or oxen in the morning light in Constant Troyon’s Les bœufs allant au labour, effet du...

Mapping Print, Connecting Cultures

This article discusses the potential of ‘historical bibliometric’ methodologies for understanding past cultures and offers a vision for how historical bibliometric research might be conducted on a comparative and global scale. Drawing on conceptual work being undertaken at the Western Sydney University in order to further develop and extend the widely respected ‘French Book Trade in Enlightenment Europe’ (FBTEE) database project, it explores how historians might proceed to correlate, map, and analyse multiple spatially referenced data sets pertaining to the creation, publication, dissemination, ownership, consumption, reception, policing, and geographic setting of texts. While the authors recognise the many dangers and limitations inherent in reducing the cultural history of text to a set of statistical data, they observe that historians frequently use the production and circulation of texts as a useful proxy for understanding the circulation of ideas. Hence historical bibliometrics can provide measurable indicators of cultural resonance. The challenge, then, is to meaningfully integrate algorithmic abstractions with qualitative-based humanities research. This paper and the suite of projects it discusses seek to provide a way forward.