French Life Research Articles

Maupertuis and the Reshaping of Natural History in Eighteenth-Century France

Abstract In this paper, I analyze a momentous change in eighteenth century French life sciences. Whereas in the first half of the century the conception of natural history as the systematic collection of facts had been most successful, at mid-century a new approach emerged. This approach was characterized by an accent on general philosophical themes rather than on observation and experiment. I study the grounds and features of this historical shift through the work of Maupertuis, who published papers in institutional (or Baconian) natural history in his early years, but then adopted a more speculative approach to the life sciences.

Quantifying work-related social inequalities in life expectancy: a methodological proof-of-concept.

Employment and working conditions are strong social determinants of health, yet many epidemiological studies fail to account for their impact on life expectancy calculations. Integration of working conditions into health estimates requires both valid methodology and data sources. Using the French National Health and Career Path survey and French life tables, we quantified the impact of four major work-related factors (lack of job control, job insecurity, unemployment, and occupational physical activity) in explaining socio-occupational inequalities in life expectancy. Using a formula-based approach, we computed work-related loss in life expectancy by socio-occupational group separately by sex. Based on life expectancy at age 35, we estimated a range from 1.3 to 3.3 years of life lost for men, and from 0.5 to 1.8 years for women are attributed to a combination of these four key factors. Although subject to sources of under- and over-estimation, the differential life expectancy at age 35 between senior executives and manual workers would substantially decrease, had these exposures been set at the theoretical minimum level. This proof-of-concept analysis demonstrates the utility of accounting for occupational factors and the potential to quantify the improvements in life expectancy by modifying working and employment conditions.

Breaking the Borders: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Travel, ‘French Life’ and its Spatial Intertextuality

According to the nineteenth-century ideology of separate spheres, women were supposed to avoid the public sphere and to stay at home, as depicted in most artistic and literary representations. Even though much content in her travel writing represented by letters and the journal article ‘French Life’ is about daily living in ordinary foreign societies, I argue that Elizabeth Gaskell is treating some basic questions of human and social values such as class differences and gender distinctions. This paper emphasizes the significance of travel and travel-writing in Gaskell's personal and professional life, examining how her exposure to other cultures shapes her novels and positions her as a cross-cultural literary figure. Combining ESRI technology, I apply the old map (1864, Paris) to it and draw a GIS picture. The route is based on the journal article ‘French Life’ by Gaskell: by comparing it with the locations and landscapes mentioned in Charles Dickens’s The Tale of the Two Cities, I find there is only one overlapping place: Faubourg Saint-Germain. However, the narratives of the two writers about this same place are so different. Multiple layers of mobility are uncovered in ‘French Life’: starting with Gaskell's physical mobility in Paris and the Mohls' residence, followed by an exploration of her social activities within the salon setting as a British writer, and culminating in an analysis of Gaskell's professional development exemplified through her creation during her time with the French families.

스페인 인플루엔자 유행 시기(1917-1919년) 프랑스인들의 일상사

This article is one of the research attempts by which we study the french lives in the various aspects, from 1918 to 1919, when the Spain influenza exploded. We grasp that at the first time of introduction of Spain Influenza, many french thought that Flu was light, for the reason of the First World War, and rejoiced in the news that this Flu severely exploded in Germany. The citizen made the various mere conjectures and even used the expression, ‘the Chinese epidemic’, or ‘German epidemic’. This epidemic’ spreading speed was fast, but not greatly severe than expected. Nevertheless, Spain Influenza caused many deceased, in the link of the First World War.
 Meanwhile french medical and pharmaceutical world payed the minute attention to this epidemic and prepared the variety of countermeasures on the pharmaceutical and therapeutic ways. This article includes the studies on the daily life of the french citizen monitoring on these aspects of changes.

Annette, ein Heldinnenepos d’Anne Weber

L’article traite du livre d’Anne Weber Annette, ein Heldinnenepos (2020). Il étudie la manière dont il présente à un public allemand une « héroïne » très française, en l’inscrivant non seulement dans son contexte géographique, social et historique, mais aussi dans son contexte linguistique, par l’insertion dans le texte allemand de termes français particulièrement représentatifs et expressifs. Il montre également comment, en recourant à une forme comme l’épopée qui suppose une forme de communication particulière entre l’auteur et son public, Anne Weber crée une situation qui lui permet de jouer avec les deux versions du texte, la version allemande et la version française qui en est davantage une réécriture qu’une traduction au sens strict. La réflexion sur l’héroïsme et l’engagement qui parcourt le livre, quant à elle, confère au livre une dimension universelle.

Role of social status and social environment on net survival in patients with chronic lymphocytic leukemia: A high-resolution population-based study

BackgroundThe prognostic roles of social status and social environment in chronic lymphocytic leukemia have been highlighted in some solid tumors but remain unclear in hematological malignancies. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of individual social status (with socioprofessional category, SPC) and social environment (with European deprivation index, EDI) on net survival in a high-resolution population with CLL. MethodsWe included CLL patients from the Regional Register of Hematological Malignancies in Normandy belonging to the French Network of Cancer Registries (Francim). The SPC variable was divided into 5 categories: farmers, craftsmen, higher employment, intermediate employment, and workers/employees.Net survival was used to estimate the excess of mortality in CLL independent of other possible causes of death using French life tables. Net survival was estimated with a nonparametric method (Pohar-Perme) and with a flexible excess mortality hazard model. Missing data were handled with multiple imputation. ResultsA total of 780 patients were included. The median follow-up was 7.9 years. The crude survival at 10 years was 50%, and the net survival at 10 years was 80%. In multivariate analysis, a higher age (EHR: 1.04 [1.01–1.07]), being a craftsman (EHRcraftsmen/higher.employment: 4.15 [0.86–20.15]), being a worker or an employee (EHRworkers.employees/higher.employment: 3.57 [1.19–10.7]), having a Binet staging of B or C (EHR: 3.43 [1.84–6.42]) and having a lymphocyte count > 15 G/L (EHR: 3.80 [2.17–6.65]) were statistically associated with a higher risk of excess mortality. EDI was not associated with excess mortality (EHR: 0.97 [0.90–1.04]). ConclusionSocioprofessional category was a prognostic factor for an excess of mortality in CLL. Craftsmen and workers/employees shared a worse prognosis than workers with higher employment. The social environment was not a prognostic factor. Further work should be performed to explore causal epidemiologic or biological factors and other hematological malignancies.

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography

Edith Wharton in France

Edith Wharton in France

Exploring France in Post-Soviet Russia

The article analyzes the development of French studies in contemporary Russia. It is shown that serious changes took place in the Russian social sciences in the post-Soviet period. Scientists have abandoned the monopoly of Marxism in favor of methodological pluralism. Thanks to the application of new approaches, the interpretation of such fundamental historical phenomena has been expanded and deepened. In the study of contemporary France, attention is focused on current political and foreign policy events. Great attention is paid to political parties and election campaigns. The topic of immigration and integration of foreign cultural communities is being intensively developed. Serious gaps appeared in other directions. The loss of the country's position in the global economy has led to a decrease in interest in this side of French life. French society has been poorly studied, although there is an understanding that it is precisely social shifts and changes in public attitudes that lead to large-scale changes in the political space. In the context of the crisis of modern globalization and the COVID-19 pandemic, interest in the national experience is returning, and therefore in the near future we can expect the emergence of new works devoted to topical issues of the history and modern development of France.

François Gros (1925–2022)

Co-discoverer of messenger RNA who advanced French life sciences. Co-discoverer of messenger RNA who advanced French life sciences.

LES PARTICULARITÉS DE LA LANGUE ET DU STYLE D’ANNA GAVALDA DANS LE ROMAN LA CONSOLANTE ET LEUR REPRODUCTION DANS LES TRADUCTIONS ESPAGNOLE ET UKRAINIENNE

The article investigates lexical, semantic and grammatical peculiarities of the language and style of Anna Gavalda’s novel “La Consolante” and their reproduction in the Spanish and Ukrainian translations. The objective of the research focuses on the translation of the French novel into Spanish and Ukrainian, taking into account that French and Spanish are closely related languages from the group of Romance languages, and French and Ukrainian are distant languages that belong to a different language group, having different grammatical structures. The paper identifies the fragments, which present difficulties for the translation, and provides options for correct and adequate translation. In this article, the results of an exploratory study (contextual, contrastive, qualitative, and descriptive) carried out on the novel “La Consolante” by Anna Gavalda and two translations into Ukrainian and Spanish. Famous translator, winner of Hryhoriy Skovoroda and Maksym Rylskiy Prices, Petro Tarashchuk, translated it into Ukrainian. “La Consolante” was edited by the Kharkiv publishing house “Folio” in 2015. This novel, in Spanish translation, was translated by Isabel González-Gallarza and published in 2008 by the publishing house “Seix Barral” in Barcelona. We studied the procedures and transformations of translation from related and distant languages, to demonstrate how to overcome the difficulties of translation and to achieve the equal pragmatic effect of translated text as that of the original. The analysis clearly indicates that the translations of Anna Gavalda’s novel “La Consolante” by Petro Taraschuk and Isabel González-Gallarza are perceived as holistic works that convey French culture and the realities of French life and reproduce them adequately in the Spanish and Ukrainian translations.

Using dedications to Charles VI to convey political messages: Honorat Bovet, Philippe de Mézières, Christine de Pizan and Pierre Salmon

Abstract The dedication of four French-language advice books to Charles VI of France (r. 1380–1422), two just after the king’s declaration of personal rule and two during the period dominated by his mental illness, was a strategic choice by the books’ authors. Honorat Bovet, Philippe de Mézières, Christine de Pizan and Pierre Salmon used these dedications to convey political messages not only to the king but also to his powerful male relatives. The dedications, the way the manuscripts represented Charles both textually and visually and the way the texts urged Charles’ relatives to support Charles and each other, all place the king at the centre of the political conversation. Casting both themselves and the king’s relatives as important contributors to French political life, the writers used the role of Charles as imagined reader of the books to urge his male relatives to prioritize the needs of king and kingdom above their own.

Ukrainian Television Exposure of the French Belles-Letters of the 19th Century

The aim of the article is to define the screening of artistic production and to contribute the foreign experiment to Ukrainian TV.Research methodology. The author uses a method of selection that characterizes the TV films about of the French life of the 19th century. The work by French stage manager is analyzed as historical, social, moral and mental phenomenon.Results. The TV series “The stories of the 19th century” was useful as an exchange of experience and was of cognitive and methodological importance. The experience by French stage managers and actors is a school for our TV creators, authors of Ukrainian films. The positive aspect of TV foreign masters is the realistic description of life, the truth of characters and the mental authentic. The article considers the issue of visualizing the book into screen, to reproduce the artistic images.Novelty. The TV series “The stories of 19th century” presentation is standard and will enrich the programmes for Ukrainian specialists as a model.The practical significance. The French TV literary programme contains the valuable lessons for the mastery of directing and acting on Ukrainian TV.

The New Edith Wharton Studies

The New Edith Wharton Studies

Threshold ages for the relation between lifetime entropy and mortality risk

We study the effect of a change in age-specific probability of death on risk about the duration of life measured by Shannon’s entropy defined to the base 2. We first show that a rise in the probability of death at age n increases lifetime entropy at age k≤n if and only if the quantity of information revealed by the event of a death at age n exceeds lifetime entropy at age n+1 divided by the probability to survive from age k to age n+1. There exist, under general conditions, two threshold ages: first, a low threshold age below which a rise in mortality risk decreases lifetime entropy, and above which it raises lifetime entropy; second, a high threshold age above which a rise in mortality risk reduces lifetime entropy. Using French life tables, we show that the gap between those two threshold ages has been increasing over the last two centuries.

De Gaulle: The Self-Made Man

Massive, imposing, authoritative, ponderous: Julian Jackson’s excellent biography of Charles de Gaulle bears a strong resemblance to the man himself. And, like the 6’4” general, this superb book will overshadow all others on the topic. Jackson, Professor of History at Queen Mary University of London, is the leading historian of twentieth century France. His early work analyzed the economic upheaval, political turmoil, and social experimentation of the 1930s in France. He has also written a masterful account of France under German occupation during the Second World War, and the finest short study we have of the fall of France in 1940. No one could be better prepared for the challenge of de Gaulle.1 And a challenging subject he is. A humorless, vain, and difficult man, de Gaulle was disliked or feared by virtually all who worked alongside him over the years—and yet he drew millions to him and created a durable political legacy that continues to exert force in French life today. His passion and love for his country were often obscured by his austere, caustic personality. Harold Macmillan, who encountered him during the war and later as British prime minister in the late 1950s, wrote that he had never known a man “at once so ungracious and so sentimental… . He belongs to the race of unhappy and tortured souls to whom life will never be a pleasure to be enjoyed but an arid desert through which the pilgrim must struggle” (221).

Patrick Modiano en español: el caso de Dora Bruder

La obra de Patrick Modiano se caracteriza por una exploración de la topografía parisina como estrategia de reelaboración de una memoria que precede al nacimiento del autor. Modiano reconstruye el pasado francés ligado al período de la Ocupación alemana a través de la topografía parisina actual: la evocación de los barrios y lugares de París y su frecuentación permite a los narradores de Modiano entrar en contacto con el pasado y con los personajes que alguna vez los habitaron. La presente contribución propone un análisis crítico de la traducción al español que María Pino realizó para la editorial Seix Barral de Dora Bruder ([1997] 2014) de Patrick Modiano para indagar los problemas, dislocaciones y desplazamientos que se presentan a la hora de traducir esta topografía de la posmemoria (HIRSCH, 1997).

Knowledge and values youngsters can trust: Nutrition and food practices in French life science teaching since 1945

We investigate trends in food education in French secondary schools through a diachronic study of school biology curricula and textbooks produced over the past 50 years as they convey a sense of “danger” or “trust” in the foods pupils eat and the foods and food systems they learn about. Our results show that a vision of “sanitized” man and the implicit valorization of industrial and medical progress characterize the life sciences curricula after 1945, leading to progressively fewer incursions into food safety issues and greater emphasis on the encouragement of nutritional responsibility on the part of youngsters. Our analysis of school textbooks suggests a concurrent trend, apparent since the 1980s, toward decontextualized depictions of food and food practices, and simplification of issues relating to food risks. This trend is reinforced by the introduction of educational approaches to health in schools in the early 2000s. Reductionist visions of nutrition within educational approaches to health, which accentuate and promote the role of individual self governance, have led to an emphasis, in school curricula and biology textbooks, on encouraging rational behavior at the expense of in-depth, systemic and complex explorations of food practice and risk factors to health and biological functions.

Narratives of democracy in post-war France

Loyalists of France’s Third Republic presented the regime as heir to France’s revolutionary tradition and as such the bearer of a set of undying principles: liberty, equality, and fraternity. This narrative came under crippling pressure in the 20th century, and in the aftermath of the Second World War, a new set of narratives began to crystallize that rethought the meaning of republican democracy. Under the Third Republic, it was the venerable Parti Radical, dating back to Dreyfusard days, that had been the mainstay of the democratic idea, but in the Liberation era, the party was sidelined, and successors emerged, Socialist and Christian-democratic, which tendered new visions of democracy’s future. The place of the State in French life was also reconsidered. It ceased to be an object of democratic suspicion but came to be seen rather as an indispensable vehicle for effecting the nation’s reconstruction. France’s place in the world came in for a major rethinking at the same time. The nation remained as ever the bearer of the democratic idea, but it now expressed that commitment as a European power and not an imperial one, as a founding member of a brotherhood of democracies and not as a unilateral actor propelled by a self-appointed civilizing mission. In today’s post-colonial, post-industrial, and globalizing world, however, these narratives no longer have the same purchase as in decades past.

Between Duty and Romance: The Attraction of Sounding “Black” in Paris

Author(s): Wilson, Anndretta Lyle | Abstract: The histories of Black Americans who significantly influenced French life and culture in Paris are hardly marked or visible across the most frequented tourist destinations or within state-sponsored museums dedicated to national history. Instead, certain tourist-oriented live performances constitute audible monuments to Black soldiers and musicians. Audible monuments are sound objects constructed through live orature, collective participation, or sound-producing movements that recall history and memory for the purpose of witness engagement or tourist consumption. Toward a critical analysis grounded in performance studies theory this essay first replays and reinterprets the music and military histories shared between African-descended US soldiers and the nation of France as a gendered and misaligned romance, and then suggests how performance events like the tours of “Black Paris” can rehearse that romance and then rupture it by a contemporary African presence.