French Works Research Articles

The Integration of Vietnamese Literature with French Literature in the Early 20th century: The Case of Writer Hồ Biểu Chánh

To demonstrate some manifestations of the integration of Vietnamese literature (in the case of Hồ Biểu Chánh), specifically with French literature, this paper will highlight the intersection of global and national characteristics in Vietnamese literature at that time, particularly in Hồ Biểu Chánh's adaptation of French literary works. Additionally, the paper employs analytical and synthetic methods to break down the research problems, thereby providing a clearer understanding of Hồ Biểu Chánh's unique features. This approach emphasizes the inheritance, development, and originality in certain aspects of Hồ Biểu Chánh's integration with world literature in the early 20th century.

Impact éloquent des mots empruntés et arabisés dans la traduction: Analyse des emprunts lexicaux dans les œuvres d’Al-Ghazāli «Al-munqid Min Addalâl (Erreur et Délivrance)» et «Le livre des Bons Usages en Matière de Mariage»

Eloquent Impact of Borrowed and Arabicized Words in Translation: Analysis of loanwords in Al- Ghazāli’s work «'Al-munqid min addalâl (Erreur et Délivrance)» and «Le livre des Bons Usages en Matière de Mariage» The Arabisation of words is a common practice in Arabic translation. It involves borrowing words from other languages and adjusting their phonetics to fit Arabic phonology. Sometimes, these words undergo semantic adaptations to fit into specific contexts, enriching the Arabic lexicon with essential terms. Such linguistic borrowings have seamlessly integrated into Arabic over time, serving both specialised and everyday functions. In the French translation of two works by Al-Ghazāli, "Al-munqid Min Addalâl (The Deliverance from Error)" and "Le livre des Bons Usages en Matière de Mariage (The Book of Good Practices in Marriage)," it is noteworthy that several Arabised words have been retained without translation. Instead, they are presented alongside their equivalents or with explanatory notes. The translator’decision to preserve these Arabised words by the translator reflects a desire to convey the original author's specific messages. It underlines a commitment to maintain the semantic depth of the original texts while honoring the cultural and linguistic richness of Arabic. These words imbue the analysed texts with profound meaning, adding a semantic dimension that enhances the works in both Arabic and French. This approach caters to a French readership interested in exploring the nuances of Al-Ghazāli's works, ensuring the integrity of his writings is preserved. It guarantees an authentic and comprehensive reading experience that captures the richness and subtleties of the original texts.

Visualization of educational data in a German-language corpus of student texts

Introduction. Digital transformation of education involves the use of digital tools in managing the educational process as a whole and in the learning process in individual disciplines. The specifics of teaching a foreign language require special functionality from digital tools. The purpose of the article is to explore the possibilities of a corpus of student texts in a foreign language for analyzing the results of students’ educational work and forming an adapted learning path within the discipline related to the study of a foreign language. Materials and methods. The material for the study was the Petrozavodsk Annotated Corpus of Texts (PACT), containing written works in German and French written by students from 2019 to 2023. Texts are accompanied by attributive information about the author, writing conditions, evaluation and error corrections. A web application has been developed to work with the corpus. The application includes personal accounts for teachers and students. To analyze the state of the learning process and make subsequent decisions on managing the learning process, the web application contains several tools for visualizing error statistics at different levels of detail with the ability to select texts according to different conditions. Results of the study. As part of the study, patterns were identified that connect the types of errors with the genres of texts, with the severity of the errors, and with the emotional and physiological state of the student. Russian-speaking students studying German as a foreign language make the most mistakes in the choice of lexemes, spelling, punctuation and the place of the verb in a sentence. At the same time, genre differences can be observed to distribute the number of errors by their type. There is an increase in the relative number of gross errors by 1.5 times for senior students compared to the first year. Errors in the choice of lexeme are critical for understanding the content of the text. The severity of the error does not depend on the genre of the text. Conclusion. The results of the study can be used to build corpora of student texts with educational analytics functions in dashboard format. The results obtained can be useful in developing teaching materials for the “Foreign Language” discipline.

От «Книги-Текста» к «Книге- Жизни»: Расин в “Fils” («Сын / Нити») Сержа Дубровски и «Тит Беренику не любил» Натали Азуле

The article analyzes Racine’s place in two French works: the autofiction “Son/ Threads” (“Fils”) (1977) by Serge Doubrovsky (1928–2017) and the novel “Titus did nоt love Berenice” (“Titus n’aimait pas Bérénice”) (2015) by Nathalie Azoulai (b. 1966). To study the role of Racine’s tragedies, we turn to the technique of mise en abyme, widely and variedly used by both authors. Recursion appears at the level of multiple quotations and homonymy (Azoulai’s novel characters are named after Racine’s “Berenice” characters). As a result, the micro-story (Racine) turns into a macro-story, reflecting the life problems of modern characters and helping them to understand themselves. That leads to autopoiesis — the ability to self-reproduce, to “self-construct.” Both characters change due to their deep immersion in reading: “Text- Book” becomes “Text-Life.” The analysis of specific features of Racine’s dramaturgy gives the reason why his tragedies are capable of having such a deep existential impact. Fictional immersion, according to J.-M. Schaeffer has a modeling function, offering a scenario of actions that can be productively used in real life.

Variations on the theme of "ballet" in the works of Eric Satie

The work of Erik Satie, his value assessment, as well as the peculiarities of the author's non-normative artistic thinking have repeatedly become the subject of musicological discussions, but still a number of his artistic discoveries in different genre areas remain out of the researchers' field of vision. The proposed article analyzes the French composer's ballet work, which became a space of experimentation in the process of searching for a new image of a musical-choreographic performance. The material of the study includes not only the odious "Parade", which became a manifesto of the "new art", but also four other works by Erik Satie in the genre of ballet, without the study of which it is impossible to draw a complete picture of this sphere ("Uspud", "The Adventures of Mercury", "Eccentric Beauty", "The Spectacle is Canceled"). Their consideration from the point of view of the evolution of the author's approach to the creation of music for a ballet performance, as well as in the aspect of revealing content-semantic, compositional-dramaturgical and stylistic innovations, is the subject of research in this article. In the process of studying the problem, a comprehensive approach is applied, combining comparative and cultural-historical methods with theoretical and analytical tools of musicology. In the course of the analysis, the author comes to the conclusion that all components of the artistic whole of a ballet performance undergo transformation. At the narrative and semantic level, there is a gradual rejection of the traditional libretto, procedurally revealing the fabula of what is happening on stage, in favor of a small script plan, often without development and cause-and-effect relationships between episodes. The compositional and dramaturgical solution of the ballets is based on the suite, which is the root of the genre, but interpreted in a modified form, with the active involvement of combinatorics and montage. The musical and stylistic appearance of the performances is also often determined by an "anti-academic" concept characteristic not only of this genre, but also of Erik Satie's work in general. The sound space of the composer's ballets is highly heterogeneous and represents a mix of academic musical traditions with the culture of everyday life, both musical (music hall, cabaret, jazz) and extra-musical (the use of everyday objects reproducing the noise of the urban environment in the score of Parade).

The Intertextual Hub: a platform for intertextual studies of 18th-century France

This article presents a comprehensive overview of the Intertextual Hub, an innovative digital platform designed to facilitate intertextual studies of 18th-century French literature. The platform leverages sophisticated computational methods such as text mining, natural language processing, or machine learning to enable a comprehensive analysis of extensive textual data, a series of approaches known as ‘distant reading’. The Hub incorporates various digital resources, including a vast collection of 18th-century French literary works, laws, decrees and revolutionary pamphlets, all of which are intended to provide a nuanced understanding of the intellectual and cultural landscape of the era. One of the notable challenges the Hub addresses is the disparity in digitisation quality and the inherent differences among various text collections. These challenges include variations in text formats, inconsistencies in metadata, and the diverse nature of the source materials, which range from literary works to official documents. The Hub’s modular architecture, built on the PhiloLogic text analysis engine, accommodates these variances by providing a unified experience for each collection. Researchers are presented with different entry points to explore the multifaceted nature of intertextuality in the period. The platform’s close reading interface is a pivotal aspect, facilitating an immersive and interconnected research experience through guided text exploration. By combining close and distant reading perspectives, users can seamlessly navigate between individual and larger groups of texts through shared themes, concepts or references, thus bridging the gap between these two different modes of reading. In short, the Intertextual Hub aims to foster a deeply interconnected research experience that enhances the understanding of the 18th-century corpus and the intellectual exchanges that shaped the period.

A Curious Case of Neglect

The ‘Van Lynden Collection’ comprises forty-four paintings that were hung in the Lyndenstein country house in Beetsterzwaag by Baron van Lynden (1827-1896) and his mother Cornelia van Borcharen (1789-1864), and forty-six paintings purchased from 1860 onwards, when the baron married Maria Catharina, Baroness van Pallandt (1834-1905), for their residence in The Hague. The baroness’s involvement is not mentioned in archival documents because of women’s legal incapacity at the time. The article corrects this by referring to the Van Lynden-Van Pallandt Collection and discussing the history of all the works. Lyndenstein was home to an almost encyclopaedic selection of finely painted works by Dutch Romantic artists to which Van Lynden, when a young man, added paintings from exhibitions of Living Artists that mostly had already received awards. Louwrens Hanedoes, himself a painter and a relative, might have mediated and represented the baron in purchasing. In their Hague residence, Van Lynden and Van Pallandt hung modern French works painted in a loose or even sketchy manner. These were acquired during visits they made together to sales and galleries in Paris and through their commercial relationship with Goupil & Cie (from 1884 Boussod, Valadon & Cie) and the firm of Wisselingh & Co, both with branches in the Netherlands. The collection from Lyndenstein arrived in the Rijksmuseum in 1899; in 1900 it was followed by the Hague collection, which had also been bequeathed but was then donated by Baroness van Pallandt during her lifetime. It was not possible to keep the Van Lynden-Van Pallandt Collection together because of the rapid expansion of the collection of late nineteenth-century paintings, the changing appreciation of modern art and the nationalist preference for Dutch art in general and the Hague School in particular, and long-term loans to other institutions. A number of the French masterpieces were not hung permanently until after the Rijksmuseum had been renovated (2013).

Literature and Material Culture: 1830-2020

Marta Caraion and her collaborators Sophie-Valentine Borloz and Joséphine Vodoz lead an SNSF-funded project examining how objects have been represented and conceptualized in French literary works since 1830 and how attitudes to consumer culture have evolved. An edited volume with more than 40 contributors and a literary database are currently under preparation.

Atiq Rahimi’s Exophonic Entanglements: Multilingual and Multimodal Poetics

Abstract In 2008, first-generation Afghan migrant novelist-artist Atiq Rahimi published his first translingual work in French, Syngué Sabour: Pierre de patience. This article interrogates his multilingual and multimodal aesthetics across his translingual oeuvre. In his exophonic novel Les Porteurs d’eau (2019), Rahimi valorizes a polyvocal and culturally diverse Central Asian history. The Prix Goncourt–awarded author introduces Afghanistan’s past and present beyond its intracultural challenges. The epitome of the Rahimi-esque aesthetic is the author’s publication L’Invité du miroir (2020), which acts as a revolt, a transnational dialectic crossroads where multilingual fiction meets classical Persian calligraphy and nonfiction to explore the human spirit.

Gypsy “flavor” within a social structure

In Turkey Romani people have preserved their basic cultural values throughout ages, in fact ever since the Byzantium times. Their origins can be traced back to India, from where they somehow dispersed practically everywhere around the globe. Certain tribes kept living as nomadic people until fairly recent times; while others got settled collectively in districts of certain provinces and counties. In Istanbul sedentarized Romanies essentially pertain to some old neighborhoods near the ancient citywall. The bigger society used to attribute some undeserved negative traits to those jovial, carefree communities; while some of their true virtues (like music-talent or skilled handicrafts) could never be contested, enjoying universal appreciation. In this particular study; Romany people are handled from a sociologicay viewpoint in as much detail as possible or appropriate for the scope of an academic article. The major sources hereby consulted comprise an expert work in French by the prominant social scientist François de Vaux de Foletier, as well as a few volumes of the masterpiece of a social-historian, late Reşat Ekrem Koçu, namely İstanbul Ansiklopedisi (The Encyclopedia of İstanbul). (The publishment of the precious serial came to an end with the untimely-death of the chief-editor). Auxuliary complementary literature is also included. The author of this article did insert a sequence of his own life experiences/Erlebnis, as well. The outdated-and-despised word “Gypsy” is mostly omitted in the text, except solely in obligatory quotations. Instead, it is replaced by euphumistic words, above all “Romany”.

Feyyaz Kayacan's Art of War: Multiculturalism and Surrealism in "The Shelter Stories"

Feyyaz Kayacan, one of the pioneering figures of the Turkish short story, pursued a multicultural life and published his works in French, English, and Turkish. His literary journeys across languages and cultures not only enabled him to get in touch with the literary and artistic movements of his time but also allowed him to take an active part in the surrealist groups in London. After surveying Kayacan’s international identity and his quest for belonging both in his actual life and in his short fiction, this article concentrates on The Shelter Stories (Sığınak Hikâyeleri, 1962), a collection of the short stories that portray the Londoners during the Second World War. It traces the possible sources that might have incited Kayacan’s imagination in writing such idiosyncratic short stories full of linguistic tricks and figures of speech. Drawing attention to the similarity between Kayacan’s imagination and the visual representations of the wartime painters Paul Nash and Henry Moore, the article underlines that Kayacan’s art of war is geared to transform dark feelings into a cheerful spirit.

THE CONCEPTS OF SINGING OF THE FOUNDERS OF THE MODERN SHEN XIANG - JIN TELIN CHINESE VOCAL SCHOOL

The article is devoted to the characteristics of the two fundamental directions of the modern Chinese vocal school, represented in the scientifi c, pedagogical and performing work of Shen Xiang and his student Jin Telin. Shen Xiang (1921-1993) is a famous tenor in China and abroad, who was called the Chinese Caruso. His repertoire included works in English, Italian, French, Russian and German. The singer brilliantly mastered the technique of bel canto, had a light timbre and excellent diction. Thanks to his own unique technique, he brought up a large number of famous vocalists. Shen Xiang’s student Jin Tielin (1940-2022) is of particular interest in the context of the national concept of singing. A graduate of the Central Conservatory, a soloist of the Central Philharmonic, and since 1981 a teacher at the Chinese Conservatory, he simultaneously served at various times as vice chairman of the Chinese Musicians Association, rector of the Chinese Conservatory, vice chairman of the China Scientifi c Society of National Vocal Music. Jin Tielin became famous as a vocalist and teacher, who not only raised the authority of his teacher, but also created his own vocal school with unique features.

‘Triumph, victorious Love’: Le Triomphe de l’Amour (1681) and English dramatic opera

Abstract The French entertainment Le Triomphe de l’Amour was premiered at Louis XIV’s court in January 1681. A revised version was staged at the Paris Opéra in May 1681 with additional music and new scenic effects. Thomas Betterton modelled the final masque from his dramatic opera The Prophetess (1690) on the Paris version of the work, borrowing its theme and spectacular multi-stage machine effects, and some lyrics. Roger Savage has shown that the sleep scene from The Fairy Queen (1692) has ideas and text in common with Le Triomphe de l’Amour. A scenic effect in The Fairy Queen is also derived from the work. Given the literary and scenic borrowings from Le Triomphe de l’Amour in both dramatic operas, and Betterton’s role in adapting The Prophetess, he was almost certainly responsible for the Fairy Queen adaptation too. Some of Purcell’s music for The Fairy Queen emulates Lully’s music for the French work. Purcell borrows instrumental effects, stylistic features, and melodic and harmonic material. He may also have taken inspiration from the work in his treatment of the instruments in The Prophetess, though the influence of Grabu is more strongly apparent in this work. These borrowings provide further evidence that aemulatio remained core to both musical and literary composition—and was also applicable to theatrical staging—in late 17th-century London. Le Triomphe de l’Amour is an important work in the history of French musical theatre. Part of its legacy, in addition, is its substantial influence on English dramatic opera.

‘Nous sommes tous nés nomades.’ The Pictorial Compasses of Fromentin’s Dominique and Flaubert’s Salammbô of 1862

ABSTRACT This article takes its lead from Barbara Wright’s simple yet profound literary-critical imperative, ‘“Only Connect” … ’ (2010), to reflect Fromentin’s Dominique critically in Flaubert’s Salammbô – and vice versa – by means of the aesthetic compasses of critical reader response in 1862, and their authors’ earlier travel writing. In therefore arguing by example for renewed examination of important works in word and image in Second Empire France that appear the same year, the article reorientates twenty-first-century critical debate concerning the status and aesthetic perspectives of mature, representative, enduring and canonical works in nineteenth-century French and Francophone Studies.

The English Universal History’s treatment of the Arab world

ABSTRACT The Universal History, which had a complicated publishing history from the 1730s to the 1780s, was a commercial undertaking by a group of London booksellers, aimed at satisfying curiosity for reliable information about the rest of the world. It was finally composed of two separate parts, the Ancient and the Modern, which, while eventually published as a single work, were distinct. Its first author was George Sale, the noted translator of the Qur’an, who emphasized the recourse to original Arab manuscripts, although, after his death in 1736, later authors had a different approach. This article looks first at the work’s hostile view of Islam and claim that sympathy to it was a tactic of irreligious thinkers to undermine Christianity. It then analyses the somewhat confused discussion of the Arabs, which varies according to the sources used in the two parts, before highlighting the emphasis on Ottoman despotism. It finally evokes the call in the Modern Part for a European expedition to free North Africa from the Ottomans, destroy piracy in the Mediterranean, and encourage the North Africans to develop agriculture and trade. This call was copied in the best-selling French work, Raynal’s Histoire des Deux Indes.

INHIBITORY EFFECT OF CARBOHYDRAZ ON SECRETORY ACTIVITY OF THE PANCREAS

Since the time of Ivan Petrovich Pavlov's work, it is known that the juice collected from the pancreatic fistula, when it is re-introduced into the duodenum, inhibits the secretion of the pancreas. Most recently, in the works of American, French and Japanese physiologists, this inhibition was associated with the fact that trypsinogen secreted in the pancreatic secretion and trypsin contained in the duodenal contents inhibit the release of the hormone cholicystokininpancreosimin by duodenal endocrine cells - a powerful stimulator of enzyme secretion by the pancreas. This explanation of the reverse reproduction of pancreatic secretion from the duodenum is recognized by most experts. In connection with the above, the study of this problem seems to be an urgent task.

Le rôle des Hongrois dans la Chronique de Morée •

AbstractThe study examines the role and perception of Hungarians in the Chronicle of Morea (Τὸ Χρονικὸν τοῦ Μορέως). It presents the passages in which the Chronicle mentions the Hungarian people or the Kingdom of Hungary, and compares them with passages in other contemporary literary and historical works in Old French and Byzantine Greek that also mention Hungarians. It seeks to answer the question why the Chronicle, which tells the history of the hostile crusader states, speaks of the Hungarians, who were generally close to Byzantium and helped the successor states of the Byzantine Empire, in a more laudatory tone and in more praiseworthy terms than other contemporary sources closer to the Hungarians. The study also examines the role of the descendants of Béla III, the Saint-Omer brothers, and the literary role of Sir Nicolas II de Saint-Omer. Finally, it analyses the Chronicle's excerpt of the succession dispute of Akova, which is closely linked to the descendants of Béla III.

I Was a French Muslim: Memories of an Algerian Freedom Fighter. By Mokhtar Mokhtefi. Translated by Elaine Mokhtefi

Readers of memoirs of Algeria’s War of Independence from France (1954–62) become aware that these works not only engage the writer’s memory in bringing past events to light but grant the memoirists important perspectives on their war experiences. Through memoir writing, former combatants come to understand how the anticolonial struggle — in its multiple facets — transformed their lives, affording them new perspectives on the world and their place in it. Mokhtar Mokhtefi’s memoir presents such a trajectory. Originally published in 2016 in Algiers by Éditions Barzakh, the text first appeared as J’étais Français-musulman: itinéraire d’un soldat de l’ALN. The translator is Mokhtefi’s widow, Elaine Mokhtefi; she has prefaced the English-language text. Born in Berrouaghia, Algeria, in 1935, Mokhtar Mokhtefi joined the Armée de libération nationale (ALN) at the age of twenty-two in 1957, three years after the war had begun. He trained as a radio operator and headed a communications unit during the war. Following independence, he became president of the Union générale des étudiants musulmans algériens, and studied sociology and economics in Algiers and Paris. Mokhtefi left Algeria for France in 1973 and later moved to New York, where he died in 2015 shortly before the publication of his memoir. The youngest son of a butcher and the only one of six children to continue his studies beyond elementary school, Mokhtefi owes his remarkable trajectory to a schoolteacher who recognized his intellectual talents and convinced the boy’s father to allow the son to continue his education, insisting on the opportunities that education would offer the family. Mokhtefi’s memoir contains three parts: ‘Childhood’; ‘Awakening’; and ‘Soldier in the ALN Signal Corps’. The first two parts deal with his early life within the family, showing him initially as having been completely integrated into his community, and the outward journey, first to Blida as a boarding student in high school and then to Constantine as a maître d’internat in a high school there. Both sections trace the journey away from home that grants him political awareness of the injustices of colonialism and results in the young man’s sense of alienation. He writes: ‘I feel mutilated, bouncing back and forth between the traditional family, the village, and my life at the school and the city’ (p. 90). He poignantly admits to the gap that his French education has created between his world and his parents’ world: ‘Without seeking it, I am conscious of being mentally estranged from them’ (p. 141). The third part describes his war experiences: his training as a radio operator for the ALN; his life in the army; and his contact with important political figures such as President Houari Boumediene, whom he characterizes as extremely disciplined but cold (p. 242). Mokhtefi’s memoir is a fascinating read. I suggest, however, that the francophone public read the work in French to best capture Mokhtefi’s spontaneity and personal literary style, and recommend the translation to anglophone readers who otherwise would not have access to it.

Russian-Belarusian relations of the late 1990s – early 2000s: the view of French researchers

The article identifies and analyzes the views of modern French researchers on the relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. The study of the works of French scientists makes it possible to analyze Russia's foreign policy not only in relation to its closest neighbor, the Republic of Belarus, but also in relation to the entire post-Soviet space. The subject of the study is the relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus in the late 1990s - early 2000s. The article is an attempt to fill the gap in French historiography and analyze the relations between the two former Soviet republics through the prism of French studies. The article also examines the assessments that French authors give to integration associations in the post-Soviet space, as well as to the interaction between the two states in the military and economic spheres. The study is relevant due to the fact that it is the first time the French works devoted to Russian-Belarusian relations in the post-Soviet period have been analysed. Historical, narrative, and comparative-historical methods of historical research were used as the main methods. The author comes to the conclusion that, according to the majority of French researchers, since the collapse of the USSR, relations between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus have been the strongest and most stable compared to other former Soviet republics, despite the obvious great dependence of Belarus on Russia. Moreover, the participation of both countries in the same integration associations and the creation of a common Union State not only speaks about the similar interests of both countries, but it further strengthens the relationship between them.

Producing transformations to study them

Concepts are at the core of human psychological experience. By means of them, we can communicate, understand and collaborate with each other. Within each community, concepts have been learned and can be taught. They are of capital importance for education in every level and for work activities. Concepts have been the object of study of different disciplines and in different contexts for many years. Despite their importance and the attention they have received, both common sense and psychological science understand concepts in an oversimplified way that has consequences for research and teaching. Early in the past century, Vygotsky studied the phenomena of concepts and their development in what ended up addressing most of the loose ends that remain in current dominant psychological and educational perspectives. In this article, we review the main, hegemonic perspectives on concepts in psychology, particularly one of the mayor research fields in educational psychology (Research on Conceptual Change), to present later some cross-cutting criticisms to those approaches that will become our touchstone for a sound theory of concepts. Then we present the Vygotskian approach to concept development, and the methodological implications derived from the dialectical framework in which it is inscribed. Finally, extending the Vygotskian approach beyond child development, we present a method developed in French work psychology, the Activity Clinics approach, and its potential for studying the development of concepts in work activities.