Histoire De La Research Articles

‘Everyday Life’ in the Works of Maria Bogucka

The article discusses the use of the category of ‘everyday life’ in historical works by Maria Bogucka as well as her theoretical contributions on the subject. Her pioneering role in adapting the mode of popular writing advanced by the French cycle Histoire de la vie quotidienne to Polish historiography in the 1960s established a high-quality standard on Polish scholars by combining original research into economic and social history with references to the history of material culture and mentalities. A quarter of a century after the publication of her exemplary study entitled Życie codzienne w Gdańsku: wiek XVI–XVII [Everyday Life in Gdańsk: Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, 1967], Bogucka involved herself in contemporary debates within the international community of historians over the German Alltagsgeschichte, perceiving it as a methodological framework for innovative research and an opportunity to expand the theoretical side of cultural history. Though she would not produce another ‘history of everyday life’ – in a refreshed perspective and with more robust theoretical foundations – her studies into old Polish customs betray an inspiration with the German research current of Alltagsgeschichte, which blossomed in the early 1990s.

The current four volumes of Michel Foucault’s Histoire de la sexualité: a review of the state of research, 2022

By providing a review of the present state of research regarding French historian of ideas Michel Foucault’s (1926-1984) current four-volume series Histoire de la sexualité, this essay highlights an acceleration in tempo after the publication of an edited fourth volume (Les aveux de la chair) in 2018. After providing an overview of the manuscript development of Les aveux de la chair, and the emergence of a pattern regarding the structural and chronological composition of Histoire de la sexualité, namely that the series should effectively be read backward from the first volume La volonté de savoir to the thematically last volume L’usage des plaisirs, several developing themes in the most recent scholarship on Histoire de la sexualité are noted and annotated. The report concludes with a presentation of two notable features of the current four volumes, namely its unconventional composition and existing historical gaps, regarding the Carolingian and post-Carolingian periods, later Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, and Counter-Reformation.

Pulling It Out of a Hat: Picabia, Lanson and Man Ray's Cover for Littérature

The magician’s top hat, standardized handwriting, calligraphic flourish and ink blot of Man Ray’s cover for the new series of Littérature in 1922 open questions of style in both fashion and writing. The cover’s emblem-like visual components resonate not only with questions of style and cultural sophistication in such magazines as Monsieur and La Gazette du bon ton, but also with contemporary Dada squabbles with Cubism, and with a Paris Dada bugbear” Gustave Lanson’s magisterial text, Histoire de la littérature française (1894). In his 1924 Manifeste André Breton deftly capitalized on Lansonism in order to turn it against its own premises and devices. Finally, Man Ray’s emblem points to questions at the time of authenticity, authority and falsity.

How Icelandic Is French Law? A Few Remarks about the Discovery and Usage of Icelandic Antiquities in French Legal Historiography during the Nineteenth Century

How Icelandic Is French Law? A Few Remarks about the Discovery and Usage of Icelandic Antiquities in French Legal Historiography during the Nineteenth Century

Du latin tardif au numérique. Une histoire de la phrase française des « Serments de Strasbourg » aux écritures numériques sous la direction de Gilles Siouffi

From late Latin to digital culture. A History of French Sentence from the „Oaths of Strasbourg” to Digital Writing under the direction of Gilles Siouffi The article constitutes a report on the publication Une histoire de la phrase française des Serments de Strasbourg aux écritures numériques [A History of French Sentence from the “Oaths of Strasbourg” to Digital Writing] published under the direction of Gilles Siouffi. The notion of a sentence seems nowadays so widely shared that we could be tempted to think that all over the history it was an obvious thing. Texts used by the authors demonstrate the contrary, they show that a sentence was for a long time contending with little success against competitive concepts (such as period, proposition, to mention just the most important ones) and that it is the outcome of a complicated history relating to various areas of the social life: political history, literary history, technical innovations, language analyses, etc. Apart from the authors’ erudition and their ability to include linguistic thinking into the common history, this work seduces by the contrast between texts certified and the model of a sentence, which contemporary French speakers have encoded.

Speaking Out: Intersectional Denunciations of Sexual Assault and Police Responses in Michaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and Édouard Louis’ Histoire de la violence

Increasingly diverse Western European societies have developed their own conversations around intersectionality that focus on local issues. Two artists and public intellectuals that demonstrate this increasing level of engagement with intersectionality in Western Europe are writer and actress Michaela Coel and writer Édouard Louis, from England and France, respectively. In the 2020 TV series I May Destroy You, Coel presents the story of a working-class English black writer named Arabella who has been sexually assaulted. She also gives the spotlight to Arabella’s best friend, Kwame, a black gay man who has also been assaulted but whose experience differs greatly from Arabella due to his gender and sexual orientation. I May Destroy You introduces its viewers to intersectionality by insisting on how Arabella and Kwame’s specific identities lead to different outcomes. Likewise, French writer Édouard Louis’s 2018 novel Histoire de la violence revolves around the author’s rape by a man of North African descent in order to examine the treatment of queer people and ethnic minorities by the police and French society at large. Both creators have succeeded in making their audiences aware of how intersectionality is a necessary tool to comprehend systemic inequality in their respective countries.

Histoire de la description de la parole: de l'introspection à l'instrumentation éd. par Christelle Dodane, et Claudia Schweitzer

Reviewed by: Histoire de la description de la parole: de l'introspection à l'instrumentation éd. par Christelle Dodane, et Claudia Schweitzer Wladyslaw Cichocki Dodane, Christelle, et Claudia Schweitzer, éd. Histoire de la description de la parole: de l'introspection à l'instrumentation. Champion, 2021. ISBN 978-2-7453-5595-9. Pp. 404. This collection of eleven papers (plus a preface and an afterword) deals with aspects of the historical development—from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries—of the description of speech as found in research on French. The main theme is that the notations and analytical techniques currently used in phonetic research were developed over a long period of time. Before the nineteenth century, knowledge about speech was limited to what could be perceived by auditory perception, physical observation, or intuition. However, major developments in speech research were to take place in the late nineteenth century with the invention of analytical instruments such as the kymograph, palatographic mirrors, and magnetic recordings. This theme is developed in each of the three sections of the book. The first section discusses the description of prosody. While sixteenth-century grammarians considered prosody to be an important part of rhetorical art, they tended to avoid it in their research because they had difficulty describing it. The discovery of instruments that brought into focus the acoustic features of fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration helped in the creation of notational systems that were sensitive to the organization of rhythm and intonation. The second section of the book presents the development of transcription systems for segmental sounds. Research began with two types of systems, "organic" notations based on physiological articulation and writing systems that were close to the Latin alphabet; these would eventually lead to the invention of the International Phonetic Alphabet. The third section of papers outlines the growth of experimental phonetics laboratories in Paris, Grenoble, Montpellier, and Strasbourg. It establishes connections between this development and research on déclamation, gesture, and singing. Among the topics covered are the legacies of Abbé Jean-Pierre Rousselot, the phonetician and dialectologist who was the founder of experimental phonetics, and Maurice Grammont, whose research on phonetic variation was a precursor to the field of sociophonetics. Many of the nineteen specialists who contributed papers to this volume are associated with the Praxiling Laboratoire de linguistique at Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3, and they represent different fields: phonetics, phonology, speech pathology, musicology, history of linguistics, and traditional grammar. This diversity may account for some of the differences in writing style and for the loose cohesion between chapters. A noticeable shortcoming is the small number of illustrations in the chapters that discuss the development of transcription systems. It is noteworthy that the volume is accompanied by an online booklet that provides links to videos and excerpts from rare manuscripts (including portraits, descriptive texts, and demonstrations of instruments like the kymograph). This book will be of particular [End Page 171] interest to phoneticians and advanced students of phonetics as well as to those who study the history of linguistics. More generally, anyone who carries out computer-based analysis of speech—using software such as Praat, for example—will find useful historical nuggets that inspire an appreciation of and reflection on the origins of current notational and instrumental practices. [End Page 172] Wladyslaw Cichocki University of New Brunswick (Canada) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

‘Subject van zijn daden’: Lacaniaanse reflecties bij een foucaultiaanse levenskunst

‘Subject of one’s acts’: Lacanian reflections on a Foucauldian art of living In Les aveux de la chair, the fourth volume of his Histoire de la sexualité, Foucault explains how the still dominant idea that man is ‘subject of desire’ – and thus subjected to the law of desire – has its origin in the libido theory of Augustine. With this genealogical analysis Foucault targets, among other things, the libido theory of his contemporary, the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. This essay briefly discusses what makes Lacan and Foucault theoretically opposed to each other. I zoom in on how both conceive the modern ‘subject’. Opposite to the subject as ‘subject to desire’, Foucault puts forward the ‘subject of one’s own actions’, the subject that is itself the ground/base of its own ‘care for oneself’ (epimileia heautou). This essay presents a critical reflection on the possibility of such a subject. It is here that Lacan’s theory of the subject can shed a light on Foucault’s understanding of a modern ‘care of oneself’ or ‘art of living’. Lacanian psychoanalysis can provide a ‘critical theory’, indispensable for what is at stake in a Foucauldian ‘art of living’.

JEAN-LOUIS CARRA AND THE ROMANIANS

One of the Western travellers that went through the Romanian area during the second half of the 18th century was the French Jean-Louis Carra (1742-1793). Originary of Burgundy (France), he travelled in Europe on several occasions. He reached Moldavia as well in the year 1775, when he came to serve the Reigning Prince Grigore III Ghica (whom he had met in Russia), as a teacher of his sons and as a secretary for the French correspondence. He remained here for a year (1775-1776), and during this period he seems to have travelled to Wallachia as well. In the spring of the year 1776, Carra left Moldavia heading to Poland. A year later, in 1777, there appeared in Buillon, not in Iaşi, as it is written on the title page, Histoire de la Moldavie et la Valachie (History of Moldavia and Wallachia), a work that was to be published in the same year in Paris as well and then in its second edition in Neuchatel, in the year 1781. Our paper aims to bring into focus Carra’s works together with all the controversies it triggered in the course of time in the Romanian historiography.

Transnational networks and gay subjectivity in the theatre of Thomas Ostermeier, Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis

ABSTRACT The work of French writers Didier Eribon and Édouard Louis has, through translation, gained an international audience. Thomas Ostermeier has adapted Eribon's Returning to Reims (Retour á Reims, 2017) and Louis' History of Violence (Histoire de la violence, 2018) for the stage allowing the authors' reflections on growing up gay and poor in rural working-class France to transform as they travel across borders. This article will map this transnational literary-theatrical network in relation to Eribon's idea of a “collective minoritarian experience”. It uncovers how Ostermeier and his collaborators adapt these texts for the stage, and how Eribon and Louis are themselves represented as subjects. The article asks how these productions develop a shared theatrical aesthetic to represent a shared queer experience. Focusing on the networks that made these productions possible reveals the potential of transnational collaboration for representing new experiences, as well as the transformations prompted by these collaborations.

Die ‘bekentenisse van die vlees’ in die sentrale Middeleeue: ’n Verruiming van Foucault se lesing in Histoire de la sexualité 1 (La volonté de savoir)

The ‘confessions of the flesh’ in the central Middle Ages: An expansion of Foucault’s reading in Histoire de la sexualité 1 (La volonté de savoir). This article expands Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) reading of the ‘confessions of the flesh’ in handbooks of penance written during the central Middle Ages in the first volume La volonté de savoir of his (current) four-volume series Histoire de la sexualité. After the posthumous publication of the fourth volume Les aveux de la chair (2018), in which Foucault takes his analysis of the historical foundations of confessional practices in the late 12th century to the first half of the 14th century even further back, to the ‘confessions of the flesh’ in the patristics of the 3rd to the 5th centuries, it has become sensible to illuminate Foucault’s condensed reading of confessional scripts in La volonté de savoir itself. This exposition pertinently applies to Foucault’s correct conclusion that sex was prioritised above all other ‘sins’, ‘vices’, and ‘transgressions’ in central Medieval confessional scripts; therefore, as he famously noted, becoming a ‘seismograph of subjectivity in Christian cultures’. Against this backdrop, it is considered how thinkers from the central Middle Ages themselves reflected on the sacramentalisation of confession after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 – since Foucault himself did not substantially elaborate on it. The reflections of three philosophers from the central Middle Ages on the relation between sex, confession and absolution are subsequently presented as an expansion of Foucault’s reading in La volonté de savoir. Firstly, Alan of Lille’s (d.1203) interpretation of the Summae confessorum in his Liber poenitentialis is revisited, concluding that Lille’s perspective was ‘hermeneutical’, in terms of his insistence that the confessor should adjust his interrogations according to seven Aristotelian topoi or detailed questions, designate the context in which the transgression occurred very thoroughly and ‘actively participate’ in the confessional act, rather than simply recording it. Lille’s ‘hermeneutical’ approach to confession is also reflected in Robert Grosseteste’s (ca.1168–1253) De modo confitendi et paenitentias iniungendi, in which a moderate phronetic approach allows for the full discretion of the confessor, rather than following the rigid prescriptions of the Summae confessorum only. Secondly, William of Auvergne’s (ca.1180–1249) contribution to the interpretation of the Summae confessorum in his Poenitentia is indicated in his utilitarian ethics, in which the interests of the ethical ‘other’ is related to the confessing ‘self’: even though matrimony is for Auvergne the only realm where the other’s interests are not necessarily compromised by sexual contact, several considerations regarding ‘improper sex’, precisely within matrimony, apply according to the relevant penitential guidelines. Thirdly, Paul of Hungary’s (ca.1180–1241) De confessione is considered in terms of his reflections on ‘paying sexual debt’, and on the relation between regulated sexual release and the legitimacy of sexual gratification, again within the context of matrimony.Contribution: This article contributes to Foucault-scholarship by elucidating and expanding Foucault’s condensed reading of 13th-century confessional scripts in La volonté de savoir, with reference to the relevant texts of Alan of Lille (d.1203), William of Auvergne (ca.1180–1249) and Paul of Hungary (ca.1180–1241).

Grains of Gold – Compiling an Historical Anthology of Occitan Literature

Grains of Gold – Compiling an Historical Anthology of Occitan Literature James Thomas Some endeavours are so foreboding they might be considered acts of folly. The compilation of a 780–page anthology of Occitan literature with English translations could be — to those with an interest in such matters — a prime example. Most scholars and researchers of Occitan from English-speaking nations are, so the argument goes, medievalists, for whom whatever happened after 1400 to the first Romance language of the French Midi is of no real concern. There is some truth in this assertion. Each year produces new monographs on troubadour culture, multilingualism in southern France during the Albigensian Crusades, gender and religious dissent in Provence or — periodically —annotated editions and bilingual anthologies of courtly lyric poetry before 1300. If scholars stray into the Baroque period, little-known Eighteenth Century, or post-Revolutionary era, it is usually as social or economic historians studying the development of a particular city, industry or profession or — closer to the contemporary age — sociolinguists charting bilingualism or language shift and Romance philologists concerned with dialectal or morphological variation. The situation in France — and, to varying degrees, Catalonia, Italy, and Germany — is very different. Despite the path-breaking work of a small, disparate collection of literary historians and translators — William Calin, Catherine Aldington, Rosemary Lloyd, and Patrick Hutchinson, among others — the late twentieth century saw very little institutional change in the idea prevalent in and around Anglophone French Studies1 that Occitan literature died around 1300 — with the miraculous nineteenth-century exception of Frédéric Mistral (1830–1914). In fact, francophone social historians, such as Robert A. Schneider and William H. Sewell Jr., have often shown greater affinity with later Occitan writers — for Schneider, the Toulousain [End Page 127] poet Pèire Godolin (1580–1649), for Sewell, the Marseillais chanteur Victor Gelu (1806–1885) — than their literary confrères in post-medieval French Studies. It was thus with some trepidation (though great enthusiasm) that, in 2010, I embarked on Grains of Gold, a five-year project to produce a comprehensive — though evidently non-exhaustive — bilingual anthology of Occitan literature from the tenth century to the present day. My own credentials for such an undertaking were (hopefully) sound, having, since 2005, completed two successful Masters Degrees in Occitan-related matters. The first — a research M. Phil (University of Bristol) supervised by Catherine Léglu and externally examined by Peter Davies (University of Glasgow) — was a comparative study of two iconic nineteenth-century Occitan figures: Ganges-born savant and poet Antoine Fabre d’Olivet (1767–1825) and the afore-mentioned Victor Gelu (1806–1885). The second — an MA in Translation (University of Exeter, 2010) — included a well-received dissertation on French and English translations of medieval Occitan troubadours during the Age of Romanticism. This grounding in medieval and post-medieval Occitan would soon be buttressed by a trilogy of published chapters on the Occitan reception of Dante in the nineteenth century. At heart a dix-neuvièmiste with a penchant for translation, I was able, through this research, to contemplate a bilingual anthology emanating from a core of medieval studies, romantic medievalism, and social romanticism. From one angle, Bernart de Ventadorn and the Comtessa de Dia: from another, Frédéric Mistral and the Agen hairdresser-poet Jacques Jasmin (1798–1864): from a third, the history of Anglophone reception of Occitan. Robert Lafont and Christian Anatole’s important Nouvelle histoire de la littérature occitane helped set broad generic and temporal parameters as well as identify major authors whose exclusion would be unthinkable. This led me to the more concentrated, period-specific Occitan-French anthologies such as Lafont’s Anthologie des baroques occitans, Pierre Bec’s Le Siècle d’or de la poésie gasconne, and Jean Eygun’s Camins dubèrts: [End Page 128] Anthologie bilingue de poésie occitane contemporaine. Jean-Claude Rixte’s indispensable online database Li Tèxts literaris occitans en anglès was a hugely stimulating resource for charting prior historical translations and receptions of Occitan in the Anglosphere. Peter Ricketts — whose British Library research contributed to this database — had previously offered generous assistance and support for my research on Fabre d...

Foucault's Formative Years

Foucault's Formative Years Paul Allen Miller (bio) Review of Stuart Elden, The Early Foucault, Cambridge Polity Press 2021. xiv + 280 pp. Stuart Elden has become the definitive chronicler of Foucault's intellectual evolution. The Early Foucault is the third in what will ultimately be a four-volume history. The series began with Foucault's Last Decade (2016). While the first volume was originally intended as a stand-alone work, it immediately became clear to the publisher and the reviewers alike that this approach should be extended to the whole of Foucault's intellectual life. Elden has created what is in effect a kind of Bible for Foucault scholars, a series of works that any serious student of Foucault simply must consult. Elden is careful not to call his work a biography to distinguish it from the admirable work of David Macey and Didier Eribon on the life of Foucault as well as the gossip-filled scandalmongering of the regrettable James Miller. Elden focuses on Foucault's published work, not in terms of a close reading of his texts, although he is a more than competent interpreter, but in terms of how they came to be, on their intellectual genealogy. How did arguments come together? Who were Foucault's interlocutors? What sources did he consult? Elden's work in the Foucault archives housed in the Bibliothèque Nationale as well as those found in the Institut Mémoires de l'Édition Contemporaine is extraordinarily thorough and meticulous. For the present volume he has also consulted archives in Uppsala and Hamburg, where Foucault worked in the 1950s, and the personal archives of such early mentors as Louis Althusser, Georges Canguilhem, Georges Dumézil, and Jean Hyppolite. Elden does not ignore issues in Foucault's personal life, but he explores them only to the extent that they are relevant to his oeuvre. Thus, in the current volume there is a short discussion of Foucault's relationship (1953–55) with the young serialist composer Jean Barraqué, but the focus is on their mutual intellectual influence, with particular regard to Foucault's early interest in Nietzsche. Foucault would later observe that Barraqué's and Boulez's serialist music had an analogous effect on his intellectual formation to that of Nietzsche himself, creating a "rupture in the dialectical universe" (124). [End Page 343] The telos of this volume is the writing of Foucault's major thesis for his doctorat d'État, what would eventually become known as Histoire de la folie or, according to the greatly abridged version that was first translated into English and was long the only version available, Madness and Civilization. The story begins in 1945 when Foucault moved to Paris and matriculated at the Lycée Henri IV, where he enrolled in the preparatory course for the entrance exam for the École normale supérieure (ENS) and first encountered the great Hegel scholar Jean Hyppolite, who was briefly his instructor in philosophy there. At Henri IV, Foucault studied a comprehensive liberal arts curriculum that focused on philosophy, literature, and history in French, German, Latin, and Greek. He entered the ENS in 1946 and was awarded a licence in philosophy in 1948 and a second in psychology in 1949, with an advanced diploma in general psychology from the Paris Institut de Psychologie that same year. This pairing of the disciplines set the intellectual agenda for Foucault for the following decade, as he both deepened and expanded his philosophical knowledge and gained theoretical and practical knowledge of psychology, psychiatry, and psychoanalysis. Elden provides thorough coverage of the scope of Foucault's philosophical education, detailing each of his professors and their respective specialties. In 1949, Foucault submitted the equivalent of an MA thesis on "The Constitution of a Transcendental in Hegel's Phenomenology of the Spirit" under the direction of Hyppolite. He then immediately began studying under the direction of Althusser for the aggrégation, the national exam given each year that qualifies you to teach philosophy, which he passed with high marks on the second attempt, in 1951. He began his teaching career in 1952 with an appointment in Lille, while also lecturing at the ENS. Elden reconstructs the substance of Foucault's...

MAPS OF ROMAN DACIA. II. VICTORIA VASCHIDE AND THE CARTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF DACIA IN 1903

We are continuing our series of studies regarding the representation of Dacia in medieval and modern cartography with a discussion related to another map, printed in a book written by Victoria Vaschide, entitled Histoire de la conquéte romaine de la Dacie et des corps d’armée qui y ont pris part, Paris, Librairie Emile Bouillon, 1903. This is a book which contains a detail analysis of different aspects regarding the conquest of Roman Dacia, including the construction of roads, the organization of the frontier, and the military troops which have participated to the conquest. At the end of the volume, the reader finds a map of Roman Dacia, drawn by the author, entitled “Carte militaire de la Dacie dressée par Victoria Vaschide”. We are presenting here some data regarding the topography of Dacia illustrated by this map published in 1903.

Die ontwikkeling en komplekse samehange van die huidige vier bande van Foucault se Histoire de la sexualité

Hierdie artikel bied 'n toeganklike oorsig van die ontwikkeling en komplekse samehange van die huidige vier bande van Michel Foucault (1926-1984) se seksualiteitsgeskiedenis in die reeks Histoire de la sexualité, gepubliseer by Gallimard in Parys. Die eerste band is in 1976 en die tweede en derde in 1984 met Foucault as alleenskrywer gepubliseer, en die vierde band (Les aveux de la chair) het in Februarie 2018 onder redakteurskap van Frédéric Gros gevolg. Les aveux de la chair se huidige status (met inbegrip van die skrywer van hierdie artikel se voorbehoude daaroor) in die reeks en Foucault se groter oeuvre word inleidend aangedui, waarna 'n gedetailleerde oorsig volg van die tematies-chronologiese ontwikkeling van die drie vroeër gepubliseerde bande (La volonté de savoir [gelees met die manuskrip van La chair et le corps, wat waarskynlik geredigeer sal word om as vyfde band in die reeks te dien], L 'usage des plaisirs en Le souci de soi) en die koppeling van hierdie tekste met Les aveux de la chair. 'n Tabel waarin die tematiese en chronologiese samehange tussen die huidige vier en minstens nog twee beoogde bande in die reeks uiteengesit word, word as deel van die gevolgtrekking aangebied.

Raptus en die ‘vorm van die wil’: ’n Transgressiewe lesing van Foucault se Augustinus-interpretasie in Les aveux de la chair

Raptus and the ‘form of the will’: A transgressive reading of Foucault’s interpretation of Augustine in Les aveux de la chair . This article presents a reading of Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) interpretation of Augustine of Hippo’s (354–430) views on sex in Histoire de la sexualité 4 ( Les aveux de la chair ), published in February 2018 at Gallimard in Paris under editorship of Frédéric Gros. The article contributes to the reception and ongoing analyses of Les aveux de la chair by presenting a transgressive reading of the Augustinian prioritisation of the will, and Foucault’s emphasis on the Augustinian notion of sexual desire as the ‘form of the will’. Raptus or ‘divine orgasm’ is presented from the texts of several female mystics from the central Middle Ages as an example of a sexual context in which the will is unable to claim the pinnacle position Augustine attributed to it, precisely as a form of identity – and language transgressing eroticism in the ‘mystical presence of God’. Foucault’s reading of John Cassian’s (ca.360–435) ‘battle for chastity’ is presented as the discursive background of his interpretation of Augustine, followed by a presentation of raptus as a resource to reconsider Augustine’s prioritisation of the will (and the ‘problem of the libido’) in sexual contexts. Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: Foucault’s reading of the church and desert fathers in Histoire de la sexualité 4 ( Les aveux de la chair ) impacts early Medieval philosophy, early Medieval history, church history, patristics, philosophy of religion and sociology of religion. Since these proximate disciplines are affected by Foucault’s text, they may well take note of the ongoing examinations of this recently edited work.

Michel Foucault on Methodius of Olympus (d.ca.311) in Les aveux de la chair: Patrick Vandermeersch’s analysis contextualised

This article presents a contextualisation of Belgian philosopher and historian of psychiatry and sexuality, Patrick Vandermeersch’s (1946–), unpublished analysis of French philosopher Michel Foucault’s (1926–1984) interpretation of Methodius of Olympus’ (d.ca.311) views on virginity and chastity, in Histoire de la sexualité 4 (Les aveux de la chair), published in February 2018 at Gallimard in Paris under the editorship of Frédéric Gros. The article contributes to the reception and the ongoing analyses of Les aveux de la chair by exploring Foucault’s reading while highlighting both the importance of Vandermeersch’s analysis and the sexological-historiographical significance of his broader oeuvre that spans over four decades. Vandermeersch shows that Foucault, as many other commentators of Methodius, did not substantially engage Methodius’ explicit indebtedness and persistent references to Plato (already evident in the title Symposium but especially regarding the Phaedrus). Platonic homoeroticism is, according to Vandermeersch, as a consequence often too hastily, and therefore problematically, transposed on contexts of female virginity. Likewise, Foucault, when indicating already at the end of Histoire de la sexualité 2 (L’usage des plaisirs 1984), the particular relevance of homoeroticism in the development of Western sexuality, seemed to adhere to this transposition. Could ‘beautiful boys’ truly be transposed onto ‘female virgins’ without severe sexual-discursive complications? And could Methodius’ encomium of virginity in any way be understood independent of his understanding of the ‘resurrection of the body’, with the integrity of its (virginised) sexual desire intact? These are among Vandermeersch’s valid and challenging questions to both Foucault and his contemporary readership.Contribution: Foucault’s reading of the church- and desert fathers in Histoire de la sexualité 4 (Les aveux de la chair) impacts early Medieval philosophy, early Medieval history, church history, patristics, philosophy of religion, psychology of religion and sociology of religion. Since these proximate disciplines are drawn towards Foucault’s text, they may well note its ongoing examinations. Foucault’s direct impact on these disciplines is illustrated in Vandermeersch’s significant analysis of Foucault’s reading of Methodius in Les aveux de la chair. Vandermeersch’s broader oeuvre in philosophy, theology, psychiatry, psychology, psychology of religion and the history of sexuality is concurrently contextualised as of ongoing contemporary importance for these disciplines.

Augustinus en vroulike homoërotiek in die vroeë Middeleeue: ’n Foucaultiaanse ideëhistoriese interpretasie

Augustine and female homoeroticism in the early Middle Ages: A Foucaultian idea-historical interpretation. Taking his reading of Romans 1:26–27 and Genesis 19 as its hermeneutical key, an idea-historical interpretation of the views of the Western church father Augustine of Hippo (354–430) on female homoeroticism is presented in this article. The accentuation of French philosopher Michel Foucault (1926–1984) on the overall significance of Augustine in the Western history of sexuality, in his posthumous Histoire de la sexualité 4 (Les aveux de la chair, under editorship of Frédéric Gros, 2018), is used to contextualise Augustine’s views on sexual desire as the ‘form of the will’, here positioned specifically within a female homoerotic context. Drawing on the substantial studies of John Boswell (in 1980) and Bernadette Brooten (in 1996), which, although relatively dated, are still without equal in Medieval research, the article subsequently explores Augustine’s views on intimate relations between women, both in monasteries and in secular society. It is shown that intimate relations between women must have transpired in fifth-century monasteries and that female homoeroticism was for the next two centuries dealt with with restraint rather than with forms of exclusion and punishment, despite the negative portrayals of same-sex relations by some of Augustine’s patristic contemporaries (particularly John Chrysostom [ca.347–407]), yet precisely on the basis of Augustine’s understated approach. Although Augustine renounced homoerotic relations as a form of ‘unnatural’ (for him, expressly, all ‘non-procreative’) sex, he dealt with the incidence of female same-sex relations with understatement. Given his general authority in the early Middle Ages, one effect of Augustine’s non-homophobic approach was that female homoeroticism was de facto bypassed as a ‘moral problem’ in the fifth and sixth centuries, until handbooks of penance, that prohibited all forms of same-sex relations, started circulating at the end of the sixth century.Contribution: This article contributes to the ongoing study of Medieval female sexuality, and particularly of female homoeroticism in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, by exploring Augustine’s views on same-sex relations between women around the early fifth century, while concurrently contributing to ongoing analyses of Michel Foucault’s interpretation of the church and desert fathers in the (edited) fourth volume of Histoire de la sexualité (Les aveux de la chair), published in 2018.

Les biographies de psychiatres

The biographies of psychiatrists have been in the 19th century panegyrics, pronounced during the funeral or necrologies evoking the career and the publications of the deceased. The successive secretaries of the medico-psychological society, Auguste Motet and then Antoine Ritti, have written many texts with accurate information on the life and works of the first French alienists. They have been gathered in books, published in 1894 and in 1913–1914. The specialist of the psychiatric biography at the beginning of the 20th century is René Sémelaigne (1855–1934), descendant of the Pinel family by his mother. He has written a reference book during half a century: The pioneers of the French psychiatry before and after Pinel (2 tomes, 1930 and 1932), including notices about 97 personalities from the 16th to the 20th century (22 before Pinel, 75 after). They were physicians, alienists or specialists of internal medicine having contributed to the clinic of neurosis. A detailed bibliography (books and articles), almost exhaustive, of each author is presented in annex of his notice. The chapters are rather hagiographic. The texts are based on the quest for forerunners and the positivist illusion of uninterrupted progress. Psychiatric journals have published in 1950 and in 1973 some issues with articles on the life and works of famous alienists. After Michel Foucault's Histoire de la Folie (1961), the biographies are more critical. The suicides of Clérambault and more recently of Marcé are clearly related. The Biographic Dictionary of Pierre Morel (1984) include about 270 notices (350 in the edition of 1996) of French and foreign personalities, not only physicians, but also psychoanalysts, philanthropists and patients. For the first time, women are present in a psychiatric dictionary. Like Kraepelin, some psychiatrists have written theirs memoirs at the end of the 20th century (Baruk, Debray-Ritzen). Others have answered in the journal International Psychiatry (1993) to the questionnaire: why have you chosen the psychiatry? In the 1990s, several books have been written on the life of alienists and psychiatrists that have marked their time, either by physicians (Marcé, Dide, Heuyer, Ey), or by historians (Pinel, Toulouse, Clérambault). For others, it is a collective book by several contributors (Esquirol, Moreau de Tours, Minkowski, Delay). Personalities belonging to neurology and psychiatry have also inspired biographies (Bourneville, Alzheimer, Gilles de la Tourette). Since 2004, a Biographical dictionary, initiated by Joseph Biéder, is published in the issues of the Annales Médico-Psychologiques, the most ancient French psychiatric journal, created in 1843. In 2020, it includes 86 notices, written by 16 contributors. The personalities are alienists, psychiatrists, neuropsychiatrics and physicians interested by the psychiatry during the 19th and the 20th centuries. The evolution of the biography from the panegyric to the critical contribution, for example in the case of Clérambault, question about its function and about the relationship between the works of an author and his life.

Early modern clouds II: Revisiting the poetics of meteorology

“Early Modern Clouds II” briefly introduces the four essays contained in this volume and refers readers to the more sustained, introductory essay of the first special issue of “Early Modern Clouds” in Romance Quarterly 68: 2, 2021. Here, the focus shifts from Hubert Damisch’s classic study of clouds in Théorie du nuage: Pour une histoire de la peinture (Theory of /Cloud/: Toward a History of Painting; 1972; 2002) to the question of the cloud’s numerous mediating functions—including philosophy, poetics, art history—with an eye to later centuries, as explored by John Durham Peters in The Marvelous Clouds: Toward a Philosophy of Elemental Media (2016).