La Tour Research Articles

Introduction to the Special Issue on the New Silk Road of Innovation: R&D Networks, Knowledge Diffusions, and Open Innovation

Introduction to the Special Issue on the New Silk Road of Innovation: R&D Networks, Knowledge Diffusions, and Open Innovation

Improving the Safety and Science of COVID‐19 Tracheostomy: Challenges and Opportunities

The LaryngoscopeVolume 131, Issue 7 p. E2160-E2161 Comprehensive Otolaryngology Improving the Safety and Science of COVID-19 Tracheostomy: Challenges and Opportunities Michael J. Brenner MD, FACS, Corresponding Author Michael J. Brenner MD, FACS mbren@med.umich.edu orcid.org/0000-0003-4926-0957 Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. Global Tracheostomy Collaborative, Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. Send correspondence to Michael J. Brenner, MD, FACS, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, University of Michigan Medical School, 1500 East Medical Center Drive, 1903 Taubman Center SPC 5312, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. E-mail: mbren@med.umich.eduSearch for more papers by this authorChristopher H. Rassekh MD, FACS, Christopher H. Rassekh MD, FACS Department of Otorhinolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.Search for more papers by this authorPavel Dulguerov MD, PhD, Pavel Dulguerov MD, PhD Division of Head and Neck Surgery, Hôpital de la Tour, Meyrin, Geneva University, Geneva, SwitzerlandSearch for more papers by this author Michael J. Brenner MD, FACS, Corresponding Author Michael J. Brenner MD, FACS mbren@med.umich.edu orcid.org/0000-0003-4926-0957 Department of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, University of Michigan Medical School, Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. Global Tracheostomy Collaborative, Raleigh, North Carolina, U.S.A. Send correspondence to Michael J. Brenner, MD, FACS, Associate Professor of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, University of Michigan Medical School, 1500 East Medical Center Drive, 1903 Taubman Center SPC 5312, Ann Arbor, MI 48104. E-mail: mbren@med.umich.eduSearch for more papers by this authorChristopher H. Rassekh MD, FACS, Christopher H. Rassekh MD, FACS Department of Otorhinolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.Search for more papers by this authorPavel Dulguerov MD, PhD, Pavel Dulguerov MD, PhD Division of Head and Neck Surgery, Hôpital de la Tour, Meyrin, Geneva University, Geneva, SwitzerlandSearch for more papers by this author First published: 16 March 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/lary.29512 The authors have no funding, financial relationships, or conflicts of interest to disclose. Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume131, Issue7July 2021Pages E2160-E2161 RelatedInformation

Respiratory impact of a grand tour: insight from professional cycling.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the respiratory function and symptom perception in professional cyclists completing a Grand Tour (GT). Nine male cyclists completed La Vuelta or Tour de France (2018/19). At study entry, airway inflammation was measured via fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO). Respiratory symptoms and pulmonary function were assessed prior to the first stage (Pre-GT), at the second rest day (Mid-GT) and prior to the final stage of the GT (Late-GT). Sniff nasal inspiratory pressure (SNIP) was assessed at pre and late-GT timepoints. Seven cyclists reported respiratory symptoms during the race (with a prominence of upper airway issues). Symptom severity increased either mid or late-GT for most cyclists. A decline in FEV1 from pre-to-mid GT (-0.27 ± 0.24l, -5.7%) (P = 0.02) and pre-to-late GT (-0.27 ± 0.13l, -5.7%) (P < 0.001) was observed. Similarly, a decline in FVC (-0.22 ± 0.17l, -3.7%) (P = 0.01) and FEF25-75 (-0.49 ± 0.34l/s, -11%) (P = 0.02) was observed pre-to-late GT. Overall, eight (89%) and six (67%) demonstrated a clinically meaningful decline (> 200ml) in FEV1 and FVC during the GT follow-up, respectively. SNIP remained unchanged pre-to-late GT (n = 5), however, a positive correlation was observed between ΔSNIP and ΔFVC (r = 0.99, P = 0.002). GT competition is associated with a high prevalence of upper respiratory symptoms and a meaningful decline in lung function in professional cyclists. Further research is now required to understand the underpinning physiological mechanisms and determine the impact on overall respiratory health and elite cycling performance and recovery.

A Library of Lost Works: Non-Extant Books as Evidence of Female Reader Networks

This paper explores the non-extant manuscripts from Gabrielle de la Tour d’Auvergne’s library as evidence of a coherent collecting strategy. Through its demonstration that Gabrielle deliberately acquired works originating with or distributed by the courts of Bourbonnais, Burgundy, Orléans, and the French crown, this paper will uncover the multi-layered literary networks connecting the women of the medieval French aristocracy and demonstrate the necessity of taking non-extant books into account in discussions of women’s libraries and their roles in literary and cultural transmission.

Malerei als Augentrug. Alexander Roslins Selbstporträt mit Marie-Suzanne Giroust-Roslin an der Staffelei

Abstract This article examines the unique self-portrait of Alexander Roslin and his artist wife, Marie- Suzanne Giroust-Roslin (1767, Stockholm, Nationalmuseum), in which a male painter for once leaves the place at the easel to a painting woman. This complex multi-figure painting not only commemorates the couple’s friendship with the sitter, Henrik Villhelm Peill. Rather, it is conceived as a double image of love and advertisement – especially for her art. Further, with this painting Roslin takes a programmatic stand for his own concept of painting as much as for that of his wife: Criticized by Denis Diderot in 1765 for not painting but – like women at the toilet table – literally applying makeup, in this selfportrait with his painting wife Roslin undertakes a conspicuous narrowing of these (so different) activities. Roslin takes up the reproach of beautiful appearance and deception in order to let this criticism collapse in a second moment in the artistic concept of the artful deception of the eye – in a deceptively real painting, which – unlike women’s makeup – negates all difference between being and appearance. An in-depth analysis of the extraordinarily refined self-portrait of Madame Roslin with the laughing self-portrait of Maurice-Quentin de La Tour supports this interpretation. In a broader perspective this study is understood as a contribution to the investigation into the metaphorization of painting layers, picture surfaces, and forms of color application in pre-modern art and art criticism.

‘La Tour de Babel,’ 35 years later: challenges and tools relating to the translation of archival terminology from English to French

ABSTRACT In 1985, Michel Duchein published ‘Les Archives dans la Tour de Babel: Problèmes de Terminologie Archivistique Internationale’ in La Gazette des Archives. To this day, his article remains the most articulate expression of the difficulties linked to the translation of archival terminology between French and English. It was written as a reaction to the publication of the Dictionary of Archival Terminology by the International Council on Archives (1984). Departing from Duchein’s work, this article assesses the current situation regarding the translation of archival terminology from English to French. The article mainly considers four existing tools dealing exclusively with archival terminology: the Elsevier Lexicon of Archive Terminology (1964), the International Council on Archives’ Dictionary of Archival Terminology (1984), the Association Française de Normalisation’s Vocabulaire des Archives (1986) and the International Council on Archives’ Multilingual Archival Terminology database (2012- …). This article is based on an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each tool, and on practical tests carried out during the translation of a corpus of texts for Comma, the journal of the International Council on Archives. This article intends to show that the existing tools for translating archival terminology from English to French lack either up-to-date content or reliability.

A WAVE OF DREAMS: DREAM SOURCE PICTURES IN PLASTIC ARTS

The origin of the art work can be based on many places. It is seen that dreams also constitute an important resource for artists by inspiring many works. In this article, dream-themed works of artists from different periods and styles are analyzed. In the study, Giotto di Bondone, Nicolas Dipre, Georges de La Tour, Henry Fuseli, Francisco de Goya, Jean Jules Antoine Lecomte du Nouy, William Blake, Utagawa Toyokuni, Pierre-Cécile Puvis de Chavannes, Odilon Redon, Henri Rousseau, Salvador Dali , Henry Matisse and Frida Kahlo's dream concept works were evaluated. While evaluating the works, the sources of the dream-themed works were searched. It has been determined that the works originate from religious, psychological, literary and cultural influences. Artists have revealed the phenomenon of dream by blending it with the plastic of the painting within their own period features and original sensitivities. The concept of dream and its effect in terms of creating plastic language were examined within the data obtained by literature review and qualitative research methods. The findings obtained are important as they will contribute to the art world and shed light on the period.

Parisian Genius Loci: one of the ways to attract students

The article deals with the analysis of didactic potential of advertising as an authentic material used in the study of foreign languages. The systematic use of this material in particular enables to reconstruct such a complex phenomenon as the Parisian Genius Loci. The idea of N. Antsiferov, a prominent Russian researcher, who was born in Ukraine, is the tool that gives a holistic and multifaceted notion of the city in all aspects of its existence – historical, cultural, artistic, economic, sociological, etc. The concept of Genius Loci can be considered effective in teaching foreign languages as it enables to grasp, distinguish, takes into account, describe and represent numerous elements that shape the Paris phenomenon in the educational context. By analyzing a great number of advertisements in the French press, element categories that make up the Parisian Genius Loci as it is embodied in advertising have been identified. First, they are landmarks which are immediately associated with the city (la Tour Eiffel, la Place de la Concorde, le Palais Royal, le pont Alexandre III, etc.). Other elements also play a great role in the formation of Genius Loci, which, unlike the previous ones, are not “rare specimens”, but they create the city’s unique atmosphere (standards of mass architecture, street equipment, plants, some features of conventional lifestyle, ethnic and sociocultural composition, etc.). Toponyms constitute the last category least-featured by advertising. These categories relate to the tasks and techniques that meet the specifics. When the focus is on the landmarks of Paris, exercises to learn vocabulary and develop all language competences are used. The ‘impregnation & awareness’ effect corresponds with less striking, more hidden elements of Parisian Genius Loci. The ways of teaching how to use toponyms should be inductive, i.e. searchable. Students will not receive information passively. On the contrary, confronted with a certain phenomenon, they are able to grasp it, analyzing the circumstances with the teacher’s help.

L’epistola a Cangrande, la scomunica dello Scaligero (6 aprile 1318) e la bozza “Ne pretereat”.

This article provides a detailed reconstruction of the events that occurred in Northern Italy between 1317 and April 1318, i.e. from the time when Pope John XXII ordered the inquisitors Bernard Gui and Bertrand de la Tour to undertake a diplomatic mission to when the imperial vicars were actually convicted for bearing such a title. It analyses the political climate in which the epistle to Cangrande della Scala may have been written, bearing in mind that according to the decree, anyone who addressed the vicars in question with that title would be subject to excommunication as well. The article also reconsiders the reception of the draft “Ne pretereat”, which was used by Bernardo Gui to prepare public opinion for the dissolution of the empire.

The clinical enigma of the "Flea catcher" by Georges de La Tour: a pregnant sinner with pre-eclampsia or a hypothyroid girl?

The clinical enigma of the "Flea catcher" by Georges de La Tour: a pregnant sinner with pre-eclampsia or a hypothyroid girl?

Conduct Becoming: Good Wives and Husbands in the Later Middle Ages by Glen Burger

Reviewed by: Conduct Becoming: Good Wives and Husbands in the Later Middle Ages by Glen Burger Nicole Sidhu glen burger, Conduct Becoming: Good Wives and Husbands in the Later Middle Ages. The Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. Pp. 272. isbn: 978–0–8122–4960–6. $65. The study of wifely virtue, its role in the home and in the broader sociopolitical imaginary, is a standby of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century studies. Medievalists pay far less attention to the 'good wife,' in part because medieval gender politics has seemed to many to be rooted in a misogynist disgust for female reproduction that allowed only nuns and virgin maidens to attain exemplary female virtue. Medievalists have also long been aware that their period sees significant transformations in notions of marriage—most notably the emergence of affection, mutual companionship, and sexual fulfillment as marital ideals that came to equal the traditional values of economic and familial alliance. And yet, while historians have examined the economics that undergirded this new vision of marriage, the deeper cultural transformations that enabled and nurtured it have thus far remained a mystery. Enter Glenn Burger, with a pioneering and intellectually ambitious new study that seeks to fill these gaps in our intellectual and cultural history. Burger's subject is conduct literature for women, but rather than analyzing it as a prescription for gendered norms of behavior, he characterizes conduct literature as part of a broader cultural movement that changed gender relations. Becoming Conduct provides a timely revision to medieval conduct studies (a field just now reaching conceptual middle age and due for a reboot) by redefining conduct literature. Instead of examining the traditional manuals of behavior that have thus far been the field's focus, Burger expands the definition of 'conduct' to include a much broader swath of texts aimed at instructing women. For Burger, conduct literature is not just about formulating normative modes of gender behavior but is part of larger social and cultural transformation that sees ideals of virtue, and the cultural authority associated with them, expanding from the clergy to the laity. Integral to this movement is an emerging notion of ethical subject-hood for both lay men and women that is constructed out of their marital roles as a 'good husband' and 'good wife.' Examining a range of texts focused on women's conduct, Burger notes the emergence of a focus on ideals relating to women as wives, rather than aristocratic lovers (according to the tradition of fin amors) or female religious (the focus of instructional texts like Ancrene Wisse). Fueled by a new emphasis on marriage as a sacrament by Church authorities, conduct manuals of the 'long fourteenth century' present a new ideal that foregrounds a wife's virtuous conduct and its ability to alter marital and social relations. By rooting their ideals in married virtue, these texts [End Page 115] diverge from earlier medieval traditions in allowing the good wife to, for the first time, equal the virgin nun in her potential as an ethical subject. The emerging ideal of 'the good wife,' Burger proposes, has far-reaching consequences, including a concomitant new ideal of 'the good husband' for men and a new model of social relations that makes household relations a fitting metaphor for relations of ruler to the ruled. Chapter One examines the Journées Chrétiennes—works that provided guidelines to spiritually ambitious secular women on how to emulate the devotional discipline of monks and nuns. These texts adjusted monastic practice to the busy life in the home to allow the wife to claim spiritual virtue within the confines of married life. In doing so, they positioned the wife as a subject with ethical potential. Chapter Two turns to texts more commonly recognized as conduct literature. Focused on the behavior of women in the secular world, these works include Louis IX's Les Enseignements de Saint Louis à sa fille Isabelle, Durand de Champagne's Speculum dominarum, and the Livre du chevalier de la Tour Landry. Here, Burger considers how the texts move away from the idea of woman as irretrievably fallen or wayward (common in clerical writings on women) to imagine woman's nature as...

Rocambole’s theatrical mission

The article deals with the influence of theatrical aesthetics on Pierre Alexis Ponson du Terrail – the famous writer of the French popular literature of the second half of the 19th century. The great connoisseur of the theatre, Viscount of Ponson du Terrail filled his novels – and first of all, an extensive cycle of works about Rocambole – with allusions to the scenic practices of his time (first and foremost, he speaks about Parisian pulp theatres) and plays that had won favour with the commonalty: "Le Chiffonnier de Paris" by Félix Pyat and "La Tour de Nesle" by Alexandre Dumas. On the other hand, performability is a paradigmatic feature of feuilleton. Viscount of Ponson du Terrail was the leading representative of this genre. Particular attention is paid to the production of the play "Rocambole" by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Ernest Blum (1864) and the transformations that the novel text underwent in the stage version.

Modern Architecture as Inextensible

I will begin with this provocative, and quite unusual image, of an iconic building that we all know – the Eiffel Tower. Some of you might have heard about the media debates surrounding the “new design for the restructuring of the public spaces of the Eiffel Tower” announced by the French architect David Serero in March 2008. He suggested doubling the size of the tower’s highest observational platform. The architect claimed that “his firm’s proposal was accepted after an open call, and that the structure is expected to be assembled for the 120th anniversary of the tower construction.” But shortly after that, the government-contracted firm that manages the tower – la Société d’Exploitation de la Tour Eiffel – stated that the claims of the architect are a “hoax.” The communication chief denied that there was ever any call for architects regarding plans to redevelop the top of the monument and that Serero Architects never presented themselves as candidates for such a competition. The media outlets that ran with the story included: The Guardian, The New York Times, Architect, Bustler, The Daily Telegraph and Belfast Telegraph.

Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible. Edited by Dalia Judovitz

Rediscovered in the early 20th century, mystery still surrounds the French Counter-Reformation painter Georges de La Tour (1593–1652) or why his later works tended to be reattributed to other painters. Mystery also lies within his known paintings, beautifully and painstakingly discussed by Dalia Judovitz in this book. Though briefer and more focused on the one artist, her work in some sense provides a counter-balance to Joseph Leo Koerner’s great work on the art of the Protestant Reformation, The Reformation of the Image (2004). This is an exemplary exercise in interdisciplinarity, though in the final analysis a work of theological reflection that indicates that we now must all dare to trespass upon a number of disciplines to begin to articulate the mystery of religion within culture. Judovitz’s book offers itself as work of art history, but it is far more than that. For the enigmatic, haunting paintings of La Tour demand profound theological categories as they call upon our visual attention to move beyond that which can be seen, from the visible to the invisible in La Tour’s interplay in illumination of light and darkness and the mystery of light that shows us that which cannot be seen. In these paintings, too, we continually cross borders between the sacred and the profane, finding the sacred within the profane, and Judovitz guides us with a steady hand, only now and then tending slightly towards the over-simplification of the biblical texts that lie at the heart of these paintings of incarnation, guilt and repentance and deception. But that is to carp.

Itay Sapir. Review of "Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible" by Dalia Judovitz.

Itay Sapir. Review of "Georges de La Tour and the Enigma of the Visible" by Dalia Judovitz.

MODERN AND CONTEMPORARY CULTURAL HERITAGE DOCUMENTATION AND KNOWLEDGE BY SURVEYING AND ITS REPRESENTATION

Abstract. Conservation of modern and contemporary cultural heritage, which goes from design objects, to architecture, to cities and territories, is certainly a current topic and in the development phase as it is underway – in the same modernity – a process of systematic replacement of architectural elements, outcome of solutions then experimental, which today are reproduced with contemporary materials, analogous in the appearance, but intimately different especially in the technological content.The paper describes the particular case of La Tour de Meudon, better known as The Tower, (1966) by André Bloc, a contemporary architect of Le Corbusier, founder of L'Architecture d'aujourd'hui, who created his habitable sculptures. All his works mark the evolution of geometric abstraction to the free form, and they are still admirable testimonies of a journey that led him from architecture to architecture. His Architecture and his sculpture intertwine, opening the plastic unity of form in physical space–time. The survey is a fundamental moment for the knowledge of these hybrid architectures, where the structural component is hidden by its evident plasticity, as if it were a large sculpture with abstract and overlapping geometric shapes.Survey isn't only an analysis of geometries: it is instrumental to the other structural and material analyses since it provides a metric and topological basis on which to spatially locate the phenomena being studied. The integrated survey of the building (laser scanning, photogrammetry, topography) has allowed to document his project, contributing to the to definition of the actual construction characteristics and ascertain both the material consistency and the state of conservation.

Made in France? Seventeenth-Century French Clay Pipes in North American Contexts

espanolLos arqueologos e historiadores han descartado de forma mayoritaria la posibilidad de que los consumidores norteamericanos del siglo XVII hicieran uso de articulos procedentes de la emergente industria francesa de fabricacion de pipas de fumar de arcilla. No obstante, los resultados de un reciente analisis de restos de pipas encontrados en yacimientos de Terranova––en asociacion con un estudio exhaustivo de hallazgos realizados previamente en la vivienda de Champlain, Fort La Tour y Fort Pentagoet—sugieren que un pequeno numero de pipas decoradas de fabricacion francesa pudiera haber sido utilizada por personas de Nueva Francia y, en algunos casos, por pobladores de asentamientos ingleses cercanos. Se plantea un enfoque innovador para identificar algunos de los productos franceses del siglo XVII, el cual se basa en una amalgama de atributos, como motivos o simbolos, el material de arcilla y las inclusiones. Los resultados se consideran un primer paso clave para descifrar los mecanismos y las motivaciones que subyacen tras la compra y el uso de pipas francesas decoradas en contextos del Nuevo Mundo. EnglishArchaeologists and historians have largely dismissed the possibility that products of the nascent French clay-pipe industry were used by North American consumers during the 17th century. However, a recent examination of pipe assemblages from sites in Newfoundland—combined with close scrutiny of previously reported finds from Champlain’s Habitation, Fort La Tour, and Fort Pentagoet—suggest that small numbers of French-made decorated pipes were consumed by individuals in New France and, in some cases, by those at nearby English settlements. A novel approach to identifying some 17th-century French products is presented, based on an amalgam of attributes, including motifs/symbols, clay fabric, and inclusions. The results are viewed as an important first step in deciphering the mechanisms and motivations behind the procurement and use of decorated French pipes in New World contexts. francaisLes archeologues et historiens ont largement refute la possibilite que des produits de l’industrie naissante des pipes en argile francaises furent utilises par des consommateurs nord-americains au 17e siecle. Un examen recent d’assemblages provenant de Terre-Neuve, combine a l’etude approfondie d’articles precedemment decouverts dans des habitations de Champlain, le Fort La tour et le Fort Pentagoet, suggere cependant qu’un petit nombre de pipes ornees de fabrication francaise etaient utilisees par des individus en Nouvelle-France et, dans certains cas, a l’interieur de peuplements anglais avoisinants. Une nouvelle approche permettant d’identifier des produits francais du 17e siecle est presentee. Elle est fondee sur un amalgame d’attributs, dont des motifs/symboles, la composition de l’argile et des inclusions. Les resultats sont consideres comme une etape importante vers le decodage des mecanismes et motivations a la source de l’approvisionnement et de l’utilisation de pipes francaises ornees dans le contexte du Nouveau Monde.

Le bourgeois versifié (Le bourgeois gentilhomme au plus près de Molière) par Jacques Jouet

his family, and after returning to Paris with a lead on an apartment and a job due to Victor’s help, Jeremy becomes embroiled in an assassination having to do with a snake, a postcard of a Renaissance painting, a colleague, and of course, music. Once again, the reader is bedazzled by the language, the references, the sights, smells, and sounds of 1920s Paris jazz scene.When the music hall murders start accumulating, Jeremy finds himself in the thick of it:“SimonettaVespucci...arrêt cardiaque [...] dépouille de serpent! Deux fois de suite, ce n’était plus un malheureux hasard, c’était une préméditation” (70). Old friends, jazz clubs, the new cinema are introduced so that the reader has a rounded knowledge of the time, place, and ambiance of the arts. Everything points to “La Tour de Babel,” a Pigalle music hall where all the victims were employed. Could Renaud Lemerle, the theater’s director, be involved? Could it be one of the performers or someone else at the theater? Could the motive be revenge, jealousy or unrequited love? Why the Renaissance painting with its serpent around Simonetta’s neck? Why postcards of the tableau and snakes present at each cadaver? Poor Jeremy! Besides desirous of a true musical career, he pursues his connections to P.K., the father he never knew, and frankly, the series of murders has become a time-consuming distraction . The characters he meets are many. The list of suspects grows, but complications continue to arise as Jeremy meets more and more people able to bring him closer and closer to his origins. Suffice it to say, Jeremy will be reunited with some of his family, but the killings to this point remain unsolved, and there are many red herrings. Throughout this ordeal, Jeremy crosses paths with extraordinary personalities such as Tristan Tzara and Fujita. Happy about finding information on his past, he is about to abandon the research into the music hall deaths, when he himself is brutally attacked and warned not to continue their pursuit. Jeremy is as good a detective as a pianist, it seems. His senses in full alert serve him well. There is a dose of humor, a pinch of ethnic and linguistic references, and always the Izner touch: beautifully detailed, animated scenes where character and theme count.Accolades for our amateur sleuth, the use of argot, the authenticity of the material. This reader cannot wait for volume three. Alliance Française, Santa Rosa (CA) Davida Brautman Jouet, Jacques. Le bourgeois versifié (Le bourgeois gentilhomme au plus près de Molière). Paris: P.O.L, 2017. ISBN 978-2-8180-4224-3. Pp. 208. One of the most comedic scenes from Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme occurs when Monsieur Jourdain learns the difference between prose and verse, understanding for the first time that his common conversation is prose and that which is not prose is verse and vice versa. Of course, Molière wrote this play in prose, but imagine if he had written it in verse. This re-imagination of the classic comédie-ballet comes from Jacques Jouet, a long-time member of Oulipo. Jouet began this project by translating 210 FRENCH REVIEW 91.4 Reviews 211 the end of Act II, Scene 4 of the original play because he was intrigued by the difficulty and formality of writing in verse. This attempt developed into the desire to translate the play in its entirety (201). The length of time between presentation of the first extract and publication of the complete play (from 2002 to 2017) is a testament to the challenges of writing in, or translating to, verse. Just as Molière used in some of his other works of theater, Jouet engages the alexandrine to complete Le bourgeois versifié, believing it“un vers actif, aujourd’hui, parmi d’autres, et non des moindres, aussi vrai que la ‘cadence nationale’, comme dit Mallarmé, est dans la mémoire de la langue française, à mon avis inarrachable” (202). Though, rather than be fixed in the past, Jouet’s alexandrines reflect the influence of their nineteenth- and twentieth-century iterations. This manipulation works to underscore Monsieur Jourdain...

Portraying The Royal Self: Maurice-Quentin De La Tour’s 1761 Portrait Of Marie-Josèphe Of Saxony And Her Son

My analysis of Maurice-Quentin de La Tour’s Portrait of Marie-Josèphe of Saxony and Her Son (1761) in the context of Salic Law and eighteenth-century French gender politics suggests the future queen’s negotiation of her own identity in royal portraiture. While the dauphine’s representation adheres to rigidly structured codes of queenship in French art, I argue that Marie-Josèphe paradoxically sought to assert her selfhood amidst the depicted glory of the Bourbon dynasty. Likely to be the portrait’s direct patron instead of the King’s Household, Marie-Josèphe adopted sartorial and ideological elements from Jean-Marc Nattier’s more private portrayal of Queen Marie Leszczinska (1748) to construct her image, suggesting a visual fellowship between royal women as they confronted gender constraints within French absolutism in art. Also, unlike most official portraits that formally represented royal sitters in oils, La Tour’s more personal approach to painting through the intimacy of the pastel medium undermines the principles of royal portraiture to indicate a degree of the dauphine’s agency. With imagery that falls in-between what was typical for official and private portraits of royalty, La Tour’s pastel painting alludes to mounting ambiguities in representations of queenship in eighteenth-century France.

BALANCING ACTS

3 R B A L A N C I N G A C T S N I C H O L A S H Y T N E R In a National Theatre rehearsal room, Michael Gambon has been wrestling for three days with Alan Bennett’s new play The Habit of Art. Michael has given many prodigious performances at the National, most recently as Falsta√ in Shakespeare’s two Henry IV plays, though there were occasional memory lapses which he covered with Elizabethan rhubarb. I had a couple of letters complaining that my production had made Sir Michael incomprehensible, to which I replied politely, although he’s a famous hoaxer so he may have written them himself. One of them compared him with suspicious pomposity to that admirable Shakespearean and model of clarity, Simon Russell Beale. He now seems much less confident than he was as Falsta√. He’s playing an old actor who is struggling with the part of the poet W. H. Auden to Alex Jennings’s Benjamin Britten in a play about Auden and Britten within a play about a theater company putting on the same play. Alex has an almost mystical faith in the great tradition of British acting, so he’s urging Michael on. With them onstage is Frances de la Tour, who in the face of life’s absurdities has an eyebrow permanently raised and a voice permanently tuned to deadpan. She’s playing a stage manager, and I’m sure that she can nurse Michael through anything that goes o√-piste. 4 H Y T N E R Y But at the moment he can barely get to the end of a sentence. And then, suddenly, the blood drains from him. He staggers, and falls into a chair. We call for help, an oxygen tank is hurried into the room, then a stretcher. Michael is wheeled out, the oxygen mask over his face. One of the stage managers goes with him in the ambulance to St. Thomas’s Hospital. As he’s carried into the A&E [Accidents and Emergencies], she asks him whether there’s any message he’d like her to take back to the rehearsal room. ‘‘Don’t worry about those bastards,’’ he says. ‘‘They’re already on the phone to Simon Russell Beale.’’ And as he speaks, I’m with Alan Bennett and the rest of the company recasting the part. Simon Russell Beale is doing something else, probably making a documentary about Renaissance choral music: he is as erudite as he is audible. So he’s not in the running. But once we know that nothing serious has happened to Michael, we barely have a thought for him. We’re in the canteen, overlooking the river. Tourist boats glide under Waterloo Bridge, and glum o≈ce workers stare at computer screens in the building next door, while we make a list of actors who are available for the part, all of them distinguished, none of them immune to our brutal assessments of their suitability. By the end of the day, Michael has been advised to withdraw from the play, and I’ve called Richard Gri≈ths, an actor renowned for his delicacy and wit, but also for his immense girth. Alan has already written lines to justify the casting of a fat actor in the part of Auden, who, although dissolute, was not even plump. You start with a vision, and you deliver a compromise. And you’re pulled constantly in di√erent directions. So although you want the actor who plays W. H. Auden to be as much like W. H. Auden as possible, you know that the play will work best with an actor who can remember what the playwright wrote. You know that what works generally trumps all other considerations , and you also know that if you care only about what works, you’ll end up with something slick but meretricious. You want a play to be challenging, ambitious, nuanced, and complicated. You also want it to sell tickets. You want playwrights to write exactly the plays they want to write. You also want what they write to reflect your own image of what...