Le Grand Research Articles

A Honeycomb Conjecture: Hexagonal Imaginaries and Interspecies Storytelling for Le Grand Paris

A Honeycomb Conjecture: Hexagonal Imaginaries and Interspecies Storytelling for Le Grand Paris

Openness: Student perceptions

This short paper describes a research project which aims at investigating how students conceive and use open educational practices (OEP). A recent definition by Cronin (2017) emphasizes collaboration, participation and learner empowerment to encompass “collaborative practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of OER, as well as pedagogical practices employing participatory technologies and social networks for interaction, peer-learning, knowledge creation, and empowerment of learners” (2017, p. 4). Researchers and educators alike have considered the role of OEP in more effectively engaging learners in the co-creation of knowledge, critically considering how digital practices and open platforms can be used in practice. Early research on OEP focused on adoption and development of OER (Cronin & MacLaren, 2018), but has recently shifted student perceptions of impact (Jhangiani, Dastur, Le Grand, & Penner, 2018, Lin, 2019) and improved student learning and empowerment (Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter, 2018). However, there are gaps in our understanding of learner experiences in other dimensions of openness, such as negotiating identity, privacy, visibility, literacy and the co-construction of knowledge. As educators we need to consider how the structures of these spaces will influence the open teaching practices we are using, both in how they may make our spaces permeable, and in how they might make them more impenetrable. If we want our learners to be able to explore what we as educators see as the benefits of open practices, such as co-creation and sharing of knowledge, then we need to explore both their perceptions and direct learning experiences. The focus of this project will be on students' perceptions of openness in education, exploring their identities as open educational practitioners and how they negotiate their open educational spaces. Participants will be situated in an online graduate program (including multiple courses) designed around open educational practices, including open platforms and open educational resources, and endeavouring to include learners in critical digital pedagogical practices. To explore learner practices, the following research questions will be explored using a virtual ethnographic case (Hine, 2008): What are learners’ understanding of open educational practice? How do they see themselves navigating open platforms, open digital pedagogies and practices and critical digital perspectives? What practices, values and/or strategies are shared by learners who are working within an open educational practice framework?

The Correspondence Between Ligeti and Adorno in the Light of Discussions on Ligeti’s Position in Modernism – With a Sideways Glance at Le Grand Macabre

“I am extremely interested in the new upheavals taking place in music - I was completely isolated from all this in Hungary”, Ligeti wrote to Wolfgang Steinecke, then director of the Darmstadt Summer Course for New Music, in spring 1957. In the summer of the same year, he attended his first seminars and lectures at this internationally renowned forum - and just a few years later, he took on the same place an important role as a lecturer and source of inspiration. Despite this and many other clear indications of Ligeti’s central role in new music since 1950, the references to other important European composers of the 20th/21st century are sometimes downplayed in Musicology, to simultaneously emphasize the conservative aspects of some of his statements about music. But does this help us to understand Ligeti’s music? It seems to me that the answer to this question is clearly in the negative. Keywords: Ligeti, Adorno, modernism, Le grand macabre

Notes on Le Grand Macabre and the Aesthetics of Camp

The article presents an analysis of the features of Ligeti’s opera Le Grand Macabre, indicating that it belongs to the camp aesthetics. The starting point for the analysis is the features of this aesthetic/sensitivity described by Susan Sonntag in her Notes on Camp. The opera’s libretto, its theatrical and musical layers, as well as Ligeti’s personal life experience as a composer – important for camp – are the subject of the analysis. Keywords: Camp, opera, Ligeti, Sonntag, postmodernism

Łukasz Wróbel. Józef Jerzy Hylzen. Studium kariery magnackiej w XVIII wieku. Toruń: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikołaja Kopernika, 2022

The book review evaluates the biography of the Inflantian (Polish Livonian) nobleman (szlachcic), prominent politician of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in the 18th century, Józef Jerzy Hylzen, written by Łukasz Wróbel, published in 2022. This work is an important contribution to the history of both Poland and Latvia, since it is the first comprehensive research dedicated to a representative of a noble family closely connected with Latvia. The structure of the book is based on the five criteria proving one’s belonging to the informal nobility elite, magnates: the family's ancient origins, education, including European travel (the so-called Le Grand Tour), political activities, property, and lifestyle. This monograph outlines the perspectives for further studies: border in the consciousness of the nobles of Inflantia in the context of politics, religion, and intellectual movements. Wróbel’s work is unique, factually rich, conceptually interesting, and easily readable. It also presents a very useful source of information for any future researchers of Inflanty.

Vampiric Masculinity. Rachilde's Le grand saigneur (1922) and the Writing of Gender Violence in Post-War France

Rachilde’s novel Le grand saigneur (1922) stands out from her other works in the 1920s and 1930s for its provocative portrayal of the French war veteran as a sadist who inflicts violence on those who do not conform to the codes of militarized, hegemonic masculinity. This article argues that the novel reflects the post-war years as a violent era for women and non-conforming men, shaped by the hateful discourses that emerged during the First World War. Rachilde writes about psychological and physical threats to women and non-conforming masculinity by delving into the violent fantasies nurtured by a larger-than-life, though well-recognizable, supporter of hegemonic masculinity against them. Drawing on an eclectic mix of literary genres, Rachilde depicts a society in which the impunity of men protected by their wealth and military status and the guilt bestowed upon (sometimes internalized by) women trivialize diverse forms of gender violence. Le grand saigneur belongs to the few ‘romans anti-sentimentaux’ Rachilde wrote during the interwar period. It is also an arresting attempt to write about gender violence through multiple subjectivities in order to explore the gendered, cultural, traumatic, and socio-economic factors that enabled it at this troubled historical juncture.

“Breughelland”: Subverting the Antinomy of Utopia and Dystopia

AbstractIs György Ligeti's Le Grand Macabre (1974–1977/1996) a dystopian work, or rather one of utopia? Traditionally, dystopia and utopia have formed an alternative. Yet Ligeti and librettist Michael Meschke enact an intertwinement of dystopia and utopia, in a series of moves and countermoves: (1) Death threatens to eliminate all life. (2) The earth is saved from the fate of the destruction of life – “Death is dead” (II/4). (3) Yet “Breughelland” is and will remain a crude and cruel tyranny. (4) The farcical character of the whole calls into question whether any of the previous moves can be taken seriously. Ligeti's/Meschke's subversion of the antinomy of utopia and dystopia, introduced in the opening “Breughellandlied,” turns out to be in the spirit of Piet the Pot's namesake Pieter Breughel the Elder, as a closer look at his 1567 painting Het Luilekkerland, an inspiration already to de Ghelderode, reveals. The irritating role thus assigned to consumption, however, seems to trivially lose all ambiguity through the words of the opera's final stanza. While this is a weighty objection to the reading proposed here, the conclusion attempts to outline a rejoinder to it.

Reports and Conjectures on Kylwiria

AbstractThe code word “Kylwiria” was mentioned by György Ligeti from time to time since the 1970s. At first, it functioned rather abstractly as a working title for the opera that had been in the making since the mid-1960s and eventually mutated into Le Grand Macabre. Later, Ligeti also shared details about the imaginary land of his childhood, providing glimpses of brightly colored maps of that land and underscoring the importance of his childlike fantasy world. This article explores the dimensions of this “private mythology” and its impact on the composer's creative thinking and work. Its documentary evidence – the description of the land of Kylwiria recorded in 1950 in a booklet of more than 70 pages – is presented in examples and examinated for its particularities. On the one hand, it seems that the pioneering exploration of geographical spaces is transferred as a model to the creative exploration of sound spaces. On the other hand, Ligeti's concept of a fantastic counterworld is to be seen in a literary and cultural-historical context, in which it is to be located somewhere between expedition report, travel guide and utopian design. Such an outline sharpens the meaning of Kylwiria as a cipher for creativity in a characteristic mixture of ratio and fantasy.

Le Grand Jeu and the potential of money games for exploring economic possibilities

Le Grand Jeu and the potential of money games for exploring economic possibilities

Bilingual Author-Translator Nedim Gürsel’s Translation of Jorge Semprun’s Büyük Yolculuk as An Example of the Interaction Between Author and Translator Identities

“Bilingualism” can be defined as a person’s ability to speak and be proficient in two languages. Being bilingual also entails having a dual identity. Bilingualism is a prerequisite for “translation”, which is defined as the act of transferring a text from one language to another. When we examine bilingualism in terms of bilingual writers who stand out with their writing activities, it is possible to say that there is an interaction between authorship and translation activity. Nedim Gürsel, who has been living in Paris since 1971 and taught Turkish literature courses at Sorbonne University and Inalco until 2019 and worked as the head of research on Turkish literature at CNRS, writes works in various literary genres such as novels, biographies, travel articles, poetry, translation, and academic articles. Gürsel, who publishes his fictional works in Turkish, defines himself as a writer who writes in Turkish rather than a Francophone, thus revealing his linguistic identity. Gürsel, whose works have been translated into many languages, states that in the French translations of his works, he communicates with his translator and makes necessary warnings and suggestions in order to avoid confusion in the meaning. In this study, the interaction between literary work and literary translation will be revealed with reference to French-Turkish bilingual writer-translator Nedim Gürsel’s 1977 translation of Spanish-French bilingual writer Jorge Semprun’s Le Grand voyage under the title Büyük Yolculuk. This study aims to reveal the interactions between the phenomenon of bilingualism and translation activity with reference to bilingual writer-translator Nedim Gürsel and to discuss this connection in a theoretical dimension. In addition, the stylistic interactions between the works written and translated by Nedim Gürsel, who is a writer-translator, will be examined and the effects of bilingualism on authorship will be revealed.

Biographie et fiction dans les romans dystopiques de Oana Orlea et Virgil Gheorghiu

This article analyses the theme of fear in Le grand Exterminateur by Virgil Gheorghiu and Un sosie en cavale by Oana Orlea. Romanian writers who chose the exile in France during the Cold War describe in their novels a dystopic world, where the dominant fear of the communist Romanian secret police, the Securitate, transforms the whole world in a prison cell. Inspired by their biography, Orlea’s and Gheorghiu’s novels describe the relationship between the world they escaped from and France, their new home, as permeable, thus creating a fictional world from which escape is impossible. The protagonists of Orlea’s and Gheorghiu’s novels are convinced that the Securitate is watching everybody and is just as omniscient and omnipresent as Orwell’s Big Brother. From a narrative point of view, both Orlea and Gheorghiu use a formula that brings together the detective novel, the dystopia, and some references to their own biographies.

Пространственно-временная организация новеллы Р. Тёпфера «Большой Сен-Бернар»

The aim of the research is to identify the uniqueness of space and time in R. Töpffer’s novella “The Great St Bernard” (“Le Grand Saint-Bernard”), which determines the specifics of his artistic world. The paper is original in that it is the first to consider the chronotope features of R. Töpffer’s novella “The Great St Bernard”. The research findings showed that the chronotope of the work is specific in its characteristics, undergoes deformation and transformation. The analysis of the spatial and temporal characteristics of the novella under study made it possible to distinguish four types of the chronotope: the chronotope of the monastery, the chronotope of the road, the chronotope of the garden, the Werther chronotope. With the help of the space-time continuum, R. Töpffer reveals the characters’ nature in the novella. The perception of space is closely related to the feelings experienced by the characters. The ambiguous perception of space by different characters under different conditions is a distinctive feature of the Swiss writer’s work. The elements of the idyllic chronotope, i.e. “locus amoenus”, the solitude of life in nature, the topos of the Swiss Alps, acquire a touch of irony in R. Töpffer’s novella. An open space is mainly presented, which, in our opinion, can be explained by the interdependence of the characters and the surrounding world.

The Educational Journey: Bildningsresa (Swedish), Bildungsreise (German), and Personal Development

Abstract The focus of this article is on the social and personal development of children. The essay's point of departure is a specific idea about holistic personal development in the classroom with reference to the philosopher Michel Serres. A historical perspective will be added by the concept of the bildungsreise (in French, Le Grand Tour; in English, educational or cultural journey). This perspective allows us to raise the question of how the idea of increasing self-awareness, coping with life challenges, and the tuning of long-standing aspirations through an educational journey can be related to the concepts of bildung (German) and bildning (Swedish). To understand bildning, a girl's survival in a wide, mystical forest in Astrid Lindgren's novel Ronia, the Robber's Daughter will be sketched as an example of a bildningsresa. A bildningsresa differs somewhat from a bildungsreise. We subsume bildungsreise and bildningsresa under the concept of the educational journey, with the awareness that this term has its own history that we cannot thematize. Modelling the idea of bildung and bildning within the glocalized world, the idea of an educational journey will be connected to personality development in the classroom, seen in Serres's terms.

Geography of the Conflict Potential of the Projected La Clusaz—Le Grand Bornand Ski Link Via the Tête du Danay

Geography of the Conflict Potential of the Projected La Clusaz—Le Grand Bornand Ski Link Via the Tête du Danay

The Dream of Absolutism by Hall Bjørnstad

Reviewed by: The Dream of Absolutism by Hall Bjørnstad Kate M. Bonin Bjørnstad, Hall The Dream of Absolutism. UP of Chicago, 2021. ISBN 978-0-226-80383-8. Pp. xii + 230. Much of the art, architecture, poetry, and prose of seventeenth-century France had a specific relationship to Louis XIV. Modern scholarship tends to judge such works as either unapologetically subservient to the Sun King—mere propaganda—or as mobilizing sly elements of satire and subversion. Through his analysis of an eclectic selection of artifacts of absolutism (which include the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles; Louis's Mémoires, written for the edification of a readership of one, the Dauphin; and an obscure 1698 fairy tale, "Sans Parangon," an allegory of Louis's life and exploits, by Jean de Préchac), Hall Bjørnstad proposes another, third way of understanding the role of these artifacts of absolutism within the context of the period in which they were produced. Absolutism, Bjørnstad argues, must be understood through contemporary concepts of "royal glory" and "royal exemplarity" (21). "Royal glory," for Bjørnstad, entails the shared "dream" or collective belief that the king participates in an invisible, superior (read: divine) power (35). This top-down ontology is underpinned, perhaps surprisingly, by a "bottom-up surge," which Bjørnstad figures as many hands collaborating (while simultaneously effacing their own role) in the "cultural production of sovereign singlehandedness" (206). For one example, secretaries (what we might today call ghost writers) aided Louis le Grand to compose his supposedly autobiographical Mémoires. On a larger scale, the fundamentally paradoxical nature of absolutism may be measured in the strange coexistence of a system of government which relied on a more centralized, rationalist bureaucracy, together with a collective belief in the "exceptional decision of an absolute will" (79). "Royal exemplarity" emerges in the 1680s, well into Louis's long reign. Bjørnstad demonstrates how early comparisons between Louis "le Grand" and others such as Alexander the Great began to fall out of fashion, as evidenced in the strange Parallèle de Louis le Grand avec les princes qui ont été surnommés grands (Claude-Charles Guyonnet de Vertron, 1685). This text evokes the conventional genre of the "parallèle," only to conclude that the incomparable Louis has no peer or parallel, resembling only himself. The Dream of Absolutism brings the reader to a number of exciting "aha" moments: most notably, in Bjørnstad's analysis of Charles Le Brun's ceiling paintings which decorate the Hall of Mirrors—while subtly incorporating mirroring within the painting itself. In the figure that represents Louis at the beginning of his personal reign, the king's face is clearly reflected in the shield of the allegorical Minerva who hovers near. It is a moment of mirroring inscribed in an image of "royal self-creation" (140): Louis, who has no example or model other than himself. For those of us who have visited the Hall of Mirrors without ever once noticing this subtle delight, there is a high-resolution iconographic catalog online at <www.galeriedesglaces-versailles.fr.>, well worth visiting. And, of course, [End Page 205] there is Bjørnstad's thought-provoking, inductive study of absolutism, which invites readers to set aside our post-Romantic aesthetic sensibilities and our post-Enlightenment political culture. This smart book will inform how I teach seventeenth-century literature and culture; I highly recommend it. [End Page 206] Kate M. Bonin Arcadia University (PA) Copyright © 2023 American Association of Teachers of French

Le Grand Départ 2019 - health care management during a major planned event in the heart of Brussels (Belgium)

Introduction:Mass gathering events (MGE), can attract sufficient attendees to strain the planning and response resources of the host community, state, or nation, thereby delaying the response to emergencies. The organization of such a MGE can be even more problematic when the event continues across much of downtown (including hospitals) and makes some parts of the city inaccessible. The aim of this study was describing the health care management of the Grand Départ of the Tour de France, July 6-7th, 2019. On both days, the stages drew crowds of 300,000 attendees, adding a quarter of the regular number of inhabitants of Brussels (1,2 million) and closing parts of downtown Brussels.Method:Data were retrospectively collected from the in-event health services (coordinated by the University Hospital Brussels). Data regarding medical interventions, as well as data generated by the advanced medical posts (AMP) were recorded and handed to us after anonymization. For analysis, patients were divided into two groups: those seen by first-aid responders and paramedics (triage code green) and those seen and treated by health professionals (emergency nurses and physicians) (triage codes yellow or red).Results:During the event, three AMPs were established along the route of the stage as were six ambulances, three mobile medical crews (one emergency nurse and one physician), and seven mobile first aid teams. Over the two days, 84 patients were seen; 80 green codes (95,2%), 3 yellow (3,6%), and one red (1,2%) resulting in a patient presentation rate of 0.28/1,000. In total eight patients were transported to hospital for further diagnosis and treatment (ambulance transfer rate: 0.02/1,000).Conclusion:In-event health services for this event proved adequate according to the number of attendees and the severity of the patients. No hospital reported disruptions to their standard operational capacity.

Performative Polemic: Anti-Absolutist Pamphlets and Their Readers in Late Seventeenth-Century France. By Kathrina Ann LaPorta

This book makes a welcome contribution to the burgeoning study of early modern pamphlet literature and seventeenth-century news and media culture. Combining book history and rhetorical analysis, Kathrina Ann LaPorta reconstructs ‘a literary history’ of the ‘French-language pamphlets that denounced Louis XIV’s absolute monarchy between 1667 and 1715’ (p. 6). Each of the five chapters performs a close reading of a single pamphlet. Together, they demonstrate not only the evolution of anti-absolutist polemic over this period but also the formal diversity of this mode of writing and its multiple approaches to imagining and addressing the audience for such critical discourse. Habsburg diplomat François-Paul de Lisola’s Bouclier d’état et de justice (1667) wields the language of law to refute the French monarch’s dubious legitimation of war, figuring its reader as arbiter and judge of affairs of state. Le Miroir des princes (1667) and Soupirs de la France esclave (1689–90) make use of ‘emotional modes of persuasion’ (p. 69) to portray the Sun King’s expansionist wars as a tragedy of historic proportions and his overreach as a threat to the institution of monarchy itself. Other pamphlets employ satire and burlesque to undermine the king and his government, as in the case of the dialogue of the dead between Innocent XI and Mazarin in L’Alcoran de Louis XIV (1695) and the comic fictional unveiling of the king’s marital life in Le Conseil privé de Louis le Grand (1696). Through these attentive close readings, LaPorta makes three central arguments about the pamphlets of this period. First and most successfully, she illustrates that, before ‘literature’ existed as an independent category, pamphlet-writing exhibited a high level of craft and creativity, often drawing on the resources of theatre and narrative as well as polemic. Second, LaPorta persuasively challenges the traditional characterization of pamphlets as ‘ephemera’ by showing how their writers positioned them in relation to longer histories of dissent. This could entail intertextual references to older pamphlets, such as the echoing of Fronde-era mazarinades found in L’Alcoran de Louis XIV. Other examples, such as Le Miroir des princes, invite their readers to look back on contemporary events from the vantage point of an imagined posterity. Observing that pamphlets offered up ‘citable’ criticisms which could (in modern parlance) ‘go viral’ or have a legacy in future times (p. 20), LaPorta finally suggests that we read pamphlets as ‘performative’ texts, rhetorically effective counterweights to the official representations of monarchical splendour that elsewhere performatively reinforced kingly power. This key insight about the historical perspective represented in pamphlet-writing could be explored further in a future project examining a chronologically broader corpus, attending more thoroughly to the significant links between mazarinades, these late-seventeenth-century works, and even eighteenth-century anti-monarchist polemic. In the meantime, LaPorta’s first book extends an enticing invitation to read early modern pamphlets with a keener eye.

From Clappique to Sganarelle: Fluttering with Malraux and Gary

Romain Gary is not close to André Malraux only by his political and war time commitments. They also share a form of creative fantasy that shakes up literary genres, embodied by the character of Clappique, in La Condition Humaine. He serves as a model for the recurring figure of the Baron in Romain Gary’s novels, through different incarnations from Le Grand Vestaire to Les Couleurs du jour and Clair de femme. Fanciful and comical portraits, these caricatural characters appear as a buffoonish recourse in the face of history. Gary will push this salutary counterpoint very far, gradually releasing the comic force of his fantasy, while Malraux will not resist giving this endearing double a last lap in his Antimémoires. Seeing the writer as Clappique makes it possible to show the fruitfulness and the constancy of this “wacky” (« farfelue ») dimension, which is part of the companionship between the two writers.

The Satire of the Salonnière: Women and Humour in Seventeenth-Century France

This article reassesses styles of humour in the literary output of seventeenth-century French salons by attending to women and satire. While scholarship has repeatedly dwelt on salons and salon hostesses as objects of satire, this study argues that salon hostesses were also writers of satire, and importantly writers of satire aimed at would-be hostesses, via an analysis of Madeleine de Scudéry’s Artamène; ou, Le Grand Cyrus (1649–1653). In the “Histoire de Sapho” (Book II, Tome X of Artamène), Scudéry presents a satirical portrait of an “anti-salonnière” named Damophile. This wannabe salon hostess strives to imitate the titular salonnière, Sapho, and become a well-respected savante, but instead appears excessive and pedantic in her efforts, attracting the ridicule of Sapho and her circle. Drawing together modesty, mockery and collective amusement, Scudéry uses satire to provide a model for other women writers that is firmly reconciled with the honnête values of salon culture.

Art of the Impossible: A Posthumous Supercrit

Kester Rattenbury convenes the long-running Supercrit series at the University of Westminster, London. Here she describes proceedings at Supercrit #8, which presented Alsop's ‘Le Grand Bleu’ in Marseille, France, the competition-winning building for the headquarters of the regional government of the Hôtel du Département des Bouches-du-Rhône. The event was conducted without its star performer, who had, alas, died six months prior. The invited panellists represented a range of design inputs from engineers to artists, each demonstrating their respect for Alsop and his creative verve while offering critical reflections on this ground-breaking project.