Quil A Research Articles

Au pied du Camp de Recoux, le Champ des Rochers à Soyaux (Charente) : de l'occupation néolithique au complexe funéraire et/ou cultuel de la fin de l'âge du Bronze et de l'âge du Fer

À quelques kilomètres à l’est d’Angoulême, en Charente, le plateau de Recoux, à Soyaux, occupé du Néolithique moyen à l’âge du Fer, était protégé jusqu’au XIXe siècle par un rempart de pierres sèches. C’est à ses pieds qu’une fouille, réalisée en 2007, a permis de mettre au jour un niveau d’occupation du Néolithique final implanté sur l’ancienne berge de la Font Noire, ainsi qu’un remarquable ensemble de vingt-deux enclos circulaires protohistoriques sans sépultures, et trois inhumations du second âge du Fer. Si, entre 2800 et 2500 ans av. J.-C., la berge de la Font Noire ne semble avoir connu qu’une occupation domestique en lien avec celle du site fortifié qui la surplombe, il en va différemment entre le ixe et le IIe siècle av. J.-C. Les enclos s’organisent en deux principaux groupes, distants d’un peu plus d’une centaine de mètres. Leur datation n’est pas toujours aisée, mais le plus ancien (enclos 16), doté d’une palissade de poteaux placée dans la zone enclose, est vraisemblablement implanté dans le courant du ixe siècle. Un second (enclos 1), accompagné de trois enclos satellites en fer à cheval, lui est un peu postérieur, implanté dans le courant du VIIIe siècle. La datation de ceux du second groupe, plus haut sur le versant, est plus délicate, mais l’utilisation de ceux-ci est avérée au moins jusqu’au vie siècle et vraisemblablement au-delà. Certains de ces enclos présentent des pierres déposées en couronne dans les comblements finaux des fossés, parmi lesquelles au moins deux stèles en calcaire, fragmentées. Malgré la fouille manuelle et intégrale des structures, aucun fragment d’os humain n’a été retrouvé ni dans les comblements des fossés ni à l’extérieur. Cette absence de sépulture, ces couronnes de pierres, cette palissade questionnent quant à la fonction de ces ensembles d’enclos. D’autant plus qu’au IIe siècle av. J.-C., trois petites fosses parfaitement alignées et espacées sont creusées et accueillent trois inhumés, placés tous trois en position assise et le regard tourné vers l’est et la vallée de la Font Noire.

Sumbouloi : la perception de soi chez les orateurs attiques

Résumé Quand on parle d’orateurs attiques, on pense au mot grec rhètores , mais en fait, si l’on analyse la perception qu’ils semblent avoir d’eux-mêmes, ce qui nous frappe, c’est l’effort que certains d’entre eux déploient pour ne pas être définis de cette manière et pour caractériser négativement par ce terme leurs ennemis politiques. En réalité, le choix d’utiliser ce titre comme une accusation paraît plutôt curieux, dans la mesure où celui qui la lance semble toujours oublier son propre statut de rhètôr pour dénoncer celui de l’adversaire. Pour remédier à cette évidente contradiction, il a donc fallu choisir un nouveau mot positif et, à travers l’analyse de diverses sources oratoires, il est prévu ici de mettre en évidence le rôle de Démosthène, qui imprime une nette impulsion à la diffusion du mot sumboulos (« conseiller », déjà utilisé, quoique rarement, chez ses prédécesseurs), pour caractériser celui qui sait parler en public en vue du bien supérieur de sa polis .

Performing Salvation in Dante’s Commedia

Performing Salvation in Dante’s Commedia Albert Russell Ascoli The second canto of Purgatorio has, over the years, received considerable scholarly attention in the ongoing quest to define Dante’s conception and practice of poetic authorship and signification. In a dominant strand of North American criticism the canto has, from this perspective, been treated as perhaps the most important in the entire poem. This privilege is all the clearer when canto 2 is paired, as the poem urges, with Dante’s response in canto 24 to Bonagiunta da Lucca’s inquiries about whether he is the author of a “dolce stil nuovo.” After revisiting the reasons for according the canto such importance, and reaffirming its status in general terms, this essay will suggest that a key aspect of the canto’s intra- and inter-textual dynamic has been significantly undervalued.1 I refer to the question of “performance,” broadly understood as the point of intersection between authorship and readership, as between Dante-poet and his narrative projection as Dante-personaggio and pilgrim.2 I will argue that when considered from this angle, canto 2, together with 24, effects a radical, deliberate recantation of the definition of poetic authorship in De Vulgari Eloquentia, book 2, chapter 8, a text whose pivotal place in Dante’s self-construction as poet has rarely been given its due, and whose importance for this canto has been entirely ignored. In conclusion, I will argue that for the Dante of the Commedia the dramatization of the performance of poetic song ultimately reveals a process of “performative” becoming in which poet-“singer” enacts and embodies the substance of his composition. In the process, I expect to shed some new light on the perennially [End Page 74] problematic relationship between theology and poetry, truth and fiction, in the Commedia.3 I begin with a brief, selective description of the canto and its immediately preceding context. In the first canto, as we know, Dante-pilgrim undergoes a figurative rebirth under the severe gaze of Cato Uticensis,4 immediately following the exordial declaration of Dante-poet that he is ready to enter into a new poetic mode (“ma qui la morta poesì resurga / o sante Muse” [Purgatorio 2.7–8]).5 Canto 2 concludes the interactions with Cato, and sees the pilgrim begin the first part of this second stage of his journey, through the so-called ante-Purgatorio, where four forms of “negligenza” [negligence, from nec-eleggere: “not to choose”], must be expiated before purgation proper begins. As we will see, canto 2 also ostentatiously offers some possibilities for understanding what more precisely is meant by the image of poetry reborn under the auspices of “Holy Muses.” The second canto is articulated around the arrival of a boatload of redeemed souls who have come to the “otherworld” by the normal route (as against Dante’s passage through the center of the earth)—a sea-voyage from the mouth of the Tiber river conducted by an angelic “galeotto,” that is, sailor or helmsman.6 The exceptionalness of Dante’s own journey is thus put in relief, especially in the inauguration of a recurrent contrast between his living, embodied presence and the shadowy existence of the dead souls.7 At the same time, his ongoing dialogue with this new category of soul begins on a highly personal note as he discovers that one of the newly arrived is an old and dear friend, the minstrel Casella. What really makes the canto at once so extraordinary and yet so central to scholarly understandings of the Commedia’s poetics, however, is the performance of two very different songs, both of which have a separate existence external to and independent of the world of the poem, and each of which is evoked by quoting its incipit or first line. The first, cited at line 46, is the singing of the psalm “In exitu Israel de Aegypto” (Vulgate 113; 114–115 in modern Bibles) by the newly arriving souls: ‘In exitu Israel de Aegypto’cantavan tutti insieme ad una vocecon quanto di quel salmo è poscia scripto. (2.46–48) [End Page 75] The singing of a psalm is very much in keeping with the...

Impact of implant composition of twin-screw extruded lipid implants on the release behavior

The development of vaccine delivery systems that will remove or reduce the need for repeated dosing has led to the investigation of sustained release systems. In this context, the duration of antigen release is of great importance as is the requirement for concomitant adjuvant release. In this work, lipid implants consisting of cholesterol (CHOL), soybean lecithin, Dynasan 114 (D114), the model antigen ovalbumin (OVA) and the adjuvant Quil-A (QA) were produced by twin-screw extrusion. The release of antigen and adjuvant was investigated in vitro and we observed complete OVA release over a period of 7 days while QA was released in a linear fashion over a period of up to 12 days. In order to extend OVA release, lipid implants were subjected to post-extrusion curing at 45–55°C. The OVA release could be extended to up to 14 days. Furthermore the influence of the implant composition on the release of the model antigen was investigated. It was shown that the percentage of cholesterol in particular plays an important role in modulating release.

Le Christ selon l’Afrique par Calixthe Beyala

Reviews 187 la matière intéressante et capter l’attention des lecteurs. Mis en confiance, ses interlocuteurs s’ouvrent à elle parce qu’ils sentent qu’elle saura exprimer leurs sentiments et que, somme toute, il reste quelque espoir! University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire Dominique S. Thévenin Beyala, Calixthe. Le Christ selon l’Afrique. Paris: Albin Michel, 2014. ISBN 978-2226 -25601-0. Pp. 265. 19,50 a. Not quite parable or allegory, this colorful story presents Douala, and particularly its slums, through the eyes of Boréale, an intelligent and rebellious young woman who has a secondary education but not the test results required for an office job. Widespread government corruption in Cameroon lets the politicians and functionaries line their pockets and keeps the poor in slums like Kassalafaim, where Boréale lives. How can Africa be saved from impending economic and social disaster? Doctaire,a physician, argues on a street corner for science, but the man Boréale calls Homotype disputes with him, claiming that all knowledge and civilization come from Africa. Homotype was Boréale’s lover until she became disgusted by his promiscuity, but his masculine aura and his soulful singing of popular songs still attract her. Boréale’s mother belongs to the Catholic church, whose most prominent local figure is the “prophète” Paul, many of whose followers are awaiting the end of the world, while he practices rigged faith healing, demands tithing from the faithful as “le prix du salut” (21), and takes sexual advantage of his followers. Given the atmosphere—“l’Afrique cherchait ses origines à travers une spiritualité insolite” (203)—it is no wonder that Boréale is a mass of contradictions. She is wittily skeptical about nearly everything, but she also wants to be rich and to dress stylishly. To do so, she just needs to bear a child on behalf of her mother’s sterile sister Dorota, with the sister’s wealthy husband as its father. Boréale’s impoverished extended family thinks this is a wonderful idea: everyone will be able to feast on the uncle’s bounty. The Christ of the book’s title enters into events not only through the phony prophet, who proclaims “la puissance du Christ!” (197), but by way of a white man who claims his name is “Christian, Christ pour les amis” (141) and, later, through the baby of dubious parentage which Boréale finally produces and whom Dorota names Christ. The book’s characters, all of whom are painted in broad strokes, also include Boréale’s white expatriate employer, two other household employees, a brothel keeper, and the mairesse of the elegant Maképé quarter. Boréale is the only complex figure until, near the end, her mother and Homotype seem to change, though maybe it is Boréale who is finally seeing others in a more nuanced way. Just as Cameroon-born Beyala herself is both a novelist and a political activist, this book is part novel and part political propaganda, its characters and events serving to condemn corruption and inequality in Cameroon and to point to hope for its future. Boréale thinks that her baby may bring about“un monde plus juste”(259)—“Peut-être s’instruirait-il sur le secret des coups d’État réussis et renverserait-il les régimes corrompus” (259–60)—becoming Africa’s longed-for savior. College of San Mateo (CA) Susan Petit Biancarelli, Marc. Orphelins de Dieu. Arles: Actes Sud, 2014. ISBN 978-2-33003593 -8. Pp. 240. 20 a. Vénérande et son frère Petit Charles vivent reclus leur quotidien de damnés depuis que le chemin du jeune homme a croisé celui des trois frères Santa Lucia et de leur acolyte Le Long. Ce jour-là, les quatre pillards, Cavaliers de l’Apocalypse, ne se sont pas contentés de voler quelques brebis à Petit Charles mais l’ont également défiguré après lui avoir coupé la langue. Vénérande s’occupe depuis de son frère, s’abîmant dans la folie qui a déjà emporté Petit Charles tout en s’accrochant au dernier sentiment qui la relie à ce monde de violence...

Spotlight on China – An Analysis of L’Empire Chinois Illustrated by Thomas Allom and Described by Clément Pellé

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the Western world living in (the aftermath of) the age of Enlightenment, was highly intrigued by China. Although it had already been discovered in the past, its image was still unclear in the West. Not only did the latter develop interest for this new country but it was also fascinated by the Chinese culture; a true admiration for Chinese notions became the vogue at that time (Yetts, 1926). This is illustrated by Pellé’s first sentence of the preface in L’Empire Chinois: “Si les regards se tournent vers la Chine maintenant, c’est parce qu’elle n’a pas été bien explorée auparavant… Son refus pour tout changement a donné un aspect original à la population Chinoise qui la rendu unique”. Consequently, this book is contextualized against the background of the rising interest in ‘other’ countries and ‘other’ cultures. In this line, it is interesting to have a look at the cultural process explaining how Western identities were formed in opposition to an image of the East, a process that Edward Said - professor of English literature and literary theorist - called ‘orientalism’. The second part of the chapter is devoted to the analysis of the depiction of the Chinese. In L’ Empire Chinois, the illustrations of Thomas Allom are sumptuously drawn and they present an undeniable romantic image of China. So, I will try to answer the research question: how to interpret this romanticized perspective on China evoked by Allom and Pellé? Therefore, the historical context, with the specific factors which influenced the authors, isnof the utmost importance. It will be clear that the idyllic image of China in L’ Empire Chinois and the representation of the other are inextricably bound to Pellé and Allom themselves.

In vivo investigation of twin-screw extruded lipid implants for vaccine delivery

Sustained release systems have become the focus of attention in vaccine delivery as they may reduce or prevent the need for repeated dosing. In this work, lipid implants were prepared by twin-screw extrusion and investigated as vaccine delivery systems in vivo. The lipid implants consisted of cholesterol, soybean lecithin, and Dynasan 114. Ovalbumin (OVA) was employed as a model antigen and Quil-A (QA) as an adjuvant. In addition, OVA and QA loaded liposomes were prepared by the lipid-film hydration method, freeze-dried and then added to the lipid matrix prior to extrusion. Implants were administered subcutaneously and the kinetics of antigen release as well as the overall immune response stimulated were analysed by measuring CD4+ and CD8+ T cell proliferation, OVA-specific IgG production as well as cytokine (IFN-γ and IL4) secretion. Vaccine release from the implants was completed by 14days. Inclusion of adjuvant into the implants was required for the generation of cellular and humoral immune responses. Inclusion of liposomes into the implant did not enhance the resulting immune responses generated.

Chitosan hydrogels containing liposomes and cubosomes as particulate sustained release vaccine delivery systems

Sustained release depot systems have been widely investigated for their potential to improve the efficacy of subunit vaccines and reduce the requirement for boosting. The present study aimed to further enhance the immunogenicity of a sustained release vaccine by combining a depot formulation with a particulate antigen delivery system. Sustained release of the model subunit antigen, ovalbumin (OVA), was observed in vivo from chitosan thermogel-based formulations containing cationic, nanosized liposomes loaded with OVA and the immunopotentiator, Quil A (QA). Such formulations demonstrated the ability to induce cluster of differentiation (CD)8+ and CD4+ T-cell proliferation and interferon (IFN)-γ production, as well as the production of OVA-specific antibody. However, gel-incorporated liposomes showed evidence of instability and similar in vivo immune responses to liposomes in gel formulations were induced by gel-based systems loaded with soluble OVA and QA. The immunogenicity of chitosan thermogels containing cubosomes, a more stable lipidic particulate system, was therefore examined. Similarly, all gel-based formulations produced comparable effector immune responses in experimental mice, irrespective of whether the antigen and immunopotentiator were present in gels within cubosomes or in a soluble form. This work demonstrates the potential for sustained release thermogelling systems and highlights the importance of matching the physicochemical and immunological properties of the particulate system to that of the depot.

Against Recuperation: The Fictions of Art in L’ɶuvre

The exact status of Zola's has always been problematic. For Pissarro, it was livre romantique, for Edmond de Goncourt, in a no less double-edged judgment, bonne construction du roman vieux jeu. (1) Other early readers moved uncertainly between professed admiration for its emotional power and reservations about ideas expressed by l'ecrivainphilosophe in footsteps of Diderot and Balzac's Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu. Its critical reception, when it was first published, intuitively highlights generic admixture that a modern scholar like David Baguley has analyzed to such revealing effect. Yet Patrick Brady's compendiously titled study of 1968 accommodates its plurality in an exclusively recuperative direction that has seldom been properly challenged L'oeuvre d'Emile Zola- roman sur les arts; manifeste, autobiographie, roman a (2) And, over four decades later, even most authoritative of summations reverts to such terms of reference: S'agit-il d'un roman a clefs? C'est la lecture qui s'impose d'emblee, confirmed by fact that aujourd'hui, le debat critique continue, pour l'essentiel, de tourner autour des cles du roman. (3) Part of reason for this ubiquity of emphasis has been, of course, L'oeuvre's privileged position within attempts by art historians to cross disciplinary boundaries while, paradoxically (or unsurprisingly), losing from sight its fictional specificity. Exemplary in this respect is Kermit Champa's question-begging conclusion that Zola's novel of 1886 is, as he puts it, the most unreliable art-historical text of period (71). Wayne Anderson's apparently more judicious aside that character of Claude Lantier has been recklessly interpreted by many art historians as a portrait of (4) (82) is equally indebted to extraliterary, hors texte of real-life painter's friendship with Zola himself, brought to an end after forty years in famously ambiguous response Cezanne sent to him on receipt of a copy of L'oeuvre; (5) ensuing personal silence has provided not merely biographers with justification for treating novel as a roman a clef. The aim of this article, by contrast, is to alert its readers to properly imaginative processes of its composition. For by exploring from a very different perspective precisely those dimensions of foregrounded by Brady, we can both view this particular novel with renewed clarity and suggest wider implications of out rereading of Zola at some distance from habitual approaches to his aesthetic. Emblematic in this regard are novel's interpolated descriptions of Claude's grand tableau, some five meters by three and titled Plein air, vicissitudes of which play such an important narrative and symbolic role in text. Doubtless further encouraged, beyond approximate analogies of subject-matter and internal geometry, by hypothetical objection (voiced by character of Dubuche) to a depiction of ce monsieur, tout habille, la, au milieu de ces femmes nues (48), which had also scandalized Manet's contemporary critics, modern commentators have too often unhesitatingly identified fictional painting as a transposition of Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe. (6) It is, indeed, instantly recognizable as such, according to a respected Manet specialist. (7) But to look at description of Plein air much more closely is to be struck instead by significant differences between Claude's inventions and Manet's considerably smaller (208 x 264 cm) picture of 1863: Dans un trou de foret, aux murs epais de verdure, tombait une ondee de soleil; seule, a gauche, une allee sombre s'enfoncait, avec une tache de lumiere, tres loin. La, sur l'herbe, au milieu des vegetations de juin, une femme nue etait couchee, un bras sous la tete, enflant la gorge; et elle souriait, sans regard, les paupieres closes, dans la pluie d'or qui la baignait. Au fond, deux autres petites femmes, une brune, une blonde, egalement nues, luttaient en riant, detachaient, parmi les verts des feuilles, deux adorables notes de chair. …

Bohème sans frontière ed. by Pascal Brissette, Anthony Glinoer

how, through the interrelationship between poetry past and present, the former helps the latter “à avoir conscience d’elle-même, comme l’aide à avoir conscience d’elle-même tout ce qui la brise avec dévotion” (169). “Brisons-la,” as Francis Ponge wrote, not without devotion, in his prose poem “Le pain.” As do Bonnefoy’s concluding “Paroles d’Introduction,” La conscience de soi testifies to poetry’s fractious autonomy. Wellesley College (MA) James Petterson BRISSETTE, PASCAL, et ANTHONY GLINOER, éd., Bohème sans frontière. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7535-1071-5. Pp. 357. 18 a. While Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) may figure as a relatively minor work of literature, its cultural impact has been enormous. In large measure it is due to this work of fiction that the idea of “the Bohemian” impacted the European and eventually international imagination. This study presents twentyfour essays from a conference held at University of Toronto in 2008 that illustrate the variety, transformation, and migration of the concept of “bohemia” from the nineteenth century to the present. It is a measure of the complexity of the subject that the editors have judiciously divided the contributions into three categories: the first considers the different forms that the notion of the bohemian can take and discusses the social and historical forces that contributed to its emergence; the second concentrates on bohemianism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France; the final section focuses on manifestations of the bohemian outside the Hexagon. In the first section Nathalie Heinich and Jerrold Seigel, a sociologist and a historian respectively, provide excellent historical background for the bohemian phenomenon, namely how legal changes at the dawn of the nineteenth century inadvertently created a large class of disaffected artists, and that bohemianism, essentially a bourgeois phenomenon from its origins, always possessed a symbolic dimension at the same time as a historical reality. Seigel speaks of “competing bohemias” (43), and the second section of this volume provides ample illustrations of this point. Concentrating on French bohemianism, there are excellent essays dealing with literary figures such as Tristan Corbière, Jean Richepin, Francis Carco and, of course, Murger, but space is also accorded to what might be termed “political bohemia,” in the personage of Jules Vallès, as well as the arguably slumming bohemian, but true bourgeois, Guy Debord. As one might expect, there is an essay on surrealism and bohemia. David Vrysdaghs details this conflicted relationship and reinforces the impression that attraction-repulsion was a standard surrealist approach to any movement of even passing interest. International bohemia, bohème sans frontière, is the subject of the third section. The focus is entirely literary with illuminating essays on the bohemian influence in Belgium, Spain, Latin America, Canada, and the United States. In a particularly noteworthy contribution, Clémentine Hougue analyzes the ways three writers of the Beat Generation, Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs, quite literally take bohemia on the road in an extreme refusal of social integration “tout en déconstruisant l’idée d’une appartenance à un lieu national, à un espace littéraire, à une topographie préexistante” (344). The Beat Generation offered an uneasy alliance of political and literary bohemia. Hougue never makes clear whether the Beats had any knowledge of Murger’s work, and this remains uncertain in other essays Reviews 349 as well. Naturally, such a question does not really matter. As the collection makes perfectly apparent, whatever its precise origins, the idea of an enchanted locale called Bohemia, a state of mind more than a place, rapidly took command of the middle class’s literary and at times political imagination. Eventually it would become the modern world’s mythical Golden Age, a time of boisterous friendship, sexual license, and financial insouciance. In its Romantic avatars, la vie de bohème is no young person’s fantasy, but the mingling of memory and desire which is the realm of an older generation. In the past hundred fifty years or so, bohemia has developed in myriad directions, yet without ever entirely abandoning Mimi and Rodolphe’s garret. Florida State University William Cloonan CAMUS, ALBERT. Œuvres complètes. Paris: Gallimard...

Reading the Signs in Villon: Puns, Proper Names, and Implied Language Theory in the Lais

Villon's Lais quickly announces itself as the last will and testament of a poor scholar named Francois Villon, and the poem unfolds in accordance with this formal conceit: a catalogue of items the first-person narrator wishes to bequeath, and the names of their intended recipients. As Villon scholars have frequently pointed out, pictorial enseignes--the signs hung on taverns and houses--are among the facetious bequests. Modern editions of the text obligingly guide the reader through Villon's picaresque Paris: footnotes point out the pubs and street corners named in the verses, capital letters and italic type ensure that the names of these places are recognized as proper names. In a recent edition, for example, a typical stanza of the Lais is a typographically busy space: Item, a Jehan Trouve, Item, to Jehan Trouve, the boucher, butcher, Laisse Le Mouton franc et I leave The Sheep, choice tendre and tender, Et ung tacon pour esmouchier and a whisk to swat the flies off Le Beuf Couronne qu'on veult the Crowned Ox, which he'd love vendre, to sell, Et La Vache qu'on ne peult and The Cow which can't be prendre, caught. Le villain qui la trousse au That clod who bears her on col his back-- S'il ne la rend, qu'on le puist if be won't give over, let him pendre be hanged Ou assomer d'un bon licol. (1) or finished off with a good halter! With the cues on the printed page and an extensive apparatus of notes, the editor guarantees that the reader will recognize that Le Mouton and Le Beuf Couronne were the enseignes of houses in the Rue de la Harpe and that the image of the peasant carrying a cow was depicted on the sign that gave its name to the Rue Troussevache. I would like to call attention to the way these helpful editorial interventions close off important dimensions of multiple meanings in Villon's text. A reader who is allowed to misread the signs--or rather, to read the enseignes as signes--tumbles headlong into a poetic construct of carnivalesque and disorienting images. When the proper names of the Parisian locales that Villon mentions are read as common nouns, the mimetic figures of the signboard take on an active role in Villon's macabre burlesque. The vache and the villain from the sign of the Rue Troussevache are recast as active participants in a narrative. Along with a sheep, a steer, and a cow, a poor rustic is given away as part of a bequest, and Jehan Trouve, boucher, is granted the right to strangle him and hang him up like a side of beef. The availability of such a reading makes the enseignes part of a texture of double entendres, uncertainties, and comic horrors. I use the word enseignes throughout to refer to the painted or sculpted signs that labeled the medieval city's taverns, streets, and houses. It seems practical to take advantage of the French word for these signs in order to avoid confusing them with signs of the sort studied by semioticians. The distinction, as we will see, has a certain artificiality: the game afoot with Villon's enseignes has a great deal to do with the complexity of all signs, and partakes of the problematics that bedevil--and enrich--all acts of signifying and naming. The enseignes are loci of semantic instability in the Lais, opportunities for Villon to stage a dazzling interplay of signs and sign, of proper name and common noun, of word and image. (2) This investigation will proceed in two parts: a short philological inquest followed by a consideration of theoretical implications. The philological examination is designed to test the starting premise of the essay: Does the physical presentation of the text eliminate ambiguities and enforce a certain editorially endorsed reading? …

La conscience de soi de la poésie: colloques de la Fondation Hugot du Collège de France (1993–2004) ed. by Yves Bonnefoy

BONNEFOY, YVES, éd. La conscience de soi de la poésie: colloques de la Fondation Hugot du Collège de France (1993–2004). Paris: Seuil, 2008. ISBN 978-2-02-097138-6. Pp. 416. 15 a. Spanning two decades (1987–2006) of annual meetings of the Fondation Hugot and including essays by over twenty participants, this volume offers a perspective on poetry that is as eclectic as it is fascinating and wide-ranging. As does the anthology’s title, many of the essays point to a question dear to Bonnefoy: poetry’s self-consciousness, self-reflexivity, or what he called, in 2001, “l’autonomie du poétique” (372), to which “la critique qui se veut ou se prétend scientifique” can only substitute “des spectres plus ou moins pâles” (11). The reader should not expect a clear presentation and sustained examination of some “concept” of poetry’s self-consciousness. Rather, to take in the entirety of this volume is like stumbling onto the vestiges of a learned society seemingly from an era much further removed than its actual dates of existence. Vestiges since as of 2002 the participants seemed to have reached the end inevitably contained within Bonnefoy’s proposed and refined conditions for the yearly meetings, namely, that the way or “form of knowing” specific to poetry “only can be found upstream from any conceptual reading and even further from any ideological commitment ” (373). Confronted with this demanding hypothesis, the twenty or so essays that make up the anthology circle around the “autonomy of the poetic”— with some coming closer than others—from every which angle, multiple historical periods, and from a mix of long established critics (Jean Starobinski, Karlheinz Stierle, Maurice Olender, Bertrand Marchal, and Jacqueline Risset, to name but a few), and a younger generation (such as Jérôme Thélot, Patrick Née, and François Trémolières). In their approach to the question of poetry’s self-consciousness, many of the essays range from readings of the reception of Homer during Roman Antiquity (U. Todini) to the interrelationship of writing and painting in the works of Petrarch (P. Oster) and Montaigne (K. Stierle). As is befitting of Bonnefoy’s general hypothesis , many other essays offer readings of non-Francophone poets such as Leopardi (C. Ossola), Keats (J.E. Jackson and M. Edwards), Yeats (J. Thélot), and Rilke (M. Finck). A number of other essays focus on the poetry of Baudelaire (J. Starobinski), Nerval (P. Labarthe), Mallarmé and Valéry (B. Marchal), while still others read the prose of Balzac (P. Née) or Proust (J. Risset). A few essays, the best to my mind, directly address Bonnefoy’s anxious question as to the “autonomy of the poetic.” Among others, by way of a careful reading of Giambattista Vico, Maurice Olender turns Bonnefoy’s view around to analyze poetry’s previous entwinement with religion, politics, and law: “au point souvent de ne plus former qu’une entité aux aspects indistincts” (135). In an essay ranging from the Chanson de Roland to Flaubert, Rimbaud, and Proust, Michel Zink offers a dazzling demonstration as to THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 85, No. 2, December 2011 Printed in U.S.A. REVIEWS Literary History and Criticism edited by Marion Geiger 348 how, through the interrelationship between poetry past and present, the former helps the latter “à avoir conscience d’elle-même, comme l’aide à avoir conscience d’elle-même tout ce qui la brise avec dévotion” (169). “Brisons-la,” as Francis Ponge wrote, not without devotion, in his prose poem “Le pain.” As do Bonnefoy’s concluding “Paroles d’Introduction,” La conscience de soi testifies to poetry’s fractious autonomy. Wellesley College (MA) James Petterson BRISSETTE, PASCAL, et ANTHONY GLINOER, éd., Bohème sans frontière. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2010. ISBN 978-2-7535-1071-5. Pp. 357. 18 a. While Henry Murger’s Scènes de la vie de bohème (1851) may figure as a relatively minor work of literature, its cultural impact has been enormous. In large measure it is due to this work of fiction that the idea of “the Bohemian” impacted the European and eventually international imagination. This...

In vitro and in vivo investigation of thermosensitive chitosan hydrogels containing silica nanoparticles for vaccine delivery

In this work silica nanoparticles (SNP) containing the model antigen ovalbumin (OVA) were incorporated into a thermosensitive chitosan hydrogel, and the resulting formulation investigated for its potential to act as a particulate sustained release vaccine delivery system. OVA-loaded SNP and chitosan hydrogels containing OVA-loaded SNP were prepared and characterised in vitro, and examined for their ability to elicit OVA-specific immune responses in vivo. Optimised SNP were found to be approximately 300 nm in size with a moderate level of heterogeneity, a highly negative zeta potential, and an entrapment efficiency of approximately 7%. A porous particulate structure was indicated both by electron microscopy and a rapid release of fluorescently-labelled OVA (FITC-OVA) from SNP. Following successful incorporation of SNP into chitosan hydrogels, the release of both soluble and SNP-associated antigen from gel systems was quantified. Approximately 16% of total protein was released in a particulate form over a 14-day period, while approximately 35% was released as soluble antigen. Gel-based systems containing SNP-associated or soluble antigen in the presence or absence of the adjuvant Quil A (QA) demonstrated an ability to stimulate both cell mediated and humoral immunity in vivo. Chitosan gels containing OVA-loaded SNP and the adjuvant QA showed a significantly greater ability to induce CD4 + T cell proliferation than chitosan gel containing soluble OVA and QA, indicating the future promise for such a system.

Immunostimulatory biodegradable implants containing the adjuvant Quil-A—Part I: Physicochemical characterisation

Sustained-release vaccines offer the potential to reduce, or obviate, the need for repeated dosing of vaccines. In this study, we report the development and characterisation of sustained-release lipid implants that release immunogenic, self-assembling colloidal particles. Lipid implants consisting of cholesterol (CHOL), phosphatidylcholine (PC), the adjuvant Quil-A (QA) and the model antigen ovalbumin (OVA) were formulated and investigated using a variety of techniques. Transmission electron microscopy was utilised to demonstrate the release of colloidal structures from these implants over time. The nature of the colloidal particles varied depending on the ratio of QA:CHOL:PC. The release of the model antigen as well as its incorporation into the colloidal particles was investigated using a fluorescent tag covalently coupled to OVA and quantified using fluorospectrophotometry. The antigen release was modified by the incorporation of excess CHOL into the formulation and was not only dependent on the ratio of QA:CHOL:PC but also on the nature of the model antigen. Alteration of the hydrophobicity of the model antigen resulted in an increased incorporation into the colloidal structures. Surface changes of the implants were analysed using scanning electron microscopy. The implant formulations investigated in this study show a potential for the delivery of subunit vaccines.

Immunostimulatory biodegradable implants containing the adjuvant Quil-A—Part II: In vivo evaluation

Sustained-release formulations have drawn the attention of formulation scientists working in the area of vaccine research because these systems may reduce the need for booster immunisations. This would be of great advantage especially for the administration of subunit vaccines. The aim of this study was to illustrate the performance of liposome-forming, sustained-release lipid implants containing 2% of the adjuvant Quil-A (QA) (w/w of total lipids) and ovalbumin (OVA) as a model antigen, in an in vivo study using C57Bl/6 mice. QA/OVA-containing lipid implants were administered subcutaneously and stimulated a similar magnitude of immune response when compared with an immediate-release formulation that contained an equivalent amount of adjuvant and antigen but was administered twice. The novel implant system presented here combines the advantages of both sustained release and particulate delivery in one formulation.

Valéry—Modernist Myths and (Anti) Modernist States of Mind

In a short text entitled Questions de Poesie, preface to Anthologie des Poetes de la NRF and published in review in 1935, mocks those who waste their time on terms such as Classicism, Romanticism, and Symbolism. These are terms faits pour ... donner pretexte a des dissentiments infinis, since no one can agree upon their meaning. They are classifications, concludes, that n'enseignent ni a lire, ni a ecrire ... detournent et dispensent l'esprit des problemes reels de l'art; cependant qu'elles permettent a bien des aveugles de discourir de la couleur. (1) It is hard not to feel like a blind person holding forth about color when it comes to question of modernism in context of NRF. For NRF discusses Classicism, Romanticism, and Symbolism at length over years as it positions itself strategically with respect to contemporary world of letters and horizon of modern art. Its analyses clearly reveal that these apparently meaningless terms are freighted with political values, and that valences that attach to them shift over time, taking on different colorations according to ideological forces at play in their deployment. Valery, however, will have none of this. In Questions de Poesie he moves resolutely on to what he calls real problems of art: questions of language, or, as he puts it, variation[s] de la langue qui la rend [ent] insensiblement tout autre. (2) What sensations is poeta designed to produce? What operations of language enable it to do so? In other words, one direct one's attention to questions of form, L'unite et la consistence de la forme, (3) where form is construed in terms of specific operations of language. (4) What is a sentence? What is verse? What is a consonant? These are pertinent questions, not what is Classicism, or Romanticism, or Symbolism? For only difference that really counts, difference between poetry and prose, depends upon them. The irony, of course, is that this essay that mocks conventional literary historical and esthetic categories, establishes conventions of yet another category: Modernism. Valery's poetics becomes explicitly and canonically modernist thanks, in part, to commentary of that preeminently modernist poet, T.S. Eliot. In Poe to Valery (5) Eliot presents a now familiar genealogy of French modernist poetry that places at culmination of this development. Eliot traces French modernism back to a latent force in writing of E.A. Poe, one indiscernible to Anglo American readers, but progressively revealed to, and by, three generations of French poets represented by Baudelaire, Mallarme and, above all, Valery. He identifies French modernism with poesie pure, conviction that a poeta does not say something--it is (6) a formula that rephrases fundamental discontinuity insists on between poetry and prose. Prose says something, whereas poetry just is something. Eliot identifies two principal features of modernist poetics that refer us to issues of form: self-consciousness (or self-referentiality) and autonomy (or awareness and concern for language). Eliot affirms that both are championed by Valery, the most self-conscious of ali poets. (7) For Eliot, not only epitomizes modernist poet, be represents culmination of modernism. From Eliot's point of view took modernist poetics as far as it could go. The death of in 1945 marks demise of modernism itself. I do not believe that this esthetic can be any help to later poets, (8) be affirms. From his perspective this poetic self-consciousness, this extreme awareness of, and concern for, language must ultimately break down. (9) There will inevitably be an irresistible revulsion of humanity, he argues, unwilling to carry any longer burden of modern civilization. (10) Eliot's myth of modernism (and its drama) is compatible with other important modernist myths, most notably those of Adorno and Clement Greenberg, both of which define Modernism against Romanticism, on one hand, and against Realism (or project of representation) on other. …

Effect of four adjuvants on immune response to F4 fimbriae in chickens

IgG antibody response in chickens immunized with F4 fimbriae extracted from local enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) strain was studied during a 98-day immunization period for comparing the efficacy of four adjuvants: Freund’ adjuvant, Quil A (QA), propolis and extract from Cochinchina momordica seed (ECMS). For this purpose, chickens were immunized with F4 fimbriae alone or combined with one of the above adjuvants on days 1 and 21. IgG antibody levels in serum and egg yolk (by ELISA) were measured on days 0, 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 70, 84 and 98. The egg production of each group was also determined during days 1–7 and the following four weeks. The results showed that QA could enhance antibody titre, as good or almost as good as Freund's adjuvant, whereas the titres of ECMS and propolis groups were relatively lower, with the overall order: Freund's adjuvant > QA > ECMS > propolis both in serum and egg yolk. However, the significant decrease of egg production was merely observed in the Freund's adjuvant group. It is concluded that the four adjuvants tested can stimulate immune response to F4 fimbriae in chickens, with Freund's adjuvant giving the best results, followed by QA.

REPETITION FACILITY

Before taking on a role as one of the personages of French existentialism (Camus 1991), Sisyphus had been mentioned by James Phillips Kay (1832, 8), and in turn by Engels (1987), 193n) and then Mar...

(review)

826 Reviews flawed; meticulously researched in its rendering of descriptive detail and yet curiously deficient in its search for stylistic vigour. Not a bad addition to the English-language Garden of Zola for all that. University of Durham Ian Tulloch Proust et le langage religieux: la cathedraleprofane. By Stephane Chaudier. (Re? cherches proustiennes, 2) Paris: Champion. 2004. 549 pp. ?85. ISBN 2-74530768 -1. A book that studies the religious references in Proust's work (Jean Santeuiland Contre Sainte-Beuve as well as A la recherchedu tempsperdu) is a meticulous undertaking. Two approaches are possible: the religious-cum-moral stance and the religious-ascultural -referent stance. The former is strongly characterized by Francois Mauriac in Du cote de chez Marcel Proust (Paris: Table Ronde, 1947). Mauriac is led by the sight of Proust on his deathbed, his arms not crossed in repose and no crucifix on his chest, to reflect on the lack of devout religious perception in his writing. His stark opinion is that'Dieu est terriblement absent del'ceuvrede Marcel Proust' (p. 66). The failure and limitation of his work is that ia conscience humaine en est absente. Aucun des etres qui la peuplent ne connait l'inquietude morale' (p. 67). Though Stephane Chaudier does not remark on this, it is nevertheless firmlyin the reader's mind. His intention, however, is to show that in Proust the frequent recourse to God and to religious attitudes leads to the rejection of religion as such in favour of religiosity. It is this second stance that is presented here with an emphasis that fails on cultural, poetic, and stylistic effects.Chaudier's argument is to show this, often at great length, and to suggest that Proust's need for a transcendence emerges from an awareness of religious exaltation that will be replaced, paradoxically, by his own non-religious salvation through literary creation, enabling him to be a god in his own world. What is the purpose of frequent recourse to religious terminology if both Proust and his narrator are non-believers? The conclusion of this study (which too often carries with it the irksome feel of an overlong thesis) is that the religious language and tone serve as a lingering background providing illumination of the narrator's dilemmas or observations by means of analogy or poetic evocation. The one dimension missing is an agonizing over matters of faithor belief:' Sans nostalgie et sans culpabilite, 1'ceuvre dessine l'empreinte de ce Dieu qui s'est derobe. Proust ne croit pas en lui; Dieu reste pourtant le modele lointain, fascinant de l'artiste createur desireux d'exalter l'usage poetique et gratuit du style, appareil a representer, mais aussi a vivre' (p. 502). In the earlier parts of the book Chaudier elaborates the ironic allusiveness of re? ligious imagery primarily as a stylistic device in a jocular or mocking way. He goes on to look at religious references fortheir aesthetic association. Combray church, for instance, has a social and decorative purpose rather than a devotional one. The reli? gious dimensions are charming, never harrowing, more akin to a pleasing paganism. By paralleling instances mjean Santeuil and A la recherche,Chaudier shows Proust's constant replacing of a Christian ethos by a pagan nature-loving sensuality. In social settings Proust is shown to be neutral in religious controversies and careful about commitment at all times but ready to exploit paradoxical situations, especially where his personal obligations are concerned: 'par son oeuvre Proust sera au contraire et juif et catholique, mais un juif et un catholique delie du respect paralysant des ori? gines et des institutions' (p. 194). Attitudes to religion can become character-pointers, as in contrasting Francoise and Charlus. A particularly sharp analysis involves the narrator observing the priest at his grandmother's bedside peeping through his fingers to spy on the narrator's grief. The narrator detects a voyeur behind the man of MLR, 100.3, 2005 827 faith. By exploiting his religious duty, the assurance which religion should provide is destabilized and an instructive light is thrown on two characters at once: 'Jamais le pretre proustien ne se dissocie de cette institution quasi-policiere incarnee par le "confessional": I'Eglise...

Imagining the Written Word: Adaptation in the Work of Bruce McDonald and Nick Craine

En analysant les transpositions filmiques et graphiques que le cinéaste Bruce McDonald et le cartooniste Nick Craine ont réalisé des textes littéraires Dance Me Outside de W.P. Kinsella et Hard Core Logo de Michael Turner, l’auteur réfute la critique habituelle de l’adaptation qui la dénigre comme simple emprunt dérivatif. Le cliché selon lequel le cinéma gagne une certaine légitimité en s’inspirant de sources littéraires est démenti par une étude des différents processus par lesquels les films et les bandes dessinées utilisent des techniques formelles qui leur sont propres pour réinterpréter le matériel original.