an approach that Christopher Dyer describes as“pauper-centered.”Drawing on a wide range of resources, the authors avoid reducing the poor to an undifferentiated mass by inferring from their sources the life circumstances of identifiable paupers, including unmarried mothers, apprenticed youth, and age-differentiated single women. Two themes are prominent throughout the volume: the symbiotic relationship between the poor and the non-poor, and the way in which this reciprocity is marked, over time, by a shift towards accountability. The second part,“Forms of Poor Relief,” features a strong contribution by Susan Broomhall in which she uses records of the Paris HôtelDieu and its governors to outline the transition from a religiously-based response to an increasingly secularized program reliant on administrative machinery. Reciprocity also evokes the moral question of worth which underlies the third part,“Textual and Visual Representations.” The discursive power of poverty as a signifier is evident, as Mark Amsler shows, in the “re-reading” of the poor in light of the voluntary poverty of groups such as the Waldensians. By contrast, Scott’s study of a fourteenth-century poem, “La voie de povreté et de richesse,” offers a secular reformulation of the issue, showing how this didactic expression of the anxiety of the recently-married protagonist frames poverty as a question of moral turpitude set against the laudable goal of pursuing material wealth. Three plates of manuscript illustrations accompany Scott’s analysis of this little-studied poem, though a fourth, referred to as this volume’s frontispiece, is missing. Scott and her colleagues have brought together an impressive breadth of perspectives on poverty which spans four centuries and ranges over questions of age, gender, religion, and social and economic change. Given the high quality of the writing, and with its consistent emphasis on giving identity to the poor, this book will be valuable to any reader wishing to better understand the complex texture of poverty in pre-modern England and France. North Dakota State University Paul Homan Stewart, Jon, ed. Kierkegaard’s Influence on Philosophy: Francophone Philosophy. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. ISBN 978-1-4094-4638-5. Pp. 266. £65. As this volume shows, the French intellectual tradition concurs with Kierkegaard’s heterogeneous profile since its prominent authors are difficult to compartmentalize, as they often blend literary criticism, philosophy, theology, or “simple” writing. Newmark’s “Sylviane Agacinski: Reading Kierkegaard to Keep Intact the Secret” underlines the legacy Agacinski has bestowed upon the philosopher’s work. She evokes the figure of Abraham in Kierkegaard’s work as the symbol of “the most profound love of human finitude” (18). In “Roland Barthes: Style, Language, Silence,” Westfall demonstrates how Barthes and Kierkegaard were analogous in their predilection to blur the lines between autobiography, fiction, and philosophy. Llevadot (“Georges Bataille: Kierkegaard and the Claim for the Sacred”) highlights Kierkegaard’s 250 FRENCH REVIEW 88.1 Reviews 251 admiration of Abraham, the “unknown God” (59). They share a desire to radicalize Christian religion. Greenspan’s “Maurice Blanchot: Spaces of Literature/Spaces of Religion” emphasizes the ambivalence of Blanchot toward Kierkegaard. Blanchot’s quarrel is directed at the fraudulent notion of the“mask”: Kierkegaard wishes to reveal himself,while writing about solitude.José Miranda Justo’s“Gilles Deleuze: Kierkegaard’s Presence in his Writings”underscores Deleuze’s articulation of four“propositions”in relation to Kierkegaard’s works: repetition as an overture; the divergence between repetition and the laws of nature; repetition in contrast to moral law; and, “memory criticism” (86). Timmann Mjaaland (“Jacques Derrida: Faithful Heretics”) indicates that Derrida was influenced by the premise of religion in the philosopher’s writings. “Jacques Ellul: Kierkegaard’s Profound and Seldom Acknowledged Influence on Ellul’s Writings,” by Pike Cabral, reveals the belief Kierkegaard and Ellul share: that individualism is the path to faith,in opposition to Christendom,which prevents its achievement. Irina (“Pierre Hadot: Philosophy as a Way of Life: Hadot and Kierkegaard’s Socrates”) accentuates the connection between both authors in relation to ancient Greek philosophers . The modern individual can lean on their writings to resolve his struggles. Hanson (“Emmanuel Levinas: An Ambivalent but Decisive Reception”) stresses that Levinas was somewhat reluctant to praise Kierkegaard. Levinas was particularly in disagreement with him...
Search from 250 M+ research papersSearch from 250 M+ research papers
Mar 13, 2017
Paul J Davis 
Open Access