Vie De Research Articles

Defending Divinity: A Teresian Carmelite Responds to Ernest Renan’s Vie de Jésus

This article takes as its object the literary response of the cloistered Carmelite nun Marie-Aimée de Jésus (née Dorothea Quoniam, 1839-1874) to Ernest Renan’s 1863 Vie de Jésus . The reaction of Marie-Aimée de Jésus to Renan’s portrayal of Jesus as admirable man—but not divine, and not the Son of God—came in two forms, and bore the particular stamp of the founder of the Reformed Carmelite Order, Teresa of Avila. In her lengthy prose response to Renan, Jésus-Christ est le Fils de Dieu , and also in a manuscript poem, presented for the first time in this study, Marie-Aimée imitated Teresa of Avila in both form and content, drawing upon the parallel literary forms Teresa herself used and employing Teresian literary motifs. Following the presentation and analysis of Marie-Aimée’s texts, the broader implications of her literary reaction to Renan are considered, and include the need for re-reading of the poetry of Teresa of Avila, and the status of “unpublished” writings by cloistered nuns. It is hoped that this study will help to further bring the literary production of French cloistered nuns to light, just as scholarship on the production of Spanish cloistered nuns has done so effectively in recent years.

Les registres des consistoires des Églises réformées de France - XVIe–XVIIe siècles: un inventaire par Raymond A. Mentzer

chapter is devoted to a particular historic or cultural event, famous person, or aspect of society. After providing detailed information about these facts and events, Ledda reveals how they appeared in Romantic literature. Recounting the life and career of the infamous chief of police, Eugène-François Vidocq, for example, Ledda shows how he was Balzac’s inspiration for Vautrin in La comédie humaine and for Hugo’s characters Valjean and Javert in Les misérables. Places, as well as trends like the Tuileries gardens and “la vie de bohème,” are also central in works by Musset, Balzac, and Dumas. This account of a broad range of phenomena of the period makes for fascinating reading— from flaneurs strolling in Parisian parks, dandyism, the boulevards, the cholera epidemic, miserable living conditions in poor districts, the construction of barricades, and famous crimes and criminals. Ledda’s study is realistic while at the same time nostalgic—aptly recreating a lost era in the history of the capital. The book unfortunately lacks a map of Paris as well as a bibliography and an index. Ledda’s work goes beyond a historic description of Paris to provide a view of Paris, found in literature and in reality, true to its subtitle, Tableaux d’une ville disparue. Texas Christian University (TX) Sharon L. Fairchild Mentzer, Raymond A. Les registres des consistoires des Églises réformées de France – XVIe –XVIIe siècles: un inventaire. Genève: Droz, 2014. ISBN 978-2-600-01786-2. Pp. 170. 60 CHF. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, French Reform consistories, local church councils uniting pastors, church elders and deacons, met regularly to oversee the ecclesiastical,liturgical,and financial workings of each church.As Mentzer explains, the registers of French Reform church consistories offer a range of valuable documents to the historian, including information on the exercise of worship, the dates and manière of prayers and preaching, the finances of the church, the administration of aid to the poor and needy, and the teaching of the catechism. Until recently, however, many of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French Reform consistories had been inaccessible, making scholarship on the subject unsystematic and incomplete. Unlike Switzerland, where the registers of Jean Calvin were conserved in their entirety, in France, officers of the Court of Louis XIV destroyed many consistory registers following the 1685 Révocation de l’Édit de Nantes. Additionally, the French Reform registers that did escape destruction were often hidden in unknown locations, and in inadequate storage conditions. Mentzer’s inventory of these important historical documents provides a significant contribution to more thorough and comprehensive study and analysis. The inventory required more than ten years of research, during which Mentzer visited all of the libraries and archives in France that could house a register of a consistory. He identified 309 registers in Paris and in the French provinces. 290 FRENCH REVIEW 89.1 Reviews 291 These registers record data from 156 different French Reform churches and are currently housed in Paris in the National Archives, the Library of French Protestantism, and the National Library, as well as in churches, regional archives, and city halls throughout France.A number of registers remain in private hands. Mentzer’s book is divided into two main sections—three “introductory” chapters (“L’organisation et le fonctionnement du consistoire réformé aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles,” “Archives et registres du consistoire,”and“Historiographie et voies de recherche”), followed by an inventory of manuscripts of consistory registers, which includes the location and contents of registers throughout France.As Mentzer notes, the organization and content of Reform consistory registers is inconsistent. His summary of differences in the content of specific registers will help guide historians to the most appropriate sources for their particular areas of interest. Mentzer’s chapters on the archives and registers, as well as a historiography of scholarship on consistories, include discerning suggestions for future research. In addition to providing valuable information on the functioning of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French Reform churches, many consistory registers include records that offer insights into the lives of women, the illiterate, and others less frequently represented in historical documents. Whereas most of the manuscripts...

Paris romantique: tableaux d’une ville disparue par Sylvain Ledda

Reviews 289 Vertières relève des stratégies d’oubli ou de la censure des élites. Pour faire tomber ce silence, Le Glaunec part de la difficulté de narrer cette bataille, quasi inexistante dans les dictionnaires des noms propres. L’écriture de cette histoire devient alors prétentieuse, car“elle confronte l’historien à ses silences, à ses apories et aux problèmes de sa méthodologie“ (31). L’auteur réévalue à sa juste valeur le récit d’origine de l’historien haïtien Thomas Madiou et l’honore du même coup pour avoir trop longtemps été la seule source sur Vertières et Capois-la-mort, le protagoniste par excellence de cette bataille.Vertières comme acte final d’une révolution atlantique est amplement illustrée, aussi bien que la tentative de sa reconstitution en ce qui concerne son lieu d’origine, ses protagonistes principaux, ses mythes et l’héroïsme qu’elle génère. L’armée indigène a le mérite d’offrir aux lecteurs l’illustration de nombreux cas de stratégies de silence sur Vertières à la lumière de l’historiographie française et de l’histoire nationale haïtienne. C’est un ouvrage à lire si on veut comprendre comment les silences opèrent et entrent dans les processus de production historique. South Plainfield High School (NJ) Claudy Delné Ledda, Sylvain. Paris romantique: tableaux d’une ville disparue. Paris: CNRS, 2013. ISBN 978-2-271-07928-2. Pp. 256. 22 a. This engaging book will be of interest to scholars of nineteenth-century French literature as well as cultural historians with a particular interest in urban culture of the early nineteenth century.While it is a social history of Parisian life and culture during this period, its insights into the artistic and intellectual world give it broad interest and assumes a certain familiarity with nineteenth-century Romanticism in literature. Ledda’s purpose is not to paint a strictly historical description. Instead, he offers a view of the Paris known to Romantic writers Hugo, Balzac, Musset, Vigny, Nerval, Dumas, and others. Because this period is one of changing moral and cultural values, the author maintains that urban phenomena take on a new importance, making the “tableaux” of Paris found in the writings of these authors especially valuable. The author’s premise is to rediscover this disappeared Paris in the light of Romanticism and to show the interplay between urban reality and artistic representation. Ledda anchors his narrative in the first third of the nineteenth century, devoting three chapters to the Romantic movement in Paris. This includes a lively account of the battle between Romanticism and Classicism at the uproarious premiere of Hugo’s Hernani. Two other chapters outline the origins of Romanticism as a literary theory, and Paris’s position as the artistic capital of Europe. These chapters are relatively brief; our interest is captured not so much by the literary history, but by the original and rare glimpses into various events told through anecdotes and little-known details. The principal originality of this book, however, is its depictions of how Parisian places, trends, and phenomena provided multiple sources of inspiration to Romantic authors. Each chapter is devoted to a particular historic or cultural event, famous person, or aspect of society. After providing detailed information about these facts and events, Ledda reveals how they appeared in Romantic literature. Recounting the life and career of the infamous chief of police, Eugène-François Vidocq, for example, Ledda shows how he was Balzac’s inspiration for Vautrin in La comédie humaine and for Hugo’s characters Valjean and Javert in Les misérables. Places, as well as trends like the Tuileries gardens and “la vie de bohème,” are also central in works by Musset, Balzac, and Dumas. This account of a broad range of phenomena of the period makes for fascinating reading— from flaneurs strolling in Parisian parks, dandyism, the boulevards, the cholera epidemic, miserable living conditions in poor districts, the construction of barricades, and famous crimes and criminals. Ledda’s study is realistic while at the same time nostalgic—aptly recreating a lost era in the history of...

Agency in translating "Une Vie de Boy" into English: Exploring translator identity and translation strategies

Recent research in translation studies has underscored the role of translators as agents. This implies that a translator is not just a neutral conduit of a message from one language to another, but someone who is very much involved in the power interplay that determines the decision making leading to the translation product. It is within this context that this paper seeks to analyse the concept of ‘agency’ in translation, with specific focus on African literature in European languages. It is worth mentioning that while this type of literature has been the subject of much research, less attention has been given to it in terms of translation. Focusing on a translation by the late John Reed of Ferdinand Oyono’s Une Vie de Boy , this paper seeks to show how an understanding of the identity of the translator can lead to an appreciation of his/her translation strategies. It should be noted that translating African culture from one European language to another can be quite a challenging task – especially if the culture is foreign to the translator – due to the fact that cultural value systems are difficult to grasp as they are intricately woven into the texture of the native languages (Bandia 2008). Such a task is even more intriguing since the original text is in itself a form of translation, initially conceived in the African language of the author before being rendered into a European language. In this case, the agency role of the translator would therefore be more significant given that s/he is dealing with a peculiar source text that is different from most source texts which are translated between relatively close or non-distant cultures. Through an ethnographic study involving an exploration of the context of the translation production, as well as an interview with Reed, this paper posits that the translator’s socio-cultural background tends to influence the nature and extent of his/her intervention in the translation process. This will contribute in shifting the focus of translation assessment from solely the end product to an inclusion of the translator’s identity.

Eusebe de Cesaree: Vie de Constantin. Text by F. WINKELMANN. Introduction and notes by LUCE PIETRI. Translated by MARIE-JOSEPH RONDEAU.

Eusebe de Cesaree: Vie de Constantin. Text by F. WINKELMANN. Introduction and notes by LUCE PIETRI. Translated by MARIE-JOSEPH RONDEAU.

“But an Echo”?: Claude Martin, Marie de l’Incarnation, and Female Religious Identity in Seventeenth-Century New France

Claude Martin’s Vie de la Vénérable Mère Marie de l’Incarnation claims to reproduce so faithfully Marie de l’Incarnation’s spiritual autobiography that Claude’s voice in the text is “but an echo” of his mother’s own. A close reading, however, suggests that Claude so dominates the account of his mother’s life that the Vie emerges as an instance of hagiography and apology that renders Marie the model of the Counter-Reformation saint, the paradigm of post-Tridentine Catholic devotion, and the obedient daughter of a patriarchal ecclesiastical hierarchy in an effort to draw the boundaries of female religious identity in early-modern New France.

Stendhal, Illogicality, and Imagination: The Dirt of Politics and the Politics of Dirt in the Vie de Henry Brulard, Lucien Leuwen, and La Chartreuse de Parme

This article looks at the ways in which Stendhal foregrounds representations of dirt in a number of his autobiographical and fictional texts, most notably the Vie de Henry Brulard, Lucien Leuwen, and La Chartreuse de Parme. It shows how Stendhal assigns apparently contradictory political meanings to these representations. In particular, the article aims to recontextualize Henry Brulard’s declaration: ‘J’ai horreur de ce qui est sale, or le peuple est toujours sale à mes yeux’. It is argued that, in his fiction, Stendhal takes care to distinguish between the physical dirt imputed to ‘le peuple’ imagined as ‘la canaille’ and the moral dirt that he detects in all classes and shades of political opinion in Restoration and Orleanist France. It is further argued that Stendhal uses this distinction to draw attention to a series of disjunctions between reality and illusion that together came to shape the post-Revolutionary political order as far as he was concerned. The article begins and ends by setting its analysis of the dirt of politics and the politics of dirt within the broader context provided by longstanding critical debates revolving around the questions of Stendhal’s alleged (political) inconsequentiality, that it is to say the illogicality of his reasoning, and the dominant role played by his imagination.

Speculation and Gender Exploitation in Balzac’s Scènes de la Vie de Province

Speculation and Gender Exploitation in Balzac’s Scènes de la Vie de Province Robert Decker The political turmoil that reigned in France from the revolution of 1789 until the end of Balzac’s life played a central role in his œuvre. The era was so marked with rebellion and agitation that one can easily forget that another revolution figures into Balzac’s plotlines. The Industrial Revolution, and specifically the transfer of economic power from the aristocracy to the bourgeoisie, imposed a new set of economic imperatives that served to destabilize sentimental and family life. Balzac reinforces the connection between revolution and the dissolution of the family by adapting a particular character type that appears frequently in the provincial novels: a young girl exploited either by her family or by bourgeois society.1 By inserting this new character type into more traditional narratives of the provinces, he illustrates the human cost of the modernization and capitalism that had already begun to renew France. At the same time he demonstrates how these changes subordinate the family, and especially female children, to economic concerns. An analysis of what the activity of speculation means in the work of Balzac will establish how and in what measure it pervades the plots of the novels in Scènes de la vie de Province. Although numerous critics have recently shown how the economic changes in France during the period play a pivotal role in the short story L’Illustre Gaudissart (1833), none have made the connection between Balzac’s depiction of capitalism and its indelible relationship to the exploitation of young women.2 These speculative processes inspire Balzac’s characters to forsake their family and sentimental life in order to advance materially. Among the many examples of the commodification of human life, those of Pierrette (1840), the titular hero of her novel, and Flore Brazier, whose pejorative nickname gives La Rabouilleuse (1841–3) its name, are particularly instructive. Balzac weaves the themes of love and money so tightly that at times his characters, especially those [End Page 65] with little economic autonomy such as women and children, become both objects of desire and commodities subject to the economic turbulence of the era.3 These same themes drive the plot of Ursule Mirouët (1841), a novel that refracts the image of the exploited girl and offers an alternate vision of the future of France: a future where the youth, protected by societal and affective bonds from the economic prerogatives that governed bourgeois society, can succeed and advance in the world.4 As André Wurmser points out, Balzac’s portrayal of marriage differs significantly from earlier writers, such as Molière, for whom a sensible marriage is based on love: in Balzac’s world, conjugal relations exist solely to develop, consolidate, and transmit wealth.5 This perspective will not only elucidate the dramatic construction of these individual works, but will also indicate a narratological procedure that pervades his œuvre. Throughout the Scènes de la vie de Province, Balzac insists on the importance of speculation in post-revolutionary French society. Identified by Pierre Barbéris as that which marks the originality of modern capitalism, speculation becomes far more than a simple economic activity, and will affect every level of society in Balzac’s world.6 His novels abound with examples of speculation on traditional commodities and on land: characters such as du Bousquier (La Vieille Fille, 1836) Félix Grandet, and Descoings (La Rabouilleuse) amass wealth precisely by these means. In speaking of Felix Grandet, Maurice Bardèche explains—in terms that could apply to any of these characters—that one might take him “pour un paysan, pour un avare terrien, en réalité, il a le génie de la spéculation. Il a compris qu’en temps de révolution il faut acheter et il faut stocker.”7 Even in its infancy, speculation influenced new markets as well, particularly the products and transactions made possible by the progression of nascent capitalism. For example, at the end of La Rabouilleuse, Philippe Bridau loses the fortune he had just obtained from his uncle when he succumbs to the machinations of du Tillet and Nucingen. The two bankers...

The Birth of an Opera: Fifteen Masterpieces from Poppea to Wozzeck by Michael Rose (review)

Reviewed by: The Birth of an Opera: Fifteen Masterpieces from Poppea to Wozzeck by Michael Rose George Kennaway The Birth of an Opera: Fifteen Masterpieces from Poppea to Wozzeck. By Michael Rose. London: W. W. Norton, 2013. [xviii, 441 p. ISBN 9780393060430. $35.] Illustrations, bibliography, index. In spite of—perhaps because of—the regular heart-searching that accompanies much discussion of opera in financially straitened times, books about it continue to appear. The interested operagoer can read opera guides of many different types, from real nuts-and-bolts guides to subtly subversive histories that have been the subject of some controversy. An especially useful example of the former is Denise Gallo’s Opera: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2006); in the latter category, Carolyn Abbate and Roger Parker’s recent A History of Opera (New York: W. W. Norton, 2012) should stimulate all opera fans, whatever their prior knowledge. Roughly in between comes Michael Rose’s informative and highly readable book. His stated aim is not to present summaries of plots, musical analyses, reception histories, or performance studies (although, in fact, he does do this, to varying degrees). It is, quite simply, to present an account of the genesis of each opera from the first creative stimulus to the premiere. To this end, he primarily uses surviving correspondence between composers, librettists, patrons, friends, and all the operatic hangers-on who combine to produce this most paradoxical of art forms. Surely no other has its feet so deeply in the mire of contracts, agents, singers, and managers, and its head higher in the stars of neoplatonism, moral purposes, the perfect union of words and music, and the total work of art? Asked to list fifteen operatic masterpieces, I think most operagoers would include most of the operas discussed here, such as Le nozze di Figaro, Tristan und Isolde, Wozzeck, or Pelléas et Mélisande. Individual personal taste might exclude some others. I must admit to finding little masterly in Il barbiere di Siviglia; while I watch Turandot with horrified fascination I would not include it here, and I question the omission of Janáček and Kát’a Kabanová. But such quibbles are inevitable in a work of this type, and are in any case really beside the point—the material Rose presents so clearly is always interesting in itself, masterpiece or no. His choices have been made with the amount of available evidence in mind. Thus he includes both Figaro and Idomeneo, and Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea rather than Orfeo. In the latter case, simply by virtue of its relatively late date in Monteverdi’s output, there is more contextual material to draw upon, although it is still necessarily dependent on theoretical observations from Galilei, a brisk summary of the Artusi controversy, and various relevant contextual sources, rather the sort of detailed discussion that characterizes Mozart’s correspondence with his father or Da Ponte. Handel is absent, because he must have been too busy to write many letters; frustratingly, although Weber was a prolific letter-writer, he wrote little about Der Freischütz; and the substantial Strauss-Rolland correspondence on the French version of Salomé is too technical for a book of this type. While both the last-named works are important for many reasons, they do not quite fit the “masterpiece” category in any case. But one consequence of Rose’s approach is that he is able to include Berlioz’s Les Troyens, described by the composer as “building itself up like a damp stalactite in a damp cave” (p. 160). At one time this opera would not have even been slightly familiar, never mind given central canonic status. It is a happy example of the canon having shifted to include a work which happens also to have been composed by one of the most literary composers of the nineteenth century. Rose does not fall into the trap of using entertaining sources uncritically. This particularly applies to Stendhal’s Vie de Rossini, a fascinating book for many reasons but not reliable as a biography. He shows this quite directly when quoting Stendhal to the effect that it was the censor who suggested that Rossini should set...

George Moore in the Footsteps of Ernest Renan in the Holy Land

In 1913, the Irish writer George Moore set sail across the Mediterranean for what was known in those days as The Holy Land. The result of this “fact-finding” mission was the publication in 1916 of the sensational The Brook Kerith — the life of Jesus, seen through the eyes of Joseph of Arimathea. Like his illustrious predecessor Ernest Renan, Moore’s fascination with spirituality owed much to a childhood steeped in the mystical Celtic tradition, which had survived over the ages on the remote North-West Atlantic seaboard. In this article, I will discuss what is hitherto uncharted territory, i.e. the influence of Renan’s 1861 mission in Palestine and the subsequent publications of La Vie de Jésus (1863) on Moore’s itinerary and literary production. To this end, a comparative textual analysis of La Vie de Jésus and The Brook Kerith proves to be more rewarding.

Dictionnaire du Romantisme éd. par Alain Vaillant

Reviews 241 has included an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources in addition to a select chronology. I highly recommend this book for inclusion in any college or university library collection where there is a French and/or Comparative Literature program at the undergraduate level or above. Sweet Briar College (VA) Angelo Metzidakis Vaillant, Alain, éd. Dictionnaire du Romantisme. Paris: CNRS, 2012. ISBN 978-2271 -06813-2. Pp. cviv + 848. 39 a. This encyclopedic tome of 649 articles offers a fascinating analysis of Romanticism and an overview of its global influence on aesthetics and intellectual and cultural history.A biographical dictionary of authors and works, it also traces the evolution of key Romantic themes throughout literature, social and political history, philosophy, music, and the fine arts over ten geographical areas, including Northern and Western Europe, Russia and the Slavic nations, North America, Latin America, the East, and former colonial empires. Alain Vaillant’s invaluable essay, serving as an introduction, focuses on the European foundations of the movement. After outlining its genesis in Germany, he details how France in the 1830s becomes “le vrai centre romantique” (xxii), propelling Romanticism beyond an aesthetic and intellectual phenomenon, and creating a worldwide culture involving all aspects of life, such as fashion, leisure, public spectacles (in theaters and on the street), media, social mores, and personal expression. Vaillant provides a masterful examination of Romanticism, which he characterizes broadly as any effort to fuse the material and the ideal, or the concrete and the abstract. He locates its beginning in questions dating back to the Renaissance, and he finds its influence even in the search for the absolute that is symptomatic of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes, as well as in the globalized world culture of the twenty-first century. In exploring connections between Romanticism, nationbuilding , and democracy during the 1800s,Vaillant outlines the seismic shift that takes place when popular classes, such as“le peuple révolutionné né en 1789 et 1793”(xxvii) in France, generate culture instead of members of the upper echelons of society and government.Vaillant goes on to discuss the importance of the economic prosperity of the bourgeoisie and the middle class in the evolution of Romanticism, as well as the influence of the movement in religion (le Dieu romantique), history (the cult of les grands hommes), love (the union of the intellectual and the spiritual with the corporal), and art (the projection of an immaterial subject into a physical art object). In this vein, he identifies as“la véritable invention esthétique du romantisme”the process of “subjectivation, [...] la présence du sujet auctorial dans l’objet d’art créé”(liii).Vaillant’s extensive study serves as an advance organizer for readers, first as they make their way through his account of the influence of Romanticism on the development of the press and other media, the notion of privacy, the role of children as representatives of morality, the modernism of the later part of nineteenth century, and subsequently as they peruse the substantial entries that make up the Dictionnaire. A useful index of themes guides readers to articles according to geographical areas, facilitating the investigation of Romanticism in a specific country or region. The combination of general information and fresh insights makes this volume an essential resource for teachers and scholars of the nineteenth century. Brandeis University (MA) Hollie Markland Harder Van Deth, Jean-Pierre. Ernest Renan: simple chercheur de vérité. Paris: Fayard, 2012. ISBN 978-2-213-63738-9. Pp. 604. 32 a. Sans être complètement oublié, Renan (1823–1892) fait partie des écrivains dont la célébrité n’a pas longtemps dépassé son siècle. Les controverses autrefois acerbes entre cléricaux et laïques n’ayant plus le même niveau d’acuité, les écrits souvent austères de ce philologue et historien (qui avait failli devenir prêtre) ne sentent plus le soufre, ne suscitent plus la colère des bien-pensants ni l’enthousiasme des libres penseurs. À la relecture du texte, l’immense polémique créée par sa Vie de Jésus (1863), par exemple, semble difficile à comprendre de nos jours. Quant à “Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?”(1882...

Farida Benlyazid and Juanita Narboni: Two Women from Tangier

This article locates pioneer woman director Farid Benlyazid’s production against the political backdrop of Morocco and its implications for filmmaking from the 1980s to the present. Benlyazid’s multicultural, multilingual upbringing has imbued every single one of her films, from her first short, Identites de femme / Women’s Identities (1979), to Juanita bint Tanga / La Vida perra de Juanita Narboni / La Chienne de vie de Juanita Narboni / The Wretched Life of Juanita Narboni (2005), as has her humanist’s feminism. It then argues that The Wretched Life of Juanita Narboni is an exceptional film made in Morocco on several levels: its female protagonist, Juanita Narboni, speaks Spanish only, and seems frozen in time, while Tangier evolves and changes around her. The film is as much an ode to multicultural Tangier as it is an adaptation of Angel Vasquez’s novel of the same title. Finally, the film was a translocal Spanish and Moroccan co-production.

Constructions en changement: hommage à Paul Hirschbühler ed. by Monique Dufresne

Dufresne, Monique, éd. Constructions en changement: hommage à Paul Hirschbühler. Québec: PU de Laval, 2012. ISBN 978-2-7637-8936-1. Pp. 209. $30 Can. This volume serves a dual purpose: to present four papers on French historical grammar from the ongoing corpus and research project Modéliser le changement: les voies du français (Martineau and others), and to honor Hirschbühler—himself a participant in the project—on his retirement. Dufresne opens the volume with a heartfelt dedication and an introduction. The first paper, by Alexandra Simonenko and Hirschbühler, exemplifies Hirschbühler’s characteristically detailed consideration of new data and careful attention to the previous literature. The authors analyze fifteen thousand examples of proclisis and enclisis of object pronouns in verb-initial clauses, examining four clause types over five centuries. They meticulously compare two previous analyses against the new data, concluding convincingly that Labelle and Hirschbühler’s 2005 account of functional-projection loss over time for some subtypes is superior to Rouveret’s 2004 analysis, in which the number of projections generally increases. The second paper (Dufresne and Fernande Dupuis) lays to rest the traditional assumption that the choice of auxiliary with verbs of motion and change-of-state in Old French was random. Rather, activities viewed as telic require BE in Old French, while atelic activities require HAVE. In this first large-scale investigation of unaccusativity in the history of French, over two thousand clauses (twelfth through sixteenth century) with verbs identified as syntactically unaccusative are examined. Although the preliminary character of some of the data on postverbal subjects (for example, incomplete labeling or discussion of some of the graphs) makes parts of the theoretical analysis difficult to evaluate, many fascinating questions for continuing research are raised. In the third of these admirably data-intensive studies, Christiane Marchello-Nizia and Magali Rouquier provide an extensive description of the order and expression of subjects and objects in two complete very early texts, the Passion de Clermont and the Vie de Saint Alexis. Adding these texts to two previously examined later texts, the authors obtain a more precise picture of the evolution of medieval French syntax. Object-verb order loses ground between the two early texts; there is a continual, intriguing preference for expressing either the subject or the object, but not both. (A question: Are verb-object versus object-verb orders for nonfinite verbs treated separately or not?) The final paper presents a follow-up by Lene Schøsler on her previous work with semantically bleached verbs such as faire or prendre and their nominal objects. She establishes tests for distinguishing such constructions, containing a fixed number and type of complements and modification relationships, from syntactically free verb phrases, maintaining that they represent a sub-type of grammaticalization . Overall, for those interested in French and Romance syntax and the lexicon, this volume will provoke new insights into the relevance of diachronic corpus studies to issues of more general concern. Indiana University, Bloomington Barbara Vance 228 FRENCH REVIEW 87.3 ...

Chagas disease in Australia and New Zealand: risks and needs for public health interventions

International migration has changed the global distribution of Chagas disease, with the emerging importance of non-endemic regions. We aimed at better documenting the Australia and New Zealand risk of Chagas disease and needs for interventions. We reviewed Chagas disease-related evidences, policies and practices in Australia and New Zealand and calculated the estimated prevalence. Australia hosts a rapidly growing population at risk and had 1928 infected residents in 2011; New Zealand had 98 in 2006. These figures underestimate the real situation, as they do not consider non-permanent residents. The only existing policy in both countries is the identification of blood donors with a history of or a risk of infection via questionnaire. There is no programme of detection and care of patients. The lifetime economic burden of disease for society is potentially very high. Chagas disease is an emerging health risk with potential high human and economic costs in Australia and New Zealand in the absence of public health attention. Implementing strategies to screen high-risk groups and prevent transmission should be considered. Moreover, migration between the Western Pacific and Chagas endemic regions and the presence of vectors means this risk applies in the whole region.

Il genio tiranno: Ragione e dominio nell'ideologia dell'Ottocento: Wagner, Nietzsche, Renan

Il genio tiranno: Ragione e dominio nell'ideologia dell'Ottocento: Wagner, Nietzsche, Renan

Une “Vie de saint Jean-Baptiste” en vers du xve siècle. Introduction et édition

The Vie de saint Jean-Baptiste published here was probably composed in the second half of the 15th century; set up in quatrains of octosyllabes, its content includes the main episodes of the Saint’s life: birth, life in the desert, arrest and martyrdom; curiously, the baptism of Jesus is lacking. In spite of its very mediocre literary quality, this poem became a success of library: from Lyon to Rouen to Paris (by Trepperel), it had at least eleven editions, among them some incunabula.

Religion and international development in the Canadian academic context

Although faith, religion and spirituality are central to the lives of millions in the global south, few scholars in the north explicitly address religion's role in development. This study explores this disjuncture in Canadian academia by analysing references to religion and related terms across 32 volumes of the Canadian Journal of Development Studies and in international development studies (IDS) course descriptions at Canadian universities. Fewer than 1 per cent of the articles and IDS courses explicitly address religion and development. An examination of other key publications in the field suggests that growing interest in religion and development in the past decade has not been reflected in the Canadian academy. Résumé Bien que la foi, la religion et la spiritualité soient centrales à la vie de millions de personnes du Sud, peu de chercheurs du Nord abordent son rôle dans le développement. L'analyse des références à la religion dans 32 volumes de la Revue canadienne d’études du développement et dans les descriptions de cours universitaires canadiens portant sur le développement international montre que cette disjonction est présente dans la recherche canadienne. En effet, moins d'un pour cent des articles et des cours traitent explicitement la relation entre la religion et le développement. L'intérêt croissant que d'autres publications clés dans le domaine des études du développement ont porté au rapport entre religion et développement durant la dernière décennie ne trouve donc pas son équivalent dans la recherche canadienne.

Anger, Gratitude, and the Enlightenment Writer by Patrick Coleman (review)

Reviewed by: Anger, Gratitude, and the Enlightenment Writer by Patrick Coleman Janie Vanpée Patrick Coleman. Anger, Gratitude, and the Enlightenment Writer. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp. x + 249. It is the rare book that brings fresh perspectives on how anger and gratitude shaped the conception of self and sociability in the French eighteenth century and also resonates with our contemporary social and political practices. Patrick Coleman’s book focuses on writers and thinkers of the French Enlightenment, but his erudite readings of their innovative deployment of anger and gratitude in social interactions comment indirectly on how contemporary attitudes toward gratitude, recast today inversely as entitlement, and anger, deployed as political opposition, still determine the way we conceive of ourselves in the political sphere, as the recent 2012 presidential election brought to the fore. Anger and gratitude were not newly discovered emotions in eighteenth-century France. One of the strengths of the book is to ground its inquiry in references to and knowledge of both the classical and the Christian heritage the better to show how Enlightenment thinkers diverged from the established tradition. Coleman identifies two significant developments that changed attitudes toward these two antithetical sentiments. On the one hand, the idea of moral equality, spread through the writings of the philosophes and in the salons, freed anger to be voiced with dignity against both personal injuries and social injustices and allowed gratitude to be expressed beyond the weakening bonds of the patronage system. On the other hand, the rise of the social ideal of governance of human behavior through impersonal laws erased the useful role that anger and [End Page 169] gratitude had played in upholding social cohesion. The book examines the tension between these two changes and their rhetorical expression in the works of Challe, Marivaux, Rousseau, and Diderot. Each of these writers advances the transformative effect of one or both of the two emotions. Bridging the classical era and the beginning of the Enlightenment, Challe’s treatise, Difficultés sur la religion, focuses on the author’s anger in his existential relation to God. In La Vie de Marianne, Marivaux explores how Marianne’s gratitude toward her benefactors inspires the recognition of her independence and moral worth as a human being. Rousseau plays the key role, invoking both sentiments to powerful effect. Anger and gratitude figure prominently in both his personal social encounters and in his works, the fiction as well the discursive texts. From the moment of his inspiration on the way to visit Diderot incarcerated at Vincennes, anger serves the polemics of his attack on injustice and inequality. Rousseau’s anger will have an illocutionary force on his readers, inspiring their gratitude to him and redefining their sense of self in relation to Rousseau the man. His anger and his discomfort at the way gratitude in a relation of patronage weakens personal liberty and identity will lead him to propose the neutral rule of law to govern all ranks in society equally. His works will thus exceed their descriptive value to have a far lasting effect in reshaping personal relations, first between author and reader, and second, extended to other social and political relations. Anger, resentment, and the vicissitudes of gratitude resurge in the polemics between Lui and Moi in Diderot’s Le Neveu de Rameau, as each provokes the anger of the other and Lui suggests that Moi should gratefully acknowledge his debt to Lui as an inspiration for Moi’s own genius. By the close of the century, these two sentiments, described and dramatized in the texts of major authors, succeeded in redefining the individual in his relation to the social and political sphere. One can question whether Voltaire or other Enligthtenment writers should have been included. What is clear is that Coleman’s monograph lays the groundwork for exploring bourgeois drama or novels by women, such as Graffigny’s Lettres d’une Péruvienne, where the bourgeois or marginalized individual who expresses anger or gratitude merits respect and the recognition of his or her rights as a social being. Janie Vanpée Smith College Copyright © 2013 L'Esprit Créateur

Towards a poetics of reconciliation: Humans and animals in Ananda Devi’s writing

This article analyses the flux of metamorphosis that is richly evoked in the literary works of the Mauritian-born writer Ananda Devi and that testifies both to the radical positions of alterity experienced by her various protagonists and to the political and poetical possibilities involved in reimagining boundaries between humans and animals. Placing Moi, l’interdite and La Vie de Joséphin le fou (A. Devi) in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s theorizations of bare life and Judith Butler’s expositions on precarious life, the article explores the multiple tensions at play in Devi’s depictions of the human-animal. Devi’s writing neither exclusively relegates the human-animal to an abject debasement, nor excessively celebrates the hybrid as a revolutionary figure. At times basely stripped of their humanity, at others tantalizingly transgressive, and often both, Devi’s metamorphic protagonists are intricately and subtly bound up with the political layerings and divisions of postcolonial Mauritian society, all the while hinting towards a poetics of reconciliation that emerges in an acknowledgment of shared vulnerability.

Ferdinand Oyono'sFlüchtige Spur Tundi Onduaand Germany's Cameroon

Almost anyone who reads ferdinand oyono'sune vie de boy(1956) in any language will conclude that the novel focuses on French colonialism. But is it only about colonialism by the French? An analysis of the many German resonances throughout the text—as well as an engagement with the German translation ofUne vie de boy—suggests that it is about much more. Oyono'sUne vie de boyenables the reader to reflect on Europan colonialism more broadly beyond the role of France. The novel offers a lens onto Germany's colonial history because Cameroon was a former colonial “protectorate” of the German empire. This historical context, therefore, placesUne vie de boyin both national and transnational contexts. While my reading addresses possible connections or similarities between French and German colonialism, the publication in German itself adds an important layer to the understanding ofUne vie de boyin Germany. In consideration of the political activism of the novel's German publisher, Johann (Hans) Fladung (1898-1982), the publication of Oyono's novel can be read as a criticism of German historiography in the 1950s, which frequently avoided Germany's colonial history, a history that has been linked with the crimes of the Holocaust (Zimmerer).