Something to Declare

Something to Declare
Author: Julian Barnes
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Total Pages: 340
Release: 2002
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 9780330489164

A collection of essays on France from Julian Barnes. Written over a 20 year period, the topics Barnes covers range from landscape to literature, food to flaubert, film and song to the Tour de France.

The Word From Paris

The Word From Paris
Author: John Sturrock
Publisher: Verso
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1999-12-17
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9781859841631

In this accessible guide to the literature and thought of 20th century France, Sturrock clarifies the various intellectual movements that have marked the recent history of French writing, including Existentialism, Structuralism and the OuLiPo.

The Shaping of Text

The Shaping of Text
Author: John Porter Houston
Publisher: Bucknell University Press
Total Pages: 178
Release: 1993
Genre: French language
ISBN: 9780838752272

"The Shaping of Text pays homage to the work of the late John Porter Houston, who wrote extensively on style, rhetoric, and narrative and poetic techniques in Western European literature. It is appropriate that the essays in this volume focus on the form of the literary work and the ways in which form determines meaning." "William Calin's essay on the saint's life analyzes the use of antithesis as a poetic and structural device that illustrates the saint's fundamental understanding of the relationship between the ephemeral reality of his physical existence and the absolute, timeless reality to which he aspires. Raymond LaCharite's study of Rabelais focuses on the author's self-conscious awareness of this relationship and of Renaissance preoccupation with reading as both an act of creation and interpretation. George Joseph's study of three Renaissance poets focuses on the use of paradox as both a figure of speech and as a genre that serves both as a structure and as a basis for the interaction in the poetry. David Rubin's essay on La Fontaine emphasizes the ways in which the register of style in the Fables is used to set the tone and control the meaning of the language." "In the chapters devoted to nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature one can see the continuing closer relationship between the book as a work of art and the reality in which it interacts. Suzanne Nash analyzes the strategy Mme. de Stael uses in writing De l'Allemagne, a book written less to present an accurate portrayal of Germany than to promote her own republican ideals for France. Ross Chambers's essay probes the question of the theme of melancholy in Romantic writing and its relationship to the social and political structures of the period; Edward Kaplan shows how a growing ethical, social concern can be seen in Baudelaire's revised Les Fleurs du Mal; Rima Reck and Edward Kaplan reflect the growing use of literature as a vehicle for influencing public opinion." "Stirling Haig analyzes Flaubert's careful use of style and his awareness that reality is ultimately shaped by the beholder's perspective. Finnally, Virginia La Charite's chapter on Proust returns to the idea of a structure within a structure, in this case the architecture of the cathedral as a metaphor of synthesis, an aesthetic device that gives an intelligible structure to Proust's enormous but intricately complex, mass of details." "If John Porter Houston focused on form and style, it is because he understood the semiotic nature of all things: that a writer's style is a subtle form of refined communication or, as Houston wrote, "style is an absolute manner of seeing things for Proust, a question of vision, and so constitutes the ultimate reality of literature.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Assault on French Literature, and Other Essays

The Assault on French Literature, and Other Essays
Author: Percy Mansell Jones
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 224
Release: 1963
Genre: French literature
ISBN:

This book offers one professor's critical observations and constructive suggestions on the teaching of foreign literatures, specifically French, which is his métier. The condition of humane studies, and their risk of being degraded to the status of poor relations to the sciences, are a continuing source of disquiet. Thus, the descriptions and disclosures of what went wrong in the past are meant to encourage, demonstrating by contrast the improvements in the organization of studies that have been made. With one exception, the pieces in Part Two, Commentaries & Discussions, are exercises in how to introduce literary topics within the official lecture 'hour' of fifty minutes.

Guilt and Shame

Guilt and Shame
Author: Jenny Chamarette
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 244
Release: 2010
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9783039115631

As theoretical positions and as affective experiences, the twin currents of contrition - guilt and shame - permeate literary discourse and figure prominently in discussions of ethics, history, sexuality and social hierarchy. This collection of essays, on French and francophone prose, poetry, drama, visual art, cinema and thought, assesses guilt and shame in relation to structures of social morality, language and self-expression, the thinking of trauma, and the ethics of forgiveness. The authors approach their subjects via close readings and comparative study, drawing on such thinkers as Adorno, Derrida, Jankélévitch and Irigaray. Through these they consider works ranging from the medieval Roman de la rose through to Gustave Moreau's Symbolist painting, Giacometti's sculpture, the films of Marina de Van and recent sub-Saharan African writing. The collection provides an état-présent of thinking on guilt and shame in French Studies, and is the first to assemble work on this topic ranging from the thirteenth to the twenty-first century. The book contains nine contributions in English and four in French.