You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Before Babel: A History of Basque Literatures is the first book written originally in English and directed towards a global audience. It is also a new departure from traditional literary histories, as it is not a philological tedious classification of centuries, authors, genres, and books published in Basque. This book addresses the historical conflict and violence that define Basque history and culture, and so it defines Basque literary history as that of at least two literatures: one expressed by Basque subaltern (oppressed) classes in their language, euskara, which mainly constitutes an oral tradition, and the other written by Basque elites in Spanish, Latin, French, etc. The book emphasi...
None
These essays, three of them previously unpublished, explore the competing claims of innovation and tradition among the lower orders in sixteenth-century France. The result is a wide-ranging view of the lives and values of men and women (artisans, tradesmen, the poor) who, because they left little or nothing in writing, have hitherto had little attention from scholars. The first three essays consider the social, vocational, and sexual context of the Protestant Reformation, its consequences for urban women, and the new attitudes toward poverty shared by Catholic humanists and Protestants alike in sixteenth-century Lyon. The next three essays describe the links between festive play and youth groups, domestic dissent, and political criticism in town and country, the festive reversal of sex roles and political order, and the ritualistic and dramatic structure of religious riots. The final two essays discuss the impact of printing on the quasi-literate, and the collecting of common proverbs and medical folklore by learned students of the "people" during the Ancien Régime. The book includes eight pages of illustrations.