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Collecting China
During a relatively short period, from around 1765 to 1780, the Dutch lawyer Jean Theodore Royer (1737-1807) was intensely engaged in the study of Chinese culture. Befriended VOC officials and their Chinese relations in Canton collected Chinese objects for him and helped him with his greatest ambition: the composition of a Chinese dictionary. The objects were given a home in his museum on the Herengracht in The Hague. Better than travel journals, they gave a picture of life in China in Royer’s time. Because the selection was largely made by modest Chinese traders, the collection does not so much give a picture of the material culture of the Chinese elite, but rather that of the ambitious, upwardly-mobile world of small traders and craftsmen. These are mostly ephemeral objects that have rarely been preserved, but they came to The Hague, thanks to Royer and his Chinese contacts. A bequest from his widow then ensured that the collection ended up in two Dutch museums: Museum Volkenkunde in Leiden and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, where the objects are still present today.
Interviews to Literature
Royer's role here is similar to a translator's, where confidences and revelations from the artists he has talked to are translated into these texts he calls 'interviews to literature'. He polishes, he evaluates, he chooses, he animates -- in short, doing what a translator does to make the translated text into a reality in its own right, separate from yet intimately linked to the original. The texts here allow us to see the artists not only in their guarded moments -- when they make oft-uttered statements they hope the world will read and appreciate -- but especially in their unguarded, relaxed moments when we get a glimpse of the private person, the inner being it is a privilege to discover. Jean Royer has the gift of brilliantly showing us these moments and shaping them into unforgettable texts that remain in the mind as only literature can do. -- Daniel Sloate."
Hearings
None
Writing in the Feminine
Gould (women's studies and French, Bowling Green State U.) analyzes four feminist rebels, all major Quebec women writers. These women--Nicole Brossard, Madeline Gagnon, Louky Bersianik, and France Theoret--are attempting to explode male-dominated language and to construct a new language and literature of women. Gould studies their work and also provides historical, political, and theoretical background. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Rebuilding Europe's Bombed Cities
An exploration of Europe's urban reconstruction after World War II, this volume contains 12 essays, based on new research which examine the significant architectural continuities in pre-war and post-war building. They highlight the unusual character of rebuilding in several case studies.
Tensions of Empire
"Carrying the inquiry into zones previous itineraries have typically avoided--the creation of races, sexual relations, invention of tradition, and regional rulers' strategies for dealing with the conquerors--the book brings out features of European expansion and contraction we have not seen well before."--Charles Tilly, The New School for Social Research "What is important about this book is its commitment to shaping theory through the careful interpretation of grounded, empirically-based historical and ethnographic studies. . . . By far the best collection I have seen on the subject."--Sherry B. Ortner, Columbia University
Crime, Justice and Public Order in Old Regime France
This title, first published in 1984, is a case study of crime and criminal justice in rural, southwestern France in the last century of the Old Regime. Based on extensive research in criminal court records, often the only documentary evidence of the poor and illiterate, the study is a valuable addition both to our knowledge of Old Regime society and to our understanding of its judicial institutions. Rural, Old Regime France seethed with violence. Assault, homicide, and a violence of speech occurred frequently at all levels of society. The author’s finding that royal fiscal and judicial officials were recurring targets of this violence additionally contributes to our understanding of the revolutionary events ending the Old Regime. This system, providing in principle for judicial torture and corporal and capital punishments for relatively minor crimes, has long epitomized much that was wrong with pre-revolutionary France. But the law in principle is not the law in practice, and the author finds that both local and appeals courts seldom decreed such measures. This book will be of interest to students of history and criminology.
