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The stranger (survenant) represents an important theme in Quebec literature of the second half of the twentieth century. This book analyses the role of the survenant in five major novels dating from 1945 to 1992 and shows how the theme is constantly reworked and revitalised by the authors selected. The arrival of a survenant in a community brings to the surface the conflicts and tensions which had been latent. The consequences can be tragic for all concerned. At the least the community is changed forever. This is the first study of the way in which different Quebecois authors treat the survenant and should be of interest to all students of Quebec literature and culture.
At the start of the twentieth century, the modern metropolis was a riot of sensation. City dwellers lived in an environment filled with smoky factories, crowded homes, and lively thoroughfares. Sights, sounds, and smells flooded their senses, while changing conceptions of health and decorum forced many to rethink their most banal gestures, from the way they negotiated speeding traffic to the use they made of public washrooms. The Feel of the City exposes the sensory experiences of city-dwellers in Montreal and Brussels at the turn of the century and the ways in which these shaped the social and cultural significance of urban space. Using the experiences of municipal officials, urban planners, hygienists, workers, writers, artists, and ordinary citizens, Nicolas Kenny explores the implications of the senses for our understanding of modernity.
Gender, Agency and Violence: European Perspectives from Early Modern Times to the Present Day centres on literary, cinematic and artistic male and female perpetrators of violence and their discourses. This volume takes an interdisciplinary and cross-European approach – covering French, German, English and Italian case-studies from the sixteenth to the twentieth century and allowing for the exploration of recurrent themes. The contributions also facilitate an insight into how the arts and media respond to historical turning points which, time and again, challenge the link between gender, agency and violence for individuals and society alike.
History, Memory, Performance is an interdisciplinary collection of essays exploring performances of the past in a wide range of trans-national and historical contexts. At its core are contributions from theatre scholars and public historians discussing how historical meaning is shaped through performance.
In a fresh examination of the French ceremonial entry, Neil Murphy considers the role these events played in the negotiation between urban elites and the Valois monarchy for rights and liberties. Moving away from the customary focus on the pageantry, this book focuses on how urban governments used these ceremonies to offer the ruler (or his representatives) petitions regarding their rights, liberties and customs. Drawing on extensive research, he shows that ceremonial entries lay at the heart of how the state functioned in later medieval and Renaissance France.
Under glittering lights in the Louvre palace, the French court ballets danced by Queen Marie de M?dicis prior to Henri IV's assassination in 1610 attracted thousands of spectators ranging from pickpockets to ambassadors from across Europe. Drawing on newly discovered primary sources as well as theories and methodologies derived from literary studies, political history, musicology, dance studies, and women's and gender studies, Dancing Queen traces how Marie's ballets authorized her incipient political authority through innovative verbal and visual imagery, avant-garde musical developments, and ceremonial arrangements of objects and bodies in space. Making use of women's "semi-official" statu...
A study of the strategies by which sacred music and liturgy was used to legitimate Louis XIII's power.
This collection of essays focuses on the concept of perfection in various domains during the 17th century in France.
Performing Public History explores history-telling as a performance across a wide range of media, including theatre and film, historical re-enactments and living history performances, operas, and video games. Taking historians as storytellers, this book illustrates how the choices they make shape historical meaning. While historians may strive to be objective when they research and write the past, they inevitably draw on their imagination, emotions, and creativity, aligning them with others who make history in public. The book explores issues such as the nature of archives, realism, fact and fiction, accuracy and authenticity, and actants and audiences. It draws on case studies from all parts of the world, offering global perspectives that invite a rethinking about what history is, and how and why we do it. Sharing work by graduate students, the author also offers an appendix of classroom exercises that instructors will find valuable. Written accessibly for students, this volume offers a succinct account of the discipline of history, the field of public history, and how performance is a useful concept for thinking about history work.