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A review and record of current literature.
"George Sand: Some Aspects of Her Life and Writings" by using Rene Doumic presents a complete exploration of the lifestyles and literary contributions of the enduring French author, George Sand. Doumic, a distinguished literary critic, delves into the multifaceted character of Sand, born Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin, who challenged societal norms and gender roles of her time. Through meticulous studies and insightful analysis, Doumic examines diverse aspects of Sand's life, from her unconventional non-public relationships to her prolific literary profession. He discusses Sand's works in element, highlighting recurring issues such as love, freedom, and social justice that are general in her n...
Popular American essayist, novelist, and journalist CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER (1829-1900) was renowned for the warmth and intimacy of his writing, which encompassed travelogue, biography and autobiography, fiction, and more, and influenced entire generations of his fellow writers. Here, the prolific writer turned editor for his final grand work, a splendid survey of global literature, classic and modern, and it's not too much to suggest that if his friend and colleague Mark Twain-who stole Warner's quip about how "everybody complains about the weather, but nobody does anything about it"-had assembled this set, it would still be hailed today as one of the great achievements of the book world. Highlights from Volume 31 include: . the histories of James Ford Rhodes . the fiction of Samuel Richardson . the writing of Anne Thackeray Ritchie . the maxims of La Rochefoucauld . the Roman poets of the Later Empire . the poetry of Pierre Ronsard . the writings of Theodore Roosevelt . the poetry of Christina Georgina Rossetti and Dante Gabriel Rossetti . the philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau . and much, much more.
Matsuda proves his argument by visiting a remarkable array of "memory-sites": the destruction of a monument to Napoleon during the 1871 Paris Commune; the frantic selling of futures on the Paris stock-exchange; the state's forensic search for a vagabond rapist and murderer; a child's perjured testimony on the witness stand; a scientist's dissecting of the human brain; the invention of cameras and the cinema.
Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish army officer, spent twelve years from 1894 to 1906 in solitary confinement for a crime he did not commit. Amidst the dramatic and shifting revelations of what would come to be known throughout the world as the Dreyfus Affair, four influential authors reassessed their moral convictions on the civic questions posed by this abuse. Emile Zola, Maurice Barres, Bernard Lazare, and Marcel Proust offered fictive articulations of response to these questions. Among them, national citizenship and the roles of secularism and public education, as well as tolerance of Jews and other immigrants to France, loom largest. The four authors considered dilemmas still unresolved in the modern democratic cultures of Europe today. Moreover, as this critical study illuminates, the writers in effect were teaching readers to negotiate individual desires and collective purpose and to assess their own values as the effects of Dreyfus continued to ripple through society.
It has sometimes been assumed that the difficulty of translating Shakespeare into French has meant that he has had little influence in France. Shakespeare Goes to Paris proves the opposite. Virtually unknown in France in his lifetime, and for well over a hundred years after his death, Shakespeare was discovered in the first half of the eighteenth century, as part of a growing French interest in England. Since then, Shakespeare's impact in France has been enormous. Writers, from Voltaire to Gide, found themsleves baffled, frustrated, mesmerised but overawed by a playwright who broke all the rules of French classical theatre and challenged the primacy of French culture. Attempts to tame and translate him alternated with uncritical idolisation, such as that of Berlioz and Hugo. Changing attitudes to Shakespeare have also been an index of French self-esteem, as John Pemble shows in his sparkingly written book
"Few books on European history in recent memory have caused such controversy and commotion," wrote Robert Wohl in 1991 in a major review of Neither Right nor Left. Listed by Le Monde as one of the forty most important books published in France during the 1980s, this explosive work asserts that fascism was an important part of the mainstream of European history, not just a temporary development in Germany and Italy but a significant aspect of French culture as well. Neither right nor left, fascism united antibourgeois, antiliberal nationalism, and revolutionary syndicalist thought, each of which joined in reflecting the political culture inherited from eighteenth-century France. From the first, Sternhell's argument generated strong feelings among people who wished to forget the Vichy years, and his themes drew enormous public attention in 1994, as Paul Touvier was condemned for crimes against humanity and a new biography probed President Mitterand's Vichy connections. The author's new preface speaks to the debates of 1994 and reinforces the necessity of acknowledging the past, as President Chirac has recently done on France's behalf.