Queen of Versailles Bryant, Mark
Queen of Versailles,
2020, 2020, 2020-10-22
eBook
"The rise to power of Francoise d'Aubigné, Marquise de Maintenon (1635-1719), a queen in all but name, was nothing short of extraordinary. Born into poverty and ignominy, she used her intellect, ...charisma, and connections to join the ranks of fashionable society, eventually establishing herself at the French court as governess to the legitimized children of Louis XIV. Her relationship with the Sun King gradually flourished, and after the death of the queen in 1683 the couple secretly married. Although their marriage was never made public, Maintenon came to wield unparalleled influence as Louis XIV's closest confidante and most trusted political adviser. The aging king required her daily presence in governmental meetings and relied on her for advice on crown appointments, state business, and policy making. Her modest suite of apartments at Versailles became the heart of the court and she was pursued by officials and dignitaries, popes and princes from across Europe, all anxious to appropriate her influence. She used her expansive social network to intervene in a range of political, religious, and royal family affairs, but not always with the king's knowledge, and her successes were often outweighed by controversy and failure. In Queen of Versailles, Mark Bryant explores the remarkable life and court career of Madame de Maintenon. A study in queenship, it reveals how the dynamics of power and gender operated within the realms of early modern high politics, church-state affairs, and international relations while providing unique insights into the Sun King and his court."--
As the UK leaves the EU and as the multilateral order is increasingly under stress, bilateral security links are more important than ever. Rivals in Arms is the untold story of the thriving yet ...complicated defence relationship of two countries, the UK and France, caught between strategic decline and global ambitions.
Holding on and holding out Freadman, Anne
Holding on and holding out,
2020, 2020, 2020-05-05, 2020-05-12
eBook
"Examining the diary as a particular form of expression, Holding On and Holding Out provides unique insights into the experience of Jews during World War II in France. Unlike memoirs and ...autobiographies that reconstruct particular personal events, diaries, by contrast, record daily events without the benefit of retrospect and describe events as they unfold. This book assess how each individual used the diary to record their daily life under persecution; each was waiting for some end, be it with hope or despair. Each individual used the diary to bear witness not only to the terror of their own lives, but also to the lives and suffering of others. Several used their writing as a memorial to people who were killed. All use their writing to assert: I live, I will have lived. The book concludes by considering each diarist as selves in history, investigating how their reflections on their experience are informed by the times in which they had lived before the advent of persecution."--
As early as the ancient Greeks, goddesses served as Muses for artistic creation. In essence, a creatively charged energy inspired the artist, leaving a unique and recognizable mark on the artwork. ...Picassos relationships with the women in his life was deeply formative, and he often represented them as Muses. He was particularly unabashed in the declaration of his feelings to one of them, Marie-Therese Walter, his youthful mistress of 1927. But at that point Picasso was still married to Olga Khokhlova, thus forced to practice the utmost discretion. His marriage to Olga made him increasingly frustrated with her imposed bourgeois expectations. As a release from this marital burden, Marie-Therese was ever present in his work, often portrayed as Aphrodite with a wreath in her hair, a basket of flowers and fruits by her side. Marie-Therese was the Dream the Muse. This fertile period coincided with the strong influence of surrealism which helped liberate Picassos psyche from the straitjacket that Olgas lifestyle imposed on him. By 1935, however, the model and mistress became a mother to Maya, radically changing the role she previously had. The following year Picasso was introduced to a new woman, Dora Maar, an encounter that signalled the beginning of the end of Marie-Thereses exclusive claim on Picassos affections and the closing of an artistic period clearly marked by fertility. The Aphrodite Period (19241936) provides new insights and analysis of Picassos life as recently uncovered through the research of the Online Picasso Project. This time-span is one of the most illustrative periods of Picassos career in that it clearly demonstrates the close interdependence between sexuality and artistic creativity that characterize Picasso's entire output.
Terror and terroir Smith, Andrew W. M
2016, 2016., 20160919, 2016-09-19
eBook
This work traces the history of post-war France by tracking the Comite Regional d'Action Viticole (CRAV), a militant collective of winegrowers who have used protest and violence to push back against ...attempts to modernise the French economy and state and the wider impacts of globalisation.
From revolution to ethics Bourg, Julian
From revolution to ethics,
c2007, 20070514, 2007, 2007-05-14, 20070101
eBook
Challenging the prevalent view that the 1960s did not have any lasting effect, From Revolution to Ethics demonstrates that intellectuals and activists turned to ethics as the touchstone for ...understanding interpersonal, institutional, and political dilemmas. In absorbing and scrupulously researched detail Bourg explores the developing ethical fascination as it emerged among student Maoists courting terrorism, anti-psychiatric celebrations of madness, feminists mobilizing against rape, and pundits and philosophers championing human rights.
L’Ouvroir de littérature potentielle (Oulipo) est né en 1960 et demeure aujourd’hui bien vivace. En dialogue avec un certain Xanthiphas, nous proposons ici de renouveler la critique oulipienne de ...manière ontologique et ludique. L’Oulipo est analysé au regard de passages clés du passé, tels que l’ère des Grands Rhétoriqueurs ou le traumatisme de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, sans oublier l’influence des surréalistes et de Bourbaki. L’apport pataphysique est nuancé car la généalogie préoulipienne remonte chez ses deux fondateurs, François Le Lionnais et Raymond Queneau, aux années 1930. Sera posée également la question de l’intégration assez tardive des femmes en son sein. Enfin, des informations inédites provenant des archives de l’Oulipo offriront une meilleure contextualisation de l’évolution du groupe. Il arrive ainsi parfois que le langage a ses jeux que le jeu n’a pas.
Socrate, dans sa grande sagesse, avait déjà perçu la préséance du pouvoir intentionnel du mot sur ce qu’il appelle le fignolage de l’articulation (ou du sens). Ainsi l’explique-t-il à Hermogène, en présence d’un Cratyle assez muet : « Mais ce sont choses que font, je crois, les gens qui de la vérité n’ont aucun souci, mais qui fignolent l’articulation, si bien que, à force d’insertions imposées aux mots primitifs, ils ont obtenu finalement ce résultat, que pas un parmi les hommes ne comprendra quelle peut bien être l’intention du mot1 ! » Il avait plus tôt déclaré devant un Hermogène commis à sa cause : « Tu sais ce qu’est le langage : il n’y a rien que toujours il ne signifie, ne tourne, ne retourne ; et il est double, vrai tout comme faux2. »
Alors, pourquoi l’Oulipo ?...
_______
1 Platon, Œuvres complètes, p. 653 (traduction de Léon Robin).
2 Ibid., p. 645.
In sixteenth-century France, the level of jokes, irony, and ridicule found in pamphlets and plays became aggressively hostile. In Hostile Humor in Renaissance France, Bruce Hayes investigates this ...period leading up to the French Wars of Religion, when a deliberately harmful and destructive form of satire appeared.This study examines both pamphlets and plays to show how this new form of humor emerged that attacked religious practices and people in ways that forever changed the nature of satire and religious debate in France. Hayes explores this phenomenon in the context of the Catholic and Protestant conflict to reveal new insights about the society that both exploited and vilified this kind of satire.
In a groundbreaking book that challenges many assumptions about gender and politics in the French Revolution, Suzanne Desan offers an insightful analysis of the ways the Revolution radically ...redefined the family and its internal dynamics. She shows how revolutionary politics and laws brought about a social revolution within households and created space for thousands of French women and men to reimagine their most intimate relationships. Families negotiated new social practices, including divorce, the reduction of paternal authority, egalitarian inheritance for sons and daughters alike, and the granting of civil rights to illegitimate children. Contrary to arguments that claim the Revolution bound women within a domestic sphere,The Family on Trialmaintains that the new civil laws and gender politics offered many women unexpected opportunities to gain power, property, or independence. The family became a political arena, a practical terrain for creating the Republic in day-to-day life. From 1789, citizens across France-sons and daughters, unhappily married spouses and illegitimate children, pamphleteers and moralists, deputies and judges-all disputed how the family should be reformed to remake the new France. They debated how revolutionary ideals and institutions should transform the emotional bonds, gender dynamics, legal customs, and economic arrangements that structured the family. They asked how to bring the principles of liberty, equality, and regeneration into the home. And as French citizens confronted each other in the home, in court, and in print, they gradually negotiated new domestic practices that balanced Old Regime customs with revolutionary innovations in law and culture. In a narrative that combines national-level analysis with a case study of family contestation in Normandy, Desan explores these struggles to bring politics into households and to envision and put into practice a new set of familial relationships.
