Before he became the father of cinematic special effects, George Méliès (1861-1938) was a maker of deluxe French footwear, an illusionist, and a caricaturist. Proceeding from these beginnings, ...Méliès Boots traces how the full trajectory of Georges Méliès' career during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, along with the larger cultural and historical contexts in which Méliès operated, shaped his cinematic oeuvre. Solomon examines Méliès' unpublished drawings and published caricatures, the role of laughter in his magic theater productions, and the constituent elements of what Méliès called "the new profession of the cinéaste." The book also reveals Méliès' connections to the Incohérents, a group of ephemeral artists from the 1880s, demonstrating the group's relevance for Méliès, early cinema, and modernity. By positioning Méliès in relation to the material culture of his time, Solomon demonstrates that Méliès' work was expressive of a distinctly modern, and modernist, sensibility that appeared in France during the 1880s in the wake of the Second Industrial Revolution.
An anonymous minstrel in thirteenth-century France composed this gripping account of historical events in his time. Crusaders and Muslim forces battle for control of the Holy Land, while power ...struggles rage between and among religious authorities and their conflicting secular counterparts, pope and German emperor, the kings of England and the kings of France. Meanwhile, the kings cannot count on their independent-minded barons to support or even tolerate the royal ambitions. Although politics (and the collapse of a royal marriage) frame the narrative, the logistics of war are also in play: competing military machinery and the challenges of transporting troops and matariel. Inevitably, the civilian population suffers. The minstrel was a professional story-teller, and his livelihood likely depended on his ability to captivate an audience. Beyond would-be objective reporting, the minstrel dramatizes events through dialogue, while he delves into the motives and intentions of important figures, and imparts traditional moral guidance. We follow the deeds of many prominent women and witness striking episodes in the lives of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard the Lionhearted, Blanche of Castile, Frederick the Great, Saladin, and others. These tales survive in several manuscripts, suggesting that they enjoyed significant success and popularity in their day. Samuel N. Rosenberg produced this first scholarly translation of the Old French tales into English. References that might have been obvious to the minstrel’s original audience are explained for the modern reader in the indispensable annotations of medieval historian Randall Todd Pippenger. The introduction by eminent medievalist William Chester Jordan places the minstrel’s work in historical context and discusses the surviving manuscript sources.
When fiction and reality meet: Probably no contemporary novel has shaped reality as powerfully Houellebeck's Submission. No previous analysis of Submission is as deep and encompassing as this volume ...written by experts on politics and literature.
A wide-ranging study which examines the complex, often ambivalent ways in which the New Wave engages the other arts in both its discursive construction and filmic practice. Affords a new optic for ...understanding French New Wave cinema and innovative readings of New Wave films. Offers an inclusive view of the New Wave through discussion of lesser-known directors alongside renowned New Wave filmmakers .
Conceived as both a vehicle to national prestige and as a civilizing mission, the second French colonial empire (1830–1962) challenged soldiers, scholars and administrators to understand societies ...radically different from their own. The resultant networks of anthropological inquiry, however, did not have this effect. Rather, they opened pathways to political and intellectual independence framed in the language of social science, and in the process upended the colonial political system and reshaped the nature of human inquiry in France. While still unequal, French colonial rule in Africa revealed the durability and strength of non-European modes of thought. In this ground-breaking new study, historian Douglas W. Leonard examines the political and intellectual repercussions of French efforts to understand and to dominate colonial Africa through the use of anthropology. From General Louis Faidherbe in the 1840s to politician Jacques Soustelle and sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in the 1950s, these French thinkers sowed the seeds of colonial destruction.
An encounter between a warring knight and the world of learning could seem a paradox. It is nonetheless related with the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, an essential intellectual movement for western ...history. Knights not only fought in battles, but also moved in sophisticated courts. Knights were interested in Latin classics and reading, and writing poetry. Supportive of “jongleurs” and minstrels, they enjoyed literary conversations with clerics who would attempt to reform their behaviour, which was often brutal. These lettered warriors, while improving their culture, learned to repress their own violence and were initiated to courtesy: selective language, measured gestures, elegance in dress, and manners at the table. Their association with women, who were often learned, became more gallant. A revolution of thought occurred among lay elites who, in contact with clergy, began to use their weapons for common welfare. This new conduct was a tangible sign of Medievalist society's leap forward towards modernity. This monograph contains a great deal of detailed information about the attitudes towards learning and written culture among members of the nobility in different parts of Europe in the Middle Ages.
Choquette narrates the peopling of French Canada across the 17th and 18th centuries, the lesser known colonial phase of French migration. Drawing on French and Canadian archives, she carefully traces ...the precise origins of individual immigrants, describing them by gender, class, occupation, region, religion, age, and date of departure.
