From Schoolboy to Writer: Early Works (1884–1895)
Summary: This previously unpublished collection of school essays written by the young Marcel Proust provides an insight into his literary and philosophical background, and reveals the emergence of the moralist who would triumph a few years later in In Search of Lost Time.
Queen Christina and her fictional works
Description:
Christine of Sweden, a 17th-century monarch, spoke several languages, wrote aphorisms, travelled throughout Europe, invited Descartes to her court, and commissioned the construction of music halls in Italy. A free thinker who enjoyed great freedom of movement, she refused to marry. A Swedish Protestant who often opposed the Italian Pope in her promotion of the arts, she nevertheless converted to Catholicism and eventually renounced her crown.
This has given rise to a rich mythology and numerous works of fiction, notably Greta Garbo’s portrayal of her in film, which occupies a prominent place in popular culture. This bisexual Swedish queen was queer ahead of her time. A learned woman, mocked in her day at the French court, she was a figure in the minds of her contemporaries before becoming one in plays, films and comic books, which the contributors to this volume bring to light.
Contributors to this volume include: Natacha APRILE, Annie BOURGUIGNON, Sandrine CHAMPION-BALAN, Judith COHEN, Yohann DEGUIN, Ariane FERRY, Florence FIX, Corinne FRANÇOIS-DENÈVE, Carin FRANZEN, Sylvain LEDDA, Sophie MENTZEL, Leif OLSSON, Laurent PAGÈS, Jean-François de RAYMOND, Sylviane ROBARDEY-EPPSTEIN, Francesco SCHIARITI, Marthe SEGRESTIN, Charlotte SIMONIN, Sophie TONOLO, Denis VIART, Georges ZARAGOZA and Anna ZILLI.
André Gide. Critical Essays. With a previously unpublished text
Summary: André Gide (1869–1951), winner of the 1947 Nobel Prize in Literature, was a prolific essayist and critic. This anthology offers a representative selection of his writings on music, painting and cultural policy, as well as a previously unpublished text. Gide’s mastery of the art of criticism is such that it becomes literature in its own right.
Writing for them. Playwrights and female theatregoers in Europe
The issue is available online: https://journals.openedition.org/episteme/15230
Contents
Véronique Lochert, ‘Introduction: “Theatre is the art of pleasing the lady”, or how women’s reception shapes the theatre’
The experience of female spectators
Marzia Pieri, ‘The ladies of the party, at the wake and at court’
Jean-François Lattarico, ‘A Feminine Version of The Book of the Courtier: Notes on the Ginipedia by Vincenzo Nolfi, Venetian Playwright’
Sylvaine Guyot, ‘La Palatine, a Paradigmatic Spectator? On the Appeal of Theatre: Practices, Tastes, Experience’
Jean Marsden, ‘Commanding Eyes: Female Spectators and the Restoration Theatrical Repertoire »
‘For the ladies’: what kind of addresses?
Nina Hugot, “‘Si fault-il pourtant clorre le bec’. Addresses to female spectators in Théodore de Bèze (Abraham Sacrificing) and Louis des Masures (Holy Tragedies)’
Flavie Kerautret, “‘Ce discours n’est pas pour votre regard, mes Dames’. Addresses to women in the prologues of Bruscambille”
Coline Piot, “Do playwrights write ‘for them’? The pragmatic implications of bawdy humour in comedies”
Rebecca Yearling, “Experimental plays, conventional endings: Gender normativity and the female spectator of Shirley’s The Doubtful Heir”
Gender and genres
Sandra Clerc, “A stage for all genders: the theatre of Luigi Groto”
Françoise Decroisette, “Is a ‘feminine’ tragedy possible? Valeria Miani Negri’s answer in Celinda (1611)”
Marcella Trambaioli, “Some insights into Lope de Vega’s urban-set comedy”
André Gide. « Il futuro dell’Europa » e altri scritti
In this collaborative edition, eight texts by André Gide—including one previously unpublished—have been brought together for the first time in Italian translation, centred on the idea of Europe as a collection of diverse voices that must work together for their peace and prosperity.
André Gide, ‘Il futuro dell’Europa’ and other writings
Edited and translated by Paola Codazzi, Tania Collani, Martina Della Casa and Paola Fossa
Quodlibet, 2023
André Gide, today
Introduction
From comics to music, theatre to photography, not to mention botany and gastronomy, the two series of ‘Gide Remix’ events (Mulhouse, 2018–2020) have enabled us to discover the Nobel Prize-winner’s writings in a new light, at the crossroads of literature, art and science. As his work enters the public domain, this volume brings together this collective reflection, led by creators, specialists and young researchers from various disciplines. “I write only to be reread,” is the wish expressed by Gide in his Journal des Faux-monnayeurs. To rise to this challenge, here is a collection comprising texts, interviews, archive photographs and previously unpublished images, representative of a body of work that continues to challenge us and inspire new forms of creation based on it. This very Gidean idea of multiplying viewpoints and perspectives, of attempting to question what is taken for granted, is something we are now seeking to rediscover, reinterpret and, above all, share with a wider audience.
Auteurs et artistes
Charlotte Butty, Paola Codazzi, Clara Debard, Alessandro De Cecco, Martina Della Casa, Arnow Dousse, Nikol Dziub, Paola Fossa, Robert Kopp, Jérôme Lereculey, Roselyne Liechty, Dominique Massonnaud, Lorenzo Mileti Nardo, Delfina Parodi, Ambre Philippe, Francesco Rossi, Peter Schnyder, Véronique Scius-Turlot, Sara Sorrentino, Pierre Thilloy, Paola Travers, Augustin Vœgele.
Women go to the theatre too. Female theatregoers in early modern Europe
This book explores the female audience in European theatre through a wide variety of texts, inviting readers to compare the elusive reality of female spectators with the many ways in which they have been portrayed. Female spectators were fully involved in theatrical activity and played a significant role in the modernisation of the theatre from the 16th to the 17th century. Their presence highlights the physical setting and the sensual nature of the theatrical experience; it sheds light on the modes of reception, which combine emotion with judgement, and contributes to the emergence of critical discourse; it reveals the audience’s participation in the production of meaning and the possible repercussions of fiction on real life. These various perspectives, in which women’s cultural power and the social power of theatre are closely intertwined, are of direct relevance to our own time.
The scope of the comparison
This collection of articles is the result of a series of collaborative projects organised between 2017 and 2019 by the Institute for Research in European Languages and Literatures (UR 4363) at the University of Haute-Alsace, under the direction of Nikol Dziub and Frédérique Toudoire-Surlapierre. The first part, in particular, stems from one of the sessions of the ‘Comparer en Europe’ conference (22–23 June 2017), which the organisers had conceived as a forum for comparative literature and which brought together comparative literature scholars from some thirty European and North American countries (some of the contributions were published as chapters in the volume *Comparative Literature in Europe: Challenges and Perspectives*, 2019).
The overall aim of this project, entitled Les Horizons de la comparaison, is to explore, from three perspectives—theoretical, critical and historical—the range of possibilities opened up by the act of comparison, focusing on two main themes: on the one hand, a reflective, comparative and forward-looking assessment of comparative literary practices in 21st-century Europe; on the other hand, a reflection on the creative virtues of comparison, particularly intermedia comparison.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, The Glove, trans. Corinne François-Denève
Svava Riis has everything she needs to be happy. Raised by loving parents in Norway at the end of the 19th century, she devotes herself to philanthropy and is soon to marry a man of good standing, Alfred Christensen. But a chance discovery turns everything upside down: Alfred has been with other women before Svava, and is therefore not the ‘pure’ man she thought she was marrying. The wedding cannot go ahead. The town’s leading figures are in a panic and try to reason with her. They invoke the nature of men, custom, the risk of scandal, the duty of forgiveness… Will Svava yield or not? This edition brings together the two successive versions of Bjørnson’s play, one tinged with hope, the other radically disenchanted.
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was a contemporary of Ibsen, now largely forgotten, but his social dramas earned him great success in his day. The Glove caused a scandal, and the author altered its content. This volume presents both versions of the play: the published version and the version that was performed.
Translation: Corinne François-Denève
Gerrard Winstanley. Political Pamphlets. Texts translated and introduced by Laurent Curelly & Mickaël Popelard
The aim of this book is to bring to light one of the most fruitful and original schools of thought to emerge from the English Revolution of the mid-17th century, which led to the execution of King Charles I and the abolition of the monarchy, followed by the establishment of a republic that very soon took on the characteristics of an oligarchic regime. A London merchant, Gerrard Winstanley became one of the leaders of the Diggers, members of a small colony that settled on common land in Surrey in 1649, the year of the regicide and the establishment of the republic. The Diggers thus experimented with a form of agrarian communism. They were hounded by local landowners and the republican authorities, who feared that practices they deemed seditious would spread throughout the country. The Diggers also faced setbacks in the courts as legal proceedings were brought against them. The small colony was dispersed a year after its establishment.
The existence of the Diggers’ colony was accompanied by the writing and circulation of pamphlets, some of which were collective works whilst others bore the sole authorship of Gerrard Winstanley. Advocating the communal ownership of property and imbued with Christian mysticism, Winstanley’s thinking permeates all the Diggers’ writings, which form the basis of this volume – these are translations previously unpublished in French. French-speaking readers can now access texts that develop a bold ‘proto-communist’ philosophy. In his political writings, Winstanley expresses his aversion to the feudal structures governing land ownership and campaigns for their abolition so that a community of property inspired by the early Christian Church might emerge. He also sets out his distrust of religious formalism in favour of a millenarian mysticism. More prosaically, he recounts the difficulties and indignities faced by the small colony and, in particular, the repression it endured.
Far from being detached, these texts offer a glimpse into a facet of the political and social history characteristic of the English Revolution of the early 17th century: in them, we hear the dissenting voices of marginalised individuals challenging various authorities in the country; we see ordinary people making use of the means of expression and protest provided by cheap and ephemeral writings, particularly pamphlets and petitions; we discover a richly diverse sectarian landscape, with the Diggers coexisting alongside other ‘radical’ groups and striving to distinguish themselves from them in order to better promote their ideas and agenda; finally, we read of the dashed hopes arising from an unfulfilled revolution. These texts resonate with many current debates fuelled by shared concerns, such as those relating to popular uprisings and movements, or those concerning the concepts of property and the commons, as illustrated by the various land occupation campaigns led by the ‘Zadists’.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Declaration of the Poor Oppressed People of England
Letter to Lord Fairfax and his War Council
Appeal to the House of Commons
Warning to the City of London and the Army
Memorial to Parliament and the Army
The Spirit of England Unveiled
Defence of the Diggers
Appeal to All Englishmen
Humble Petition Addressed to the Doctors of the Two Universities
