The book provides a "flaneur's eye view" of Parisian life in the first half of the nineteenth century: dress, cafes and restaurants, but also shops and passages, the omnibus, bals publics and carnival. The author provides general conclusions about the private and public spheres in "le vieux Paris." Like the flaneur, the author concentrates less on factual information for its own sake--which may be found in the secondary works cited in the text and footnotes--than on the "semiological" or anthropological significance of the cultural forms in question. Links are drawn between cultural...

This volume of essays is the first to be dedicated to the subject of intertextuality in modern Arabic literature. Beginning with a general overview of the topic by Roger Allen, it brings together essays on a range of writers from all parts of the Arab world, including, among others, Edwar al-Kharrat, Sa'd Allah Wannus, Najib Mahfuz, Rabi' Jabir, Salim Matar and the recently deceased Sudanese writer al-Tayyib Salih, whose seminal work Season of Migration to the North heralded a new phase in the modern Arabic literary tradition. The volume, which also includes two essays on aspects of...

This volume offers a representative yet concise selection of the work of the seventeenth-century poets, Malherbe, de Viau and Saint-Amant. It also provides supporting documentation to bring out the unique literary personality of each, and to help make their poetry as accessible as possible to a modern reader. It is designed to fill the gap between scholarly complete editions and more general anthologies which are rarely able to devote much space to any one author. The present volume was prompted by the success that this poetry enjoyed with readers who were relative newcomers to French verse.

Published in Rouen in 1767 and reprinted two years later, Voltaire's Candide en Dannemarc, ou L'optimisme des Honnetes Gens wraps up the adventures of Candide. Turning his back on both Voltairean satire and scepticism, the novelist proposes a moralistic fable -- the focal point of which is a rehabilitation of Leibniz's Theory of Optimism. The main body of the novel tells the story of Candide and his new wife, the noble Zenoide, in their sumptuous Copenhagen townhouse. Before achieving this happy state, however, the couple endures various trials and tribulations reminiscent of the newly minted...

This volume analyses major French plays of the 1830s, focusing on their theatricality, and on the ways in which they expose the workings of the theatre rather than conceal them. Through an examination of performance within these plays, the study posits that the stage is a privileged site of demonstration, a literal 'proving ground' that lends a physical reality to abstract values announced in the text and shared or questioned by the audience. Negotiating between the literary study of drama and performance theory, this work breaks new ground in nineteenth-century theatre scholarship while...

With the aim of encouraging a critical rereading of Mirbeau's most durable works, this study examines his problematic status as a producer of fictions, his use of humour and cruelty, and his treatment of social class and biological diversity, making detailed reference to four books written in the second half of his career: Le Jardin des supplices, Le Journal d'une femme de chambre, Les 21 Jours d'un neurasthenique and La 628-E8

These essays written to celebrate the distinguished career of Renassiance scholar, Professor Malcolm Quainton, confirm the idea that the sixteenth-century in France was deeply marked by conflict, but readers expecting to find a volume wholly devoted to studies of war and religious disputation will be intrigued to discover that these rare not the only topics discussed. A number of subtle analyses reveal the stresses of internal conflict experienced by writers and woven into the fabric of their compositions. The three sections focus respectively on living and writing in conflict, the Wars of...

This book is the second part of an important experimental trilogy in text archaeology of all the various ideas about the 1664 and later versions. Tartuffe ou L'Imposteur, (Tartuffe or the Hypocrite), is Moliere's most famous play and was first performed at Versailles in 1664. It attacked religious hypocrisy and as a result caused much scandal and was then banned. Tartuffe means 'hypocrite' especially one who shows affected religious piety and exaggeratedly feigns virtue. Revised versions of Tartuffe were performed at various times between 1667 and 1669. McBride provides a reconstruction of...

Moliere et son premier Tartuffe sheds light on one of the most enduring mysteries in world theatre: the nature, structure and purpose of the first and no longer extant version of his most controversial play, Le Tartuffe. The study provides a succinct overview of the problem and a close analysis of events leading up to the original performance at Versailles. A careful reading of Moliere's own defence of this version situates its overriding inspiration in his wish to satirise specific religious groupings, whilst hoping vainly to avoid censure from the religious establishment of his day. There...

This volume explores the characteristics of the art and literature of the Second Empire in France; it examines the attitudes and positioning of artists and writers of the period in relation to a regime of dubious legitimacy, and the ways in which that regime exploited to its advantage the artistic capital available to it.