Some of the language we come across, in reading other peoples' works or listening to others speak, moves us profoundly. It requires a response from us; it occupies and involves us. Writers, always readers and listeners as well, are fascinated by this phenomenon, which became the subject of the classical treatise On the Sublime, traditionally attributed to Longinus. Emma Gilby looks at this compelling and complex text in relation to the work of three major seventeenth-century authors; Pierre Corneille, Blaise Pascal and Nicolas Boileau. She offers, in each case, intimate critical readings...

This book, which is the fruit of papers presented at the seventh Cambridge French Graduate Conference, offers innovative analyses of how space can provide metaphors for human thoughts, utterances and experiences. The authors cross-fertilise different approaches to the significance of space as a thematic and structuring principle in French and Francophone poetry, prose, philosophy and film. They are interested in three broad areas of enquiry: how spaces can be suffused with explorations of identity; how the dividing work done by maps marks and makes spaces; and how particular questions are...