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Have an idea for Subject of the Month?
June, 2015
Selector: Nancy Beals & Rachael Clark
Think of France and you think of beauty, elegance, delicious food, the Beaux Arts and Belles Lettres, too. Please enjoy this tour of things French!
History
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The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics
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The French Revolution was one of the greatest events in world history, filled with remarkable characters and dramatic events. From its beginning in 1789 to the Reign of Terror in 1793-94, and through the ups and downs of the Directory era that followed, the Revolution showed humanity at its optimistic best and its violent worst; it transformed the lives of all who experienced it. " The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics" offers a fresh treatment of this perennially popular and hugely significant topic, introducing a bold interpretation of the Revolution that highlights the key role that religion and sexuality played in determining the shape of the Revolution. These were issues that occupied the minds and helped shape the actions of women and men; from the pornographic pamphlets about queen Marie-Antoinette to the puritanical morality of revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre, from the revolutionary catechisms that children learned and to the anathemas hurled on the Revolution from clandestine priests in the countryside. The people who lived through the French Revolution were surrounded by messages about gender, sex, religion and faith, concerns which did not exist outside of the events of the Revolution. This book is an essential resource for students of the French Revolution, History of Catholicism and Women and Gender.
ISBN: 1134455933Publication Date: 2013-10-15 -
Louis XIV and the Parlements
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This study examines the political and economic relationship between Louis XIV and the parlements of France, the Parlement of Paris and all the provincial tribunals. It explains how the king managed to overcome the century-old opposition of the parlements to new legislation, and to impose upon them the strict political discipline for which this reign is known. The work calls into question the current revisioninst understanding of the reign of Louis XIV and insists that, after all, absolute government had a harsh reality at its core.
ISBN: 0719062357Publication Date: 2002-07-05
Literature
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Literary Knowing in Neoclassical France
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Literary Knowing in Neoclassical France analyzes the work of several literary critics in France and England, at the end of the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries, who were inspired by the idea that literature - especially the literary sublime - might offer us the deepest kind of knowledge. Dominique Bouhours, Nicolas Boileau, RenE Rapin, John Dennis, and the abbE Dubos believed that literature could deliver truths that transcend our world and were analogous or even equal to the truths of divine revelation. Ann Delehanty argues that this shift towards the transcendental realm pushed the definition of the literary work away from describing its objective properties and towards its effects on the mind of the reader. After placing these ideas about literature in the context of the religious and philosophical thinking of Blaise Pascal, Delehanty traces the evolution of a debate about literature in the writings of the critics in question. They embraced theories of sentiment and the passions as the epistemological means of identifying and knowing the transcendental aspects of a literary work that eventually came to be known as aesthetics. By tracing the historical evolution of the relationship between transcendentalism and aesthetics in French and English neoclassical thought, Literary Knowing in Neoclassical France provides new and engaging insights into an important moment in our literary history.
ISBN: 1611484901Publication Date: 2012-12-01 -
Rococo Fiction in France, 1600-1715
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Rococo Fiction in France reconfigures the history of the "long eighteenth century" by revealing the rococo as a literary phenomenon that characterized a range of experimental texts from the end of the French Renaissance to the eve of the French Revolution. Tracing the literary rococo's evolution from the late 1500s to the early 1700s, and exploring its radicalization during the 1670s, 80s, and 90s, Allison Stedman unearths the seventeenth century rococo's counter-vision for the trajectory of the French monarchy and the dawn of the French Enlightenment. The first part of the study investigates the relationship between Montaigne's philosophy of literary production and those of early seventeenth century "table-talk" novelists, libertine writers, and playwrights involved in the quarrel over Corneille's play Le Cid. She thus establishes the existence of a rococo philosophy of literary production whose goal was to innovate, to bring pleasure, and to create communities. The second part of the study explores the impact that the Duchess de Montpensier's literary portrait galleries, Jean Donneau de VisE's periodical the Mercure Galant, and other forms of rococo literary production - by such authors as Charles Sorel, Alcide de Saint-Maurice, J.N. de Parvial and Jean de PrEchac - had in the creation of a textually mediated social sphere that served as the foundation of the publicly critical culture of the French Enlightenment. The study concludes with an investigation of the influx of salon sociability into the textually mediated social sphere during the 1690s. Stedman examines the role of interpolated literary fairy tales, proverb plays and other rococo publication strategies- in such late seventeenth-century women writers as d'Aulnoy, LhEritier, Murat, and Durand - in transfiguring the salon from an exclusive social circle mediated by physical presence to an inclusive social diaspora mediated by texts. Rococo Fiction in France challenges established views of early modern French literary history and discusses a range of little known works in a generous and engaging manner.
ISBN: 1611484375Publication Date: 2012-10-01
Music
Edith Piaf, 19 December 1915 – 10 October 1963, was a French cabaret singer who became widely regarded as France's national diva, as well as being one of France's greatest international stars. Her music was often autobiographical with her specialty being of chanson and ballads, particularly of love, loss and sorrow. Among her songs are "La Vie en rose" (1946) and "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960).
Orpheus in the Underworld, with its overture popularly known as the Can Can, is an opéra bouffon (a form of operetta) by Jacques Offenbach. The French text was written by Ludovic Halévy and later revised by Hector-Jonathan Crémieux. The work, first performed in 1858, is said to be the first classical full-length operetta.
Learn more about French composers, artists, and musical genres using the resources listed below:
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Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new windowNaxos Music Library is the most comprehensive collection of classical music available online. It includes the complete Naxos, Marco Polo and Da Capo catalogues of over 75,000 tracks, including Classical music, Historical recordings, Jazz, World, Folk and Chinese music. Whilst listening, users can read notes on the works being played as well as biographical information on composers or artists in Naxos's extensive database
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Music index. This link opens in a new windowIndex of 725 international music periodicals from over 40 countries and in 23 languages. Covers all styles and genres of classical and popular music, sorted by subject and geographic location.
Cinema
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French Animation History
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French Animation History is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of animation, illuminating the exceptional place France holds within that history. Selected by Choice as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2011 The first book dedicated exclusively to this history Explores how French animators have forged their own visual styles, narrative modes, and technological innovations to construct a distinct national style, while avoiding the clichés and conventions of Hollywood's commercial cartoons Includes more than 80 color and black and white images from the most influential films, from early silent animation to the recent internationally renowned Persepolis Essential reading for anyone interested in the study of French film
ISBN: 9781444392562Publication Date: 2011-03-08
Food
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Crafting the Culture and History of French Chocolate
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This absorbing narrative follows the craft community of French chocolatiers#151;members of a tiny group experiencing intensive international competition#151;as they struggle to ensure the survival of their businesses. Susan J. Terrio moves easily among ethnography, history, theory, and vignette, telling a story that challenges conventional views of craft work, associational forms, and training models in late capitalism. She enters the world of Parisian craft leaders and local artisanal families there and in southwest France to relate how they work and how they confront the representatives and structures of power, from taste makers, CEOs, and advertising executives to the technocrats of Paris and Brussels. Looking at craft culture and community from a cross-disciplinary perspective, Terrio finds that the chocolatiers affirm their collective identity and their place in the present by commemorating selectively their role in history. In addition to joining a distinguished tradition of American anthropological writing on the role of food, her study of the social production of taste in the invention of vintage, grand cru chocolates lends specificity and weight to theories of consumption by Pierre Bourdieu and others. The book will appeal to anthropologists, cultural studies scholars, and anyone curious about life in contemporary France.
ISBN: 0520221257Publication Date: 2000-09-28 -
Wine Drinking Culture in France
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ISBN: 9780708322857Wine drinking culture in France has traditionally been a source of pride for the French and in an age of concerns about the dangers of 'binge-drinking', a major cause of jealousy for the British. Wine drinking and the culture associated with it are, for many, an essential part of what it means to be French, but they are also part of a national construction. Described by some as a national product, or as a 'totem drink', wine and its attendant cultures supposedly characterise Frenchness in much the same way as being born in France, fighting for liberty or speaking French. Yet this traditional picture is now being challenged by economic, social and political forces that have transformed consumption patterns and led to the fragmentation of wine drinking culture.
Language
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French CrazyAll things French including language
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DuoLingoLearn any language online for free
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A History of the French Language
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ISBN: 0203427335Publication Date: 1989-05-01This well-established and popular book provides students with all the linguistic background they need for studying any period of French literature. For the second edition the text has been revised and updated throughout, and the two final chapters on contemporary French, and its position as a world language, have been completely rewritten. Starting with a brief description of the Vulgar Latin spoken in Gaul, and the earliest recorded forms of French, Peter Rickard traces the development of the language through the later Middle Ages and Renaissance to show how it became standardized in a near modern form in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. -
The French Language in the Digital Age
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ISBN: 9783642307614Publication Date: 2012-08-20
Paris
Map of Arrondissments and Monuments
Paris is the capital and largest city of France. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Ile-de-France region.
The most important places to visit in Paris are: Place de la Concorde, Pompidou Center, Arc de Triomphe, Versailles Palace, Notre Dame, Sacré-Coeur, Louvre Museum, Eiffel Tower.
Haven in Paris Blog
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