Recherche multi-critères

Helen Oyeyemi on haunted house novels par Helen Oyeyemi, publié le 18/06/2012

"You read of extreme cases of jamais vu in the newspapers. There was one recently involving a husband who, after eighteen years of happy stability with his wife, told her he had a surprise for her. He blindfolded her, then ‘hit her over the head with the blunt end of an axe, fracturing her skull in three places.’ She survived and tried to forgive him, even vouched for his good character in court. The husband-turned-attacker, unable to explain his moment of terminal hostility, deferred to psychiatrists who offered the opinion that it was his past that had caused it. "

Jonathan Dee on the place of the novel in a money-driven society par Jonathan Dee, publié le 13/06/2012

About money there is nothing new. Nor about social inequity. When I wrote The Privileges, I was careful to leave out as many time-specific details as possible, because I felt that to tie its characters, and the lives they led, to the circumstances of a particular moment in history was to excuse them, in a way, and thus to miss the point of their existence...

Nicholson Baker on his literary career and how he came to write about sex par Nicholson Baker, publié le 13/06/2012

I think the job of the novelist is to write about interesting things, including things that might not seem all that interesting at first glance--like, say, a lunch hour on an ordinary weekday – and to offer evidence that life is worth living. At least, that’s what I try to do – not always successfully. My first book was about a lunch hour – the second about sitting in a rocking chair holding a baby – the third about literary ambition. There was almost no sex in those three books. But I always wanted to be a pornographer – because after all sex is amazing and irrational and embarrassing and endlessly worth thinking about. My fourth book was called Vox, and it was about two strangers telling stories to each other on the phone. I decided to write it as one big sex scene, because if you’re going to do it, do it.

“Break On Through (to the Other Side)”: An Overview of The Historiography of U.S. Conservatism in the Sixties par Aurélie Godet, publié le 30/04/2012

Since the 1990s, a new generation of American historians has been exploring the “other,” counter-countercultural side of the 1960s, focusing on either the higher echelons of conservative power, the work of conservative militants at the grassroots, or on the ideas of specific conservative thinkers. This article aims to review some of the existing literature, while providing insight into what a comprehensive history of the conservative sixties should also include.

Narration in the Human Mind par Siri Hustvedt, publié le 16/02/2012

"Human beings are forever explaining themselves to themselves. This is the nature of our self-consciousness. We are not only awake and aware of the world around us, but are able to reflect on ourselves as actors in that world. We reason and we tell stories. Unlike our mammalian relatives who do not narrate their own lives, we become characters in our own tales, both when we recollect ourselves in the past and imagine ourselves in the future. Our ability to represent our experience in language - in those sounds and signs of our essential intersubjectivity - allows us the necessary symbolic alienation required for mental time travel..."

The Neurosciences and Literature: an “exquisite corpse” or a “meeting of the minds”? par Lionel Naccache, publié le 16/02/2012

In the context of the Walls and Bridges project in New York, a meeting has been organized for October between an American novelist - Siri Hustvedt - and a French neuroscientist on the topic of "fiction," both mental and literary. This will obviously be the time to ask ourselves: can we imagine a promising future for meetings between the neurosciences of cognition and the world of literary creation? Is this merely the random juxtaposition of two terms to which we are attached, or the genuine dialectical culmination of self-consciousness? An amusing, trendy quid pro quo, or a key moment in our knowledge of ourselves as tale tellers?

Beauty, Intensity, Asymmetry par François Chaignaud, publié le 16/02/2012

"Beauty, Intensity, Asymmetry are born in my mouth like three goddesses ripe for veneration - far more than Identity, Gender, or Transgression, and utterly different from them. But this Beauty, of which we know only that some wish to buy but never to sell it, much less allow it to disappear or cause it to flee - nor to be the man or woman who no longer possesses anything but memories of it - is she a prescriptive goddess?"

For Free Union in Criticism par Pierre Bayard, publié le 14/02/2012

The idea of attributing old works to new authors is not original. It has long been practiced by those lovers of literature, our students, who do not hesitate to attribute The Old Man and the Sea to Melville or War and Peace to Dostoevsky. What is interesting is that this kind of reinvention is not always properly appreciated by teachers. Students are not the only readers to practice reattribution. Scientific discoveries have on occasion forced historians of literature - and even more, of art - to ascribe works to creators other than those to whom they were at first incorrectly attributed...

Three Words for Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich par Wendy Lesser, publié le 14/02/2012

As an element in Shostakovich's music, the shame is perhaps not as audible as the dread, but it is everpresent nonetheless. One cannot point to a precise place in the music where you can hear it, but it underlies and supports most of the other painful emotions, and if it were removed from the mix, you would certainly notice the difference. The shame is apparent in the harshness with which Shostakovich treats himself and his own feelings; it saves the saddest quartets (like the Eighth) from self-pity, and it saves the more cheerful ones (like the Sixth) from any tincture of smugness or self-assurance...

“The shadow of the fifth”: patterns of exclusion in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child par Anne-Laure Brevet, publié le 06/12/2011

This study of The Fifth Child (1988) attempts to show that the eponymous character, a traumatic semi-human creature who neither assimilates into his ordinary family nor conforms to the demands of society impersonates a drive for disorder, chaos and violence undermining collective ideals. On the one hand, the fact that the alien child is not only excluded from family life but also from any type of “normal” human interaction, especially in Ben, in the World (2000), reveals hidden discordant notes that further lead to the disruption of his model family. On the other hand, as the symbol of a dark, destructive force fighting against enlightenment and progress, Ben’s inherently disruptive figure is a reminder of the two World Wars and the impersonation of social unrest. Through the various patterns of exclusion triggered off by his subversive presence, the fifth child reveals that the primitive dimension of the self and of humanity at large should be understood as part and parcel of human nature.

The State and Surveillance: Fear and Control par Didier Bigo, Mireille Delmas-Marty, publié le 20/09/2011

The prevention discourse, which has existed for so long has gone a step further with the belief of scientific capability to predict human behaviour by sophisticated software. It is not enough to assess possible futures, to do simulation and alternative scenarios and to guess what virtual future has the most chance to become actualised, now the professionals of security technologies want to reduce all these possible futures to only one future; often the future of the worst case scenario. And it is this selected future that they read as a future perfect, as a future already fixed, a future they already know...

Katherine Mansfield’s Short Stories: An Introduction par Emilie Walezak , publié le 28/06/2011

Katherine Mansfield wrote short stories exclusively and produced a large body of work though she died quite young from tuberculosis when she was 30. She is one the best representatives of modernist short story writing. Virginia Woolf herself admitted to Mansfield that she was jealous of her writing: "and then Morgan Foster said the Prelude and The Voyage Out were the best novels of their time, and I said damn Katherine! Why can't I be the only woman who knows how to write?"

The Legacy (1944) par Virginia Woolf, publié le 28/06/2011

Texte de la nouvelle accompagné de l'enregistrement d'une lecture de ce texte.

Miss Brill (1920) par Katherine Mansfield, publié le 28/06/2011

Texte de la nouvelle accompagné de l'enregistrement d'une lecture de ce texte.

Breaking Bounds in Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things par Catherine Pesso-Miquel, publié le 13/05/2011

This article on Arundhati Roy's novel focuses more particularly on the idea of dividing lines, turned into parodied, ridiculous devices, and on their transgression. Analysing in particular the love scenes between the two lovers and the incest scene between the two twins, it attempts to define the differences rather than the similarities between such scenes, asking the question: is transgression necessarily linked with progression? The article will show that Roy, like other Indo-Anglian novelists such as Salman Rushdie, goes to war with the sacrosanct notion of purity, celebrating instead mixing, hybridizing, and the blurring of boundaries.

Wayne Koestenbaum - Notes on Affinity par Wayne Koestenbaum, publié le 18/04/2011

Wayne Koestenbaum (États-Unis), poète, romancier et essayiste, est l'auteur d'une œuvre protéiforme et subversive qui explore les multiples facettes de l'identité américaine à travers de nombreux thèmes (les arts, la célébrité, les gender studies...) et où se mêlent les cultures littéraire, artistique, musicale et populaire. Dans Hotel Theory, il met en regard une enquête philosophique sur les hôtels et le récit d'une rencontre improbable entre deux icônes de la culture américaine : l'actrice mythique Lana Turner et la star du music-hall Liberace.

Lord Peter Melchett on GMOs par Lord Peter Melchett, publié le 12/11/2010

Lord Peter Melchett was a whip in James Callaghan's Labour Party and later became minister of state for Northern Ireland. He was appointed Executive Director of Greenpeace UK in 1989 and he has been Policy Director at the Soil Association since 2002. He was invited by Libération to tackle the issue of GMOs.

Jonathon Porritt on sustainable economy par Jonathon Porritt, publié le 09/11/2010

Jonathon Porritt was a prominent member of the Ecology Party in the 70's and 80's. He later became Tony Blair's chief environmental adviser and was chair of the Sustainable Development Commission. He was invited by Libération to take part in a debate on sustainable economy with Yannick Jadot.

Religion et politique (Entre la grande séparation et la consubstantialité) par Abdelwahab Meddeb, publié le 08/11/2010

Le 12 octobre 2010, la Villa Gillet organisait à l'Institution des Chartreux une rencontre autour de la perception des religions dans notre société. Réunissant des spécialistes français et américains des questions religieuses, cet évènement était l'occasion de faire le point sur ces "nouvelles conflictualités" qui sont souvent la conséquence de préjugés et de pratiques culturelles spécifiques à chaque nation. Ce texte a été écrit par Abdelwahab Meddeb, écrivain et poète franco-tunisien, enseignant la littérature comparée à l'Université de Nanterre.

Shakespeare’s The Rape of Lucrece: the wound that cannot heal par Clifford Armion, publié le 17/09/2010

In Shakespeare's works, the assaults on the body and the marks they leave in the flesh constitute a complex form of language. The shape of the wound, its seriousness, its position on the body, the situation in which it was inflicted, the terms and metaphors used to describe it: all these elements contribute to its semantic load.

James Frey - Assises Internationales du Roman 2010 par James Frey, publié le 03/09/2010

James Frey was one of the guests of the Assises Internationales du Roman, organised by the Villa Gillet and Le Monde in Lyon. He introduced his novel Bright Shiny Morning and told the audience about his perception of Los Angeles and his conception of storytelling.

Race Relations and the Presidency of Barack Obama par Randall Kennedy, publié le 05/03/2010

I attended the inauguration of Barack Obama with two million other people who created the largest crowd in the history of Washington, D.C. Although I grew up in the nation's capital, I had never before attended an inauguration. None had previously beckoned. But this time I felt compelled to be present. The sentiments that gripped me were similar to those that animated many who attended the proceedings.

Coming in from the Cold? The Thatcher Legacy, Devolution and Cameron’s Conservatives in Scotland 1979-2009 par Peter Lynch, publié le 23/02/2010

In opposition, Conservative leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron adopted quite different strategies to deal with Scotland and devolution. Mrs Thatcher's intention was to avoid splitting her own party over the devolution issue in advance of the 1979 devolution referendum,with an emphasis on party management. Cameron has had to deal with a more complex picture due to the institutional reality of devolution, the unpopularity of the Conservatives in Scotland and the election of the SNP government in 2007. This environment brought a cautious but positive approach to Scotland from Cameron, involving five different strands of territorial management in preparation for the 2010 UK general election.

Reducing social democracy’s last redoubt: the privatisation and marketisation of the NHS in England par Colin Leys, publié le 12/02/2010

Since 1980 the NHS has been converted from a planned, integrated service, to a set of quasi-businesses operating in a health care market, in which an increasingly significant role is being played by for-profit corporations. This policy was initiated by the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher and John Major but continued and driven much further by the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. The paper outlines the sequence of initiatives through which the transformation has been accomplished and assesses what has driven the change, and why it has been so relatively easy to accomplish.

« To disfigure, or to present » (MND, 3.1.57) : la contradiction de King Lear à la scène par Isabelle Schwartz-Gastine, publié le 22/01/2010

Toutes les pièces du corpus renaissant offrent des réalités théâtrales qui ne prennent sens que par les mots du texte incarnés par des comédiens sur la scène de planches de bois dénuées de décor. C'est ainsi que, de comédie en tragédie, Shakespeare a interrogé la théâtralité en montrant ce qui n'était pas et en occultant parfois ce qui était. Dans cette communication, on se penchera sur la manière dont le texte donne substance à une nature grandiose, tantôt hostile (la lande sous la tempête), tantôt spectaculaire et dangereuse (la falaise de Douvres), qui n'existe vraiment que par l'interprétation des acteurs. Les spectateurs n'ont rien à voir devant eux sur la scène, mais, grâce à la présentation dynamique qui s'offre à leur regard, l'illusion théâtrale parvient à se métamorphoser en réalité.

The Brooklyn Follies: extracts par Juliette Tran, publié le 08/10/2009

« I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning I traveled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain. »

A reading of The Brooklyn Follies through the lens of autofiction par Marie Thévenon, publié le 02/10/2009

From his very first novel, The Invention of Solitude, to his very last, Man in the Dark, Paul Auster has always played with the mixture between autobiography and fiction. The Brooklyn Follies pertains to this tradition and it is through the lens of autofiction that this article proposes to explore this novel. The author starts by observing the similarities between Paul Auster and his characters and pays close attention to the intertextual dimension. She then analyses the metafictional aspects of the narration. Finally, she places this novel among Paul Auster's other works and wonders if there has been an evolution in his writing.

The Ethics of the BBC par Beth Harper, publié le 04/07/2009

This essay will look at the ways in which the ethics of the BBC have been manifested, compromised and disputed by drawing upon particular instances of crisis, both in its endorsement of certain popular culture personalities in its programming, and in its BBC News coverage of international events such as the Iraq war and the Arab-Israeli conflict. We shall see the controversy that has surrounded the BBC in recent times and investigate the various debates on public morality, journalistic integrity and cultural sensitivity that have ensued.

Littérature et société aux Etats-Unis : 1917-1968 par Alice Béja , publié le 27/11/2008

Cet article propose un regard sur la littérature américaine du 20e siècle dans son rapport à l'idée d'Amérique. Les guerres et crises que traversent les Etats-Unis au cours de la période 1917-1968 contribuent à une dégradation de l'"American Dream" en "American way of life" à laquelle les écrivains américains réagissent en recherchant de nouvelles origines pour construire, en fin de compte, leur propre idée d'Amérique.

Ralph Waldo Emerson et le transcendantalisme américain par Marc Bellot , publié le 14/10/2008

Figure marquante de la pensée du 19ème siècle américain, Ralph Waldo Emerson ne se laisse pas aisément enfermer dans une catégorie bien délimitée : doit-on le définir comme théologien, philosophe, ou théoricien de la « loi morale » devant concourir au salut des âmes ? Il est tout cela à la fois.

Fiche de lecture : Celebration, Harold Pinter par Juliette Dorotte, publié le 07/05/2008

In a posh restaurant, two couples of friends, Matt and Prue, and Lambert and Julie, are having lunch. They are together to celebrate Lambert and Julie's wedding anniversary, but the mood is not proper to celebration. At an adjacent table, another couple is having a talk. Revelations are fusing on both sides: the man had an affair, and the woman reveals the dark side of her past. Before the six characters meet and make the general atmosphere even tenser, three characters come and go between the tables: the owner of the restaurant, a waitress, and a mythomaniac waiter.

Fiche de lecture : On Beauty, Zadie Smith par Claire Poinsot, publié le 07/05/2008

The Belseys have always claimed to be liberal and atheist, but when their eldest son Jerome goes to work as an intern in England with his father Howard’s enemy the, ultra-conservative Christian Monty Kipps, there are bound to be a few mishaps. When Jerome finally returns home, the Kipps in turn move to Wellington, the town where the Belseys live. Working at the same university, Howard and Monty develop a rivalry, while their wives become friends. The novel hinges on the mirror effects and the interactions between the two families. Their relationship is a complex one which includes friendship, rivalry, lust and envy. Each family will have problems to solve, both personal and professional.

Fiche de lecture : Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer par Alice Bonzom, publié le 07/05/2008

The novel narrates the story of Oskar Schell, a precocious nine-year-old inventor, pacifist, percussionist, and Francophile, whose father died during the attacks of 9/11. A couple of years after his father’s death, he finds a mysterious key in an envelope with the name “Black” on it, in a vase in a closet. Sure that the key belonged to his father, he decides to visit everyone named “Black” in the five boroughs of New York to discover what it opens. Intertwined with Oskar’s quest are letters written by his grandparents, who went through the bombings of Dresden in the Second World War.

Fiche de lecture : Arthur and George, Julian Barnes par Thibaud Harrois, publié le 07/05/2008

The novel is based on an actual story, known as the "Great Wyrley Outrages". At the end of the 19th century, George Edalji, a solicitor from Great Wyrley, a village near Birmingham, was wrongly found guilty of slaying a number of farm animals. He was sentenced to seven years in jail. In 1906, Edalji was released but he was not pardoned. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the famous author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, was involved in the case. Indeed, he tried to prove the man's innocence and was at the source of what was considered as an English Dreyfus Case.

Fiche de lecture : The Discomfort Zone, Jonathan Franzen par Auréliane Narvaez, publié le 03/05/2008

Thirty years after the colorful 1970’s, hurricane Katrina, the Bush Administration’s failure, social inequalities are proof that America is sinking into the Discomfort Zone, along with the narrator who gives way to his discrete feeling of helplessness and invites us to live with it the way he does in a disenchanted but yet humourous way.

Fiche de lecture : Blackbird, David Harrower par Valentine Vasak, publié le 03/05/2008

An unmanned canteen, food leftovers are spilt over the floor. Una, a young woman in her late twenties, pays a visit to Ray at his workplace; a photo of him in a trade magazine has put her on his track. The last time she saw him, she was twelve and he was over forty, they haven’t set eyes on each other since. Ray happens to be her former lover, the man who took her virginity when she was not even pubescent. Together they go over grievous memories: the disgrace that followed the disclosure of their affair for both Una whose parents refused to quit the neighbourhood exposing her to public humiliation, and Ray who spent six years in prison. Gradually, bygone feelings resurface questioning the morally unacceptable nature of their relationship.

Across the ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’: Jean Rhys’s Revision of Charlotte Brontë’s Eurocentric Gothic par Sylvie Maurel, publié le 20/03/2008

In this article, Sylvie Maurel analyses the Gothic destabilizing machinery at work in Jean Rhys’s "Wide Sargasso Sea". The first Gothic element the author looks at is the demonic agency that haunts the novel. Colonial history lingers in Rhys’s world and accounts for some of the strange and unexpected phenomena that occur on the island. Actually, the narrative is under the double influence of a past set in an actual history of slavery and a future already written in the story of "Jane Eyre". Rhys’s characters have an uncanny prescience of what lies ahead and a sense that they cannot evade repetition. The motif of witchcraft is another element that links "WSS" to the Gothic. The motif goes beyond a picturesque reference to the West Indian context and functions as a metaphor of the relationship between language and power. Christophine’s witchcraft and Rochester’s Eurocentric discourse are two similar attempts at transforming the world through language. The power of language is also reflected in the way the novel constantly brings together multiple voices and conflicting views which seem to hide a secret rather than reveal a final truth. Rochester can only feel the presence of such a secret and risks delirium as he tries to get a grip on something that constantly eludes him.

John Muir's Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf par Jean-Daniel Collomb , publié le 22/01/2007

Lorsque John Muir entame son gigantesque voyage à pied depuis Indianapolis jusqu'à Cedar Keys, en Floride, via le Kentucky, le Tennessee et la Georgie, il n'a que 29 ans mais il est déjà habitué à de longues randonnées dans les bois. Son goût de la liberté et son attrait pour les sciences naturelles l'ont en effet amené à parcourir l'arrière-pays de son Dunbar natal en Ecosse, les bois du Wisconsin de son adolescence ainsi que les denses forêts canadiennes. Pourtant, c'est un accident du travail, survenu en mars 1867 dans la fabrique de pièces détachées où il s'est révélé être un contremaître hors pair, qui l'incite à assouvir ce rêve de liberté intégrale. John Muir perd la vue pendant deux mois et se promet sur son lit malade qu'il s'échappera de l'univers mécanique où il s'est enfermé si la vue lui est rendue.