This book analyses the use of the crucial concept of 'taste' in the works of five major seventeenth-century French authors, Méré, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère and Boileau. It combines close readings of important texts with a thoroughgoing political analysis of seventeenth-century French society in terms of class and gender. Dr Moriarty shows that far from being timeless and universal, the term 'taste' is culture-specific, shifting according to the needs of a writer and his social group. The (...) notion of 'taste' not only helped to shape a new dominant culture, but also registered the conflicts within that culture between a view of taste that presupposted the values of 'polite society' as an exclusive (though not necessarily aristocratic) group, and a view that stressed the value of the classical-humanist tradition as a source of standards ratified by a broader public. this study sheds light not only on the central concept, but also on the individual authors discussed and on the norms of French classical literature in general. (shrink)

Although the great French novelists of the last two centuries are widely read in America, there is a widespread notion that little of importance has happened in French literature since the heyday of Sartre, Camus, and the nouveau roman. Curious American readers seeking new, up-to-date information and analyses will find in Paths to Contemporary French Literature a stimulating and much-needed guide to the major currents of one of the worldas great literatures. This critical panorama of (...) contemporary French literature introduces English-language readers to over fifty important writers and poets. Emphasizing authors who are admired by their peers, John Taylor offers a compelling insideras view. (shrink)

** Named a Best Book of 2007 by Ready Steady Book, an independent book review website, working in association with The Book Depository, which is devoted to reviewing the best books in literary fiction, poetry, history and philosophy. "An invaluable guide to new literary territory, Taylor is equally good in discussing writers whom the reader already knows." -- Raphael Rubenstein, Rain Taxi "The paths that John Taylor invites us to walk in this book are inviting ones: fifty-five luminous essays devoted (...) to the broad avenues and the seductive byways of contemporary writing in France. John Taylor is opinionated but his opinions are rigorously argued ones. He strikes a canny and productive balance among a variety of competing concerns: the will to instruct his readers, the desire to share with them some very real pleasures, the imperative to interpret critically, and so forth. What emerges here is the image of a rare reader, one who is always willing to engage literature on its own terms, and that of a literature that is mobile, ambitious, provocative and deeply invested in the process of becoming. -- Warren Motte, Review of Contemporary Fiction "In this great introduction to some 50 French writers and poets little known outside of France, Taylor (The Presence of Things Past; The World As It Is), winner of the Three Oaks Prize for Fiction, invites his readers on an interesting journey."--Library Journal "Here it is under one cover: a deeply informed, delightful, and provocative stroll' through the literature of postwar France. From the chroniques of Cingria to the mythologies of Barthes, John Taylor introduces us to the prose and poetry of dozens of French authors, many of them regrettably never translated into English. Taylor is a skillful and witty guide, able to locate a writer between the traditions of Catullus and Pavese or to identify a style borrowing equally from Hlderlin and Hemingway. Working across every genre from autobiography to poetry to fiction to travelogue to the essay, these French authors, well known and obscure, have plumbed the quintessential French problem' of subjectivity. Tired of the culture wars? The language-lyric debate? The post-game analysis of post-structuralism? I suggest you dive into any one of John Taylor's Paths' for a reminder of the astonishing breadth and depth and complexity of which literature is capable."--Erica Funkhouser, author, Pursuit "Here we have vast erudition revealed in graceful, arresting sentences, writing that provides confidence and pleasure. John Taylor's writing strongly evokes Henry James' writing about French literature in his own day. Like James, Taylor is both generous and astute, never relinquishing admiration for the intricate process of analysis, analysis that he does so penetratingly and eloquently. However brilliant Taylor's observations, behind them rests a deep esteem for the writer, for his or her work, and for the tradition from which it comes. This is critical writing that is satisfying at every single level."--Richard Goodman, author, French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France "As they stroll through forgotten quartiers of Paris, wander in memory through the fields of a Norman childhood, reflect on a poem's resemblance to the salt marshes of the Breton coast, mourn the death of a beloved young wife, or look for answers in questions to which the only answers are more questions--France's most celebrated and, in some cases, still uncelebrated contemporary writers are exquisitely captured by John Taylor in a prose both limpid and lapidary and through a host of finely wrought essays, each a small jewel of critical insight, poetic sensitivity, and meticulous interpretation. Like a message in a bottle cast up on the shore, this work offers the English-speaking reader an original and poetic way to understand, appreciate, and love French. (shrink)

Presents essays (previously unpublished) by prominent philosophers on topics such as rationality and alien cultures, moral realism and social science, human sciences in the case of literature, Foucault's genealogical method, Vigotsky and artificial intelligence. No index. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This Volume illuminates the notion of meaning in the arts-in literature, painting, music, and dance. Specific topics include theory in the arts; interpretations of meaning; objectivity in meaning; and the consumer as a participant in art. Brings together articles from prominent philosophers and practitioners of the arts, which illuminate the notion of meaning in the arts. Addresses meaning in literature, painting, music, and dance. Explores the relationship between authorial intentions and the viewer's interpretation of meaning; the possibility of (...) objective meaning; and the role of the consumer as a participant in the work of art. (shrink)

Although generally philosophers have put a high valuation on reason, increasingly the role of emotions in motivating action is being recognized. The essays in this volume explore the emotions from a variety of perspectives, ranging from Aristotelian views of the passions to the new findings of cognitive science, and from such diverse starting points as medieval literature and psychological studies.

Self-blaming expressions are common. For example, “I blame myself for missing the deadline;” “I’m the only one to blame for my alcoholism;” “I can’t stop blaming myself for what he did to me;” “Bless me Father, for I have sinned;” “My bad, I’ll pay for it;” “I’m so ashamed of having done that;” and, “Damn me, I’ve done it again!”Self-blame occupies a sizable chunk of what is published in academic psychology, but there is not that much on the topic in (...) philosophy. My intent is to offer some thoughts and explorations about self-blaming in the context of a wider view of negative responsibility ascriptions that are not uttered at the time of the untoward action, and to use a distinction drawn in a piece from the psychological literature to suggest a link between a certain kind of self-blame, repentance, and acts of atonement.PreliminariesSelf-blaming is a form of holding oneself responsible, a way of expressing a negative self-reactive attitude subsequent to the performance of an action. .. (shrink)

Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Volume XXIV, Life and Death: Metaphysics and Ethics is an important contribution to the literature on the intersection of issues of metaphysics and issues of ethics. In the Midwest Studies tradition, twenty of the more important philosophers writing in this area have contributed original papers that extend the boundaries of philosophical discussion of issues that are of both theoretical and practical concern to a wide-ranging audience. Topics considered include the concept of human life, the relationship (...) between the concept of personal identity and the understanding of death, normative appraisals of death, capital punishment, euthanasia, the postponement of death and the impact of a theory of death and afterlife on one's ethical perspective. (shrink)

Although the great French novelists of the last two centuries are widely read in America, there is a widespread notion that little of importance has happened in the French literature since the heyday of Sartre, Camus, and the nouveau roman. Some might argue that even well-read Americans are ignorant about what is happening in European literature generally. Certainly, there has never been so few translations of foreign books in the United States, or so little coverage of (...) foreign writers. Curious American readers need new, up-to-date information and analyses about what is happening elsewhere. Paths to Contemporary French Literature is a stimulating and much-needed guide to the major currents of one of the world's great literatures. This critical panorama of contemporary French literature introduces English-language readers to over fifty important writers and poets, many of whom are still little known outside of France. Emphasizing authors who are admired by their peers, John Taylor offers a compelling insider's view. Their pioneering essays included in this book offer incisive analyses of the ideas motivating current writing and delve into a writer's or poet's entire output. Although some names may be familiar, the reader obtains fresh reappraisals of their seminal work. Especially noteworthy, however, are Taylor's lively introductions to many other key writers who either have not yet crossed the English Channel, let alone the Atlantic. Combating the notion that French literature is overtly intellectual, inaccessible, or interested only in formal experimentation, Taylor shows that many French writers are instead acutely inquisitive about the outside world, shrewd observers of reality, even very funny. Although not conceived as a "reference book," the volume possess some qualities of a reference work: a good bibliography, reliable dates and biographical facts. (shrink)

To demonstrate some manifestations of the integration of Vietnamese literature (in the case of Hồ Biểu Chánh), specifically with French literature, this paper will highlight the intersection of global and national characteristics in Vietnamese literature at that time, particularly in Hồ Biểu Chánh's adaptation of French literary works. Additionally, the paper employs analytical and synthetic methods to break down the research problems, thereby providing a clearer understanding of Hồ Biểu Chánh's unique features. This approach emphasizes (...) the inheritance, development, and originality in certain aspects of Hồ Biểu Chánh's integration with world literature in the early 20th century. (shrink)

The present study examines the idea of lucid self-delusion in late nineteenth and early twentieth century French literature. It traces its gradual incorporation at every level of the text--author, narrator and reader--and connects this tendency to trends in contemporary German philosophy . As a primary vehicle for lucid self-delusion, story-telling becomes a central theme in the confessional prose and symbolist poetry of the period. Here the narrative voice often performs a deliberate and conscious falsification upon the material of (...) the tale, just as the author, at a higher level, spins experience into acknowledged fantasy. The result is that the reader, while willingly submitting to the illusion on which all reading depends, must also reconstruct the activity of speaker and author, and is thus placed in a similar double position. ;If the reader's relationship to the text is ultimately made to resemble that of the author, this is because the latter discerns a new form of heroism in such a rigorous lucidity, coupled with the determination to believe: a resolution to live life as if it made sense, even if this means forcing it to do so; to act as if one had a fixed essence, even if this means constructing one. Lucid self-delusion becomes a value to fill the vacuum; and self-reflexivity, the aesthetic analogue of this psychological state, comes to characterise the literary output of an age. (shrink)

The healthcare environment is knowledge driven and knowledge and human resource dependent. Despite the paucity of evidence on which to shape and evaluate organizational change, health‐care in Canada has undergone many changes in the last 15 years. In the pursuit of enhanced productivity, healthcare administrators have turned to industrial and engineering models. Using available Canadian research and policy reports, and where necessary, American literature, this paper describes the impact of re‐engineering on nursing and on the relationship between nursing and (...) patient outcomes. It also identifies emerging trends and ways forward. (shrink)

This collection of essays, on French and francophone prose, poetry, drama, visual art, cinema and thought, assesses guilt and shame in relation to structures of ...

In recent years, substructural approaches to paradoxes have become quite popular. But whatever restrictions on structural rules we may want to enforce, it is highly desirable that such restrictions be accompanied by independent philosophical motivation, not directly related to paradoxes. Indeed, while these recent developments have shed new light on a number of issues pertaining to paradoxes, it seems that we now have even more open questions than before, in particular two very pressing ones: what (independent) motivations do we have (...) (if any) for restrictions on structural rules, and what to make of the plurality of new logics emerging from these restrictions, i.e. how to ‘choose’ among the different options. In this paper, we address these two questions from the perspective of a dialogical conception of logic that we've been advocating in recent years. We will argue that dialogical interpretations of structural rules, that is, as rules determining specific properties of the dialogues in question, provide a conveniently neutral framework to adjudicate between the different substructural proposals that have been made in the literature on paradoxes. (shrink)

"This collection of essays arises from the 7th annual Cambridge French Graduate Conference, held July 4-5, 2005, whose theme was 'threat'.".

This volume contains new papers addressing a number of new and traditional issues pertaining to the roles of representations in visual perception. Among these issues is the one concerning the nature of the perceptual state itself – e. g. on the issue of whether the perceptual state, like its distal objects, is structured, for instance by possessing a spatial character. Other issues include those of whether at least aspects of the distal object are presented immediately to us visually, whether representation (...) plays any (interesting) role in disjunctivist and naïve realist accounts of visual experience and the relationship among visual perception, attention and representation. The anthology includes a wide variety of positions on the subject of the roles of representations in visual perception, which would help to close the literature gap and will be of interest to scholars from all schools and trends of philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Taking to heart Massaro's [(1988) Some criticisms of connectionist models of human performance, Journal of Memory and Language, 27, 213-234] criticism that multi-layer perceptrons are not appropriate for modeling human cognition because they are too powerful (i.e. they can simulate just about anything, which gives them little explanatory power), Regier develops the notion of constrained connectionism. The model that he discusses is a distributed network but with numerous constraints added that are (more or less) motivated by real psychophysical and neurophysical (...) constraints. His model learns static prepositions of spatial location such as in, above, to the left of, to the right of, under, etc., as well as dynamic prepositions such as through and the Russian iz-pod, meaning out from under. The network learns these prepositions by viewing a number of examples of them. Very importantly, this book tackles-and goes a long way towards resolving-the problem of the lack of negative exemplars (i.e. we are only very rarely told when something is not above something else), which should lead to overgeneralization, but does not. This book is a significant contribution to connectionist literature. (shrink)

Through a comparative reading of three novels of the late nineteenth century, namely Le Disciple, A rebours and Un homme libre, the monastic hermitage has emerged as a common place in which the protagonists of the novels, in search for a spiritual space, let themselves be shaped and transformed by the materiality of places. Through the consideration of the specific features of these closed and sacred sanctuaries, as well as the identity and the dream of the end of the 19th (...) century man, a new literature searching for an ideal will appear openly. (shrink)

Medicine and the humanities have been exploring new ways to improve the quality of healthcare. One such collaboration is the practice of narrative medicine which uses literature to teach physicians to better meet their patients’ needs. Narrative medicine, however, draws primarily from Anglophone literature, yet post-war French literature, philosophy and criticism have much to add to the theoretical and practical underpinnings of narrative medicine. As well, such scholarship provokes a number of questions that expose certain weaknesses (...) in narrative medicine as it is practiced currently. As this paper demonstrates, drawing post-war French literature into narrative medicine opens new ways to think about life, narrative and the place of the patient in the modern healthcare system. (shrink)

This paper makes a comparison between Milan Kundera and Annie Saumont. I assume there is a message being sent by Saumont in her highly recommended short story “You Should Have Changed at Dol,” regarding history in Kundera, but what is the message? I offer two interpretations.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ornament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century French LiteratureGeoffrey Galt HarphamOrnament, Fantasy, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century French Literature, by Rae Beth Gordon; xvii & 288pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992, $42.50.As Rae Beth Gordon notes in the introduction to her stimulating and original book, ornament, which is devoted to grace, charm, and attractiveness, becomes the object of suspicion and moralizing disdain when it exceeds what numerous (...) commentators refer to as “its proper limits.” The limits are set low by those who wish to maintain the integrity of the center—the melodic line, the text, the main image, the literal sense, the consensual meaning—against the disruptive and excessive forces of the margin. Transgress the margin to which ornament is properly confined, as artists in virtually every medium available in nineteenth-century France did, and a series of crucial binary distinctions collapses, threatening not only the center, but ornament itself, which is defined by its limits, its position on a well-defined edge.What distinguished nineteenth-century French literature was, from Gordon’s point of view, a sustained interest, among critics as well as artists, in cultivating the creative possibilities opened up by compromising the boundary between ornament and its other. So fertile and successful has this project proven to be that today’s postmodernity has not come to an end of it, continuing to discover its most interesting possibilities on the margin. And within the field of art history, we see that ornament, once widely denigrated as the source of confusion, has become virtually orthodox; as the title of Ernst Gombrich’s book on the subject indicates, ornament is now held to appeal to and gratify The Sense of Order.Gordon takes advantage of the posthistory of her subject, applying to studies of Nerval, Mallarmé, Gautier, Huysmans a theoretical armature drawn from the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Winnicott, and Lacan. Drawing attention to a dimension of meaning or intention that has been “suppressed or excluded from the central field,” ornament, she argues, “anticipates the way psychiatry, perceptual psychology, and aesthetics converge in the fin de siècle.” Ornament, in other words, is cognate with the unconscious, and its prevalence in fin de siècle art and literature may be considered a sign of a certain cultural receptivity to the discoveries Freud was about to make, the “French” modality of a phenomenon to which Freud would give a “Viennese” formulation. [End Page 364]It is fashionable, especially in medieval studies, to focus on the disruptively counter-doctrinal potential of marginal elements such as gargoyles or textual illuminations. But Gordon generally argues another kind of case altogether, one that has, perhaps, even greater contemporary interest. Ornament, she claims, discloses the essential principles of aesthetic production. The expressive power of line, the “sense of order” to which it appeals, the subordination of literal depiction to design, the primacy of relationships over individual figures—all these reflect, as Wilhelm Worringer was explicitly to claim in 1908, energies deriving from the very beginnings of art itself.Thus, when principles and figures of ornament began to invade the “sense” or “business” of the text itself, as they did in nineteenth-century French literature, what is happening is not only a radical adjustment of a certain conception of ornament, but a large movement of return. Art becomes under these circumstances both decadent and primordial, devoting itself to both meaningless proliferation and to “pure art.” Gordon tracks this ambivalent movement with very considerable assurance and learning in an argument as sinuous as the ornamental line itself. The chapters on Nerval (“Lace as Textual Metaphor”) and Gautier (“Trills, Frills, and Decorative Frames for the Object of Desire”) are particularly illuminating, inspired by a kind of theoretical wit that does justice to their objects. Gordon is somewhat less successful in communicating the relevance to Mallarmé of Lacan, the exposition of whom—of which?—is laborious. But the responsibility probably lies more heavily with Lacan than with Gordon. Labored accounts of Lacan may even be considered as a species of ornament, a refinement and a new barbarism, peculiar to critical discourse in the fin of our own siècle.Geoffrey Galt HarphamTulane UniversityCopyright... (shrink)

The undisputed master of stylistic criticism, Leo Spitzer combined phenomenal learning in historical and comparative linguistics with brilliant and original critical insight. He was born in Vienna in 1887. He studied Romance Philology at the Universities of Vienna and Paris and then taught at Vienna, Bonn, Marburg and Cologne. After escaping from Germany in 1933, he taught briefly at Istanbul and then at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. He died in 1960. He was the author of over 800 books, (...) articles, reviews and notes on the language and literatures of France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Romania, Germany, England and America from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. This translation brings together for the first time in any language all of Spitzer's work on the literature of seventeenth-century France, including 'Racine's classical piano' and 'Saint-Simon's portrait of Louis XIV'. Each of the essays demonstrates in practical rather than theoretical terms the essential unity of literary and linguistic study. David Bellos's introduction sets Spitzer's method of textual and stylistic interpretation in its historical context and sketches out the career of this supremely knowledgeable reader for whom knowledge was less important than understanding. (shrink)

Analytic philosophy was born from philosophic reflection on logic and mathematics. It has been at its strongest in these and related domains of reflection, domains that are friendly to definition and analytic clarity. From time to time, analytic philosophers, some very distinguished, have produced fine work on literature and the arts. But these areas remain underexplored in the analytic tradition. This volume is focused upon language that does not fit within the usual analytic paradigms. It's highlights include two pieces (...) of original poetry on philosophic subjects (by philosophers who are also published poets), and philosophic reflection on poetry, literature more generally, metaphor, and related subjects. (shrink)

Cover -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Chapter One: Writing against Theodicy: Secularization in Baudelaire's Poetry and Critical Essays -- Chapter Two: The Mourning of God and the Ironies of Secularization in Baudelaire's Le Spleen de Paris -- Chapter Three: Sublimation and Conversion in Zola and Huysmans -- Chapter Four: The Staging of Doubt: Zola and Huysmans on Lourdes -- Chapter Five: Religious and Secular Conversions: Transformations in Céline's Medical Perspective on Evil -- Conclusion -- (...) Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- About the Book. (shrink)