Ensemble de contributions qui porte sur les vicissitudes de la traduction du chinois dans les langues européennes depuis trois siècles, sur la diversité des idiomes et des personnages impliqués. Variation aussi, de la proximité du traducteur au texte d’origine, de son empreinte propre, de son époque, du genre choisi et, bien sûr, de la langue cible – ou des langues intermédiaires. Ce parcours à travers un choix de textes littéraires, philosophiques et scientifiques illustre les enjeux réels et fantasmatiques de la relation de la Chine et de l’Europe. Il ne s’agit pas de confrontation, mais bien plutôt, à travers le processus de traduction, d’approfondissement mutuel – ce qui s’observe par exemple quand plusieurs interprétations traditionnelles du texte de départ sont prises en compte.

African-American writers willingly attend European symposiums dealing with their work because scholars here focus on textual aspects American readers frequently leave aside. The essays collected here arose on the occasion of such a symposium sponsored by the Conseil Scientifique de l'Université François-Rabelais de Tours. Other essays were commissioned later in order to make the collection as complete as possible when new books came out. We wish to thank Percival Everett for his enlightening collaboration during the debates, as well as for the long interview he has allowed us to transcribe here.

Play is one of humanity's straightforward yet deceitful ideas: though the notion is unanimously agreed upon to be universal, used for man and animal alike, nothing defines what all its manifestations share, from childish playtime to on stage drama, from sporting events to market speculation. Within the author's anthropological field of work (Mongolia and Siberia), playing holds a core position: national holidays are called "Games," echoing in that way the circus games in Ancient Rome and today's Olympics. These games convey ethical values and local identity. Roberte Hamayon bases her analysis of the playing spectrum on their scrutiny. Starting from fighting and dancing, encompassing learning, interaction, emotion and strategy, this study heads towards luck and belief as well as the ambiguity of the relation to fiction and reality. It closes by indicating two features of play: its margin and its metaphorical structure. Ultimately revealing its consistency and coherence, the author displays play as a modality of action of its own. "Playing is no 'doing' in the ordinary sense" once wrote Johan Huizinga. Isn't playing doing something else, elswhere and otherwise ?

Monasticism, in all of its variations, was a feature of almost every landscape in the medieval West. So ubiquitous were religious women and men throughout the Middle Ages that all medievalists encounter monasticism in their intellectual worlds. While there is enormous interest in medieval monasticism among Anglophone scholars, language is often a barrier to accessing some of the most important and groundbreaking research emerging from Europe. The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West offers a comprehensive treatment of medieval monasticism, from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. The essays, specially commissioned for this volume and written by an international team of scholars, with contributors from Australia, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, cover a range of topics and themes and represent the most up-to-date discoveries on this topic.