The centennial of Andre Maurois's birth in 1885 has made this a most appropriate moment to produce a comprehensive work assessing his role as one of the leading literary figures in the Western world. Jack Kolbert's The Worlds of Andre Maurois draws heavily from his close personal association with Maurois as well as from painstaking analyses of each of Maurois' published works and of many of his unpublished and private papers. Maurois had the virtue of serving as a supreme communicator - a writer who could transform the most complex subject matter into readable, tidily organized, and above all lucid works of prose narrative. Unchallenged as the foremost biographer of 20th century literary figures, he also produced well-written and accurate histories of the three nations he knew best: France, England and the United States. For decades his novels and short stories enjoyed worldwide popularity. Climats may well be regarded as a novelistic classic and his science fiction continues to attract many readers. With a warm spirit of appreciation Jack Kolbert's monograph covers all of the major aspects of this fascinating literary figure: his human characteristics, his presence in French and international society, the persons who peopled his private and public worlds, his great biographies, novels, short stories, histories, essays, and articles of criticism. Kolbert's study on Maurois is probably the most comprehensive work on this subject to date.

The apparent self-sufficiency of joie de vivre means that, despite the widespread use of the phrase since the late nineteenth century, the concept has rarely been explored critically. Joie de vivre does not readily surrender itself to examination, for it is in a sense too busy being what it is. However, as the essays in this collection reveal, joie de vivre can be as complex and variable a state as the more negative emotions or experiences that art and literature habitually evoke. This volume provides an urgently needed study of an intriguing and under-explored area of French literature and culture from the Middle Ages to the contemporary era. While the range and content of contributions embraces linguistics, literature, art, sport and politics, the starting point is, like that of the term joie de vivre itself, in French language and culture. This volume will be of special interest to researchers across the full range of French studies, from literature and language to cultural studies. It will be of direct appeal to specialist readers, university libraries, graduate and undergraduate students, and general readers with a lively interest in French literature and culture of the medieval, early modern and broad modern periods. This book's fresh perspectives on the theme of joie de vivre and its relation to questions of privacy, contemplation, voyeurism, feasting and nationhood will also be of relevance to researchers in comparative and cognate disciplines.

As a courageous opening of photographic self-observation to the other, the works of the two photographers-JiniAfonso and Natalia Zavialova-allow participation in the search for the self. With the juxtaposition and confrontation of the two oeuvres, the exhibition and catalogue create a nexus that leads to fulgurations in the communication of the photographs-electrical short circuits between the images, the photographers and the viewer. The resulting newness, a temporary third, makes us aware of the subcutaneous connections with ourselves, both as a reflection and as a pictorially emotional experience.

Annotation Le but de ce livre est de promouvoir un echange de vues entre philosophes et historiens sensible aux chevauchement de la philosophie contemporaine de l'histoire et de la theorie de la pratique historienne d'aujourd'hui. The purpose of this book is to encourage an exchange of views between philosophers and historians interested in the overlap between contemporary philosophy and theory of historical practice.

The Francophone Caribbean boasts a trove of literary gems. Distinguished by innovative, elegant writing and thought-provoking questions of history and identity, this exciting body of work demands scholarly attention. Its authors treat the traumatic legacies of shared and personal histories pervading Caribbean experience in striking ways, delineating a path towards reconciliation and healing. The creation of diverse personal narratives—encompassing autobiography, autofiction (heavily autobiographical fiction), travel writing, and reflective essay—remains characteristic of many Caribbean writers and offers poignant illustrations of the complex interchange between shared and personal pasts and how they affect individual lives. Through their historically informed autobiography, the authors in this study—Maryse Condé, Gisèle Pineau, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edwidge Danticat, and Dany Laferrière—offer compelling insights into confronting, coming to terms with, and reconciling their past. The employment of personal narratives as the vehicle to carry out this investigation points to a tension evident in these writers’ reflections, which constantly move between the collective and the personal. As an inescapably complex network, their past extends beyond the notion of a single, private life. These contemporary authors from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti intertwine their personal memories with reflections on the histories of their homelands and on the European and North American countries they adopt through choice or necessity. They reveal a multitude of deep connections that illuminate distinct Francophone Caribbean experiences.