A reexamination of 1970s France as a decade of intellectual, cultural, and political consequence, both then and now Number 143 of Yale French Studies, "The French Seventies," reintroduces and reorients readers to a decade typically considered a period of disillusionment and malaise in the wake of the 1960s. This collection of essays, edited by Richard J. Golsan and Lynn A. Higgins, shows that the era was in fact a period of intellectual, cultural, and political ferment. It was a time not of spectacular leaps forward but rather of searching, regrouping, and cultivating trends that would flower in the 1980s and beyond, for better or worse. The volume offers interdisciplinary scholarly essays on history, film, national identity as articulated in the mode rétro, social and literary movements, and more. Interviews and personal history essays by major figures who actively participated in this decade add further dimension to this broad collection.

This new volume of Yale French Studies both honors and adds to Edwin M. Duval's scholarship on the history and development of French Renaissance literature. Edwin (Ned) M. Duval's scholarship focuses on teasing out hidden structures and symmetries in the poetry and prose of the French Renaissance, a period when literature underwent radical changes. In honor of Duval's literary "sleuthing," the contributors in this issue explore the symmetries, as well as the dissymmetries, the fragility, ambiguities, and contradictions of French Renaissance literary production. This volume addresses evolving literary practices, innovations in genre, and intellectual developments in sixteenth-century France.

Number 137/138 in Yale French Studies, this collection of essays examines poetry in French by authors from across the Maghreb Although in recent years Maghrebi literature written in French has enjoyed increased critical attention, less attention has been paid specifically to the genre of poetry. The sixteen essays collected in this special issue of Yale French Studies show how the poem provides a uniquely privileged perspective from which to examine questions relating to aesthetics, linguistics, philosophy, history, autobiography, gender, the visual arts, colonial and postcolonial society and politics, and issues relating to the post-Arab Spring.

Focused on existentialism, this issue explores current writers, thinkers, and texts affiliated with the movement In 1948, Yale French Studies devoted its inaugural issue to existentialism. This anniversary issue responds seventy years later. In recent years, new critical and theoretical approaches have reconfigured existentialism and refreshed perspectives on the philosophical, literary, and stylistic movement. This special issue restores the writers, thinkers, and texts of the movement to their subversive strength. In so doing, it illustrates existentialism's present relevance, revealing how the concerns of the past urgently bristle into our own times.

Drawing on texts the French thinker wrote between 1938 and 1947, Hussey addresses the question and challenge of Bataille's relation to mysticism, examining the relation between his account of an inner experience of lost identity, and how he parallels it to traditional forms of religious mysticism. Subjects are not indexed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR.

To understand why the concept of aesthetic sexuality is important, we must consider the influence of the first volume of Foucault's seminal The History of Sexuality. Arguing against Foucault's assertions that only scientia sexualis has operated in modern Western culture while ars erotica belongs to Eastern and ancient societies, Byrne suggests that modern Western culture has indeed witnessed a form of ars erotica, encompassed in what she calls 'aesthetic sexuality'. To argue for the existence of aesthetic sexuality, Byrne examines mainly works of literature to show how, within these texts, sexual practice and pleasure are constructed as having aesthetic value, a quality that marks these experiences as forms of art. In aesthetic sexuality, value and meaning are located within sexual practice and pleasure rather than in their underlying cause; sexuality's raison d'être is tied to its aesthetic value, at surface level rather than beneath it. Aesthetic sexuality, Byrne shows, is a product of choice, a deliberate strategy of self-creation as well as a mode of social communication.

This annual French XX Bibliography provides the most complete listing available of books, articles, and book reviews concerned with French literature since 1885. Unique in its scope, thoroughness, and reliability of information, it has become an essential reference source in the study of modern French literature and culture. The bibliography is divided into three major divisions: general studies, author subjects (arranged alphabetically), and cinema. Number 59 in the series contains 12,703 entries. William J. Thompson is Associate Professor of French and Undergraduate and Interdisciplinary Programs in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Memphis.