Michael G. Paulson – författare

Because advances made by science and technology far outstripped improvements in human nature, utopian dreams of perfect societies in the twentieth century quickly metamorphosed into dystopian nightmares, which undermined individual identity and threatened the integrity of the family. Armed with technological and scientific tools, totalizing social systems found in literature abolish the distinction between public and private life and thus penetrate and corrupt the very core of all utopian blueprints and visions: the education of future generations. At the heart of the family, mothers as parents transmit their diverse cultural traditions while socializing their children and thus compete with ideologically driven systems that usurp their role as educators. Mothers and Masters in Contemporary Utopian and Dystopian Literature focuses, therefore, on the thematic importance of this and other maternal roles for generic metamorphosis: the shift to dystopia invariably is signaled by the inversion of traditional maternal roles. The longevity of the utopian-dystopian literary tradition and persistence of the maternal model of human relationships serve as points of reference in this post-modern age of relative cultural values. Meta-utopian exploration of this thematic tension between utopia and dystopia reminds us that «no place» may not be home, but we need to keep going there.

Staging Subversions: The Performance-within-a-Play in French Classical Theater defines a new type of metadrama using Le Tartuffe as its paradigm and explores the complex, ambiguous, and enlightening relationships that metadrama maintains with the social and political orders. While metadramatic scenes are most often concerned with theater itself, the performance-within-a-play adopts an important function in the play’s plot, and, consequently, in the social world of the play. The performance-within-a-play is particularly associated by the classical playwrights with the family structure, with the class system, with women’s social roles, and with the politics of absolutism.

A scene of self-sacrifice can never be staged or secured. The work of Friedrich Hölderlin, arguably one of the most profound writers of the German Enlightenment, supports this idea in fascinating ways. Much of Hölderlin’s critical reception, however, has the poet saying the exact opposite. Joseph Suglia counters the dominant critical reception of Hölderlin’s Empedokles fragments, which would transform the tragic hero’s experience of mortality into a project that would be accomplished in the name of the transcendent reconciliation of disparate spheres. This book also focuses on a densely detailed consideration of the work of the great French critic and literary artist, Maurice Blanchot, whose own treatment of self-sacrifice exists in closer proximity to Hölderlin’s than the former appears to recognize. For Blanchot, it is argued, self-sacrifice is «a sacrifice that is an engagement with, in, and for language, a sacrifice that is both madness and mystery».

The Naturalists wrote from a «scientific» point of view, and no science had more currency in society in the late nineteenth century than Darwin’s theory of evolution. Until now, this motif in Guy de Maupassant has escaped critical attention. Maupassant’s Fiction and the Darwinian View of Life examines evolutionary theory in the literature in a way accessible to students of literature and science alike. It first explains the theoretical basis and Maupassant’s affinity for it, then studies one short story, «La Ficelle», in its entirety, proposing a new and interesting interpretation based on evidence read through a Darwinian lens.The remaining chapters organize a lively Darwinian reading of Maupassant according to topics such as natural selection, heredity, and materialism. The book shows that Darwinism and the economic variety of Social Darwinism figure significantly in Maupassant’s fiction. It is a must for students and teachers of Naturalism and Darwinism across the liberal arts.

The early years of Third French Republic (1880-1914) saw multiple political factions vying for the legacy of the French Revolution. This book examines one of those factions, the anarchist movement, and the role played by the French Revolution in its political thought and action. The French Revolution became a vital, if not well recognized, tool of the anarchist movement to popularize and legitimize its revolutionary activity while engaged in a struggle with other political forces of the Republic to claim ownership over the Revolutionary heritage. The anarchists of the Third Republic wrote histories of the Revolution that reflected their own political orientation. They asserted themselves as part of the intellectual tradition of the Enlightenment, which they believed had helped spark the Revolution. The anarchists appropriated the music and popular culture of the French Revolution in their own propaganda. Moreover, they orchestrated revolutionary action and political theatre on the day most associated with the Revolution, July 14. In the Revolution, the anarchists saw glimmers of hope, precursors to their own movement, as well as an effective means to present their message to a wider audience as they also offered models for others to imitate.

Por primera vez en la historia de los estudios sobre Gustavo Adolfo Becquer, El color del romanticismo presenta un nuevo punto de vista basado en un doble analisis comparativo: por un lado, entre el romanticismo aleman, en la persona de Novalis, y el espanol, en la persona de Becquer; y por otro lado, entre literatura y pintura, pues ambos escritores usan el color, especialmente el azul, como instrumento pictorico que les sirve a ambos para solucionar la insuficiencia lingueistica de la que parece adolecer la literatura romantica europea. A la zaga de los teoricos del color decimononicos, principalmente Goethe y su libro Zur Farbenlehre (Hacia una teoria de los colores), de 1810, el estudio semantico del uso del color azul en ambos poetas permite una clasificacion entre usos oniricos y no oniricos de dicho color, que situa a Becquer en un mas apropiado lugar en el panorama de los romanticos europeos.

In this book, Eva Yampolsky explores the questions of identity, illusion and suicide in the works of Guy de Maupassant. Utilizing a historical context which stimulated numerous social, technological and scientific transformations and developments during the 19th century, Dr. Yampolsky identifies two defining aims.Firstly, she examines the various figures of the double, such as visual representations of the subject through painting, mirror reflection, generational proximity and resemblance, and the relation between self-perception and social norms. She seeks to show the complex and often conflicting relation between the individual and society, and more specifically the attempts and frequent failures to manipulate, control and embody a unique definition of self. This divergence between the social norms, such as class, profession, gender and honor, and the characters’ notion of self is what drives the narrative. Secondly, Eva Yampolsky analyzes the consequent psychological turmoil, madness and even suicide of many Maupassantian characters. This impossible task of embodying an identity that is sole and unique, as it is lived and perceived by the subject and others, in most short stories and novels leads to the characters’ disillusionment and, in a great number of texts, violence or suicide. This book draws on the social, political and economic revolutions that redefined the individual. New forms of visual representation and communication, namely with the invention of photography and the developments of the press, bring forth questions of authenticity, doubling, and a new distinction between private and public spheres. Finally, the birth of psychiatry at the turn of the 19th century and the emergence of new disciplines, such as sociology and psychoanalysis, inscribe passions, illusions and suicide in new discursive and disciplinary frameworks. These transformations and developments are pervasive and, in many cases, explicit in Maupassant’s work, influences that have aided and nourished the literary analysis of his texts.

Métamorphoses des rôles et statuts par les écritures féminines offre une analyse de la façon dont les romans féminins et la littérature non romanesque défient le statut légal et les rôles sociaux imposés aux citoyennes féminines françaises et francophones, à travers les institutions et les pratiques juridiques, depuis le XVIII ème siècle jusqu’au XX ème siècle. Pour présenter ces défis, Cécile Gouard se concentre sur la détermination des femmes à rechercher l’égalité des droits civiques, en dénonçant les effets du code napoléonien qui les a réduites au statut légal de mineures. Dr Gouard affirme que les romancières féminines, en particulier, ont dénoncé les inégalités sociales et familiales afin de permettre à toutes les femmes l’accès aux études supérieures et à des carrières jusqu’alors réservées aux hommes. Ce faisant, ces écrivaines ont défié les modèles d’éducation qui, pendant longtemps, avaient privilégié les ordres patriarcaux. Ces femmes ont ainsi lutté contre les lois archaïques qui interdisaient contraception et avortement. Dr Gouard montre comment ces écrivaines ont tenté de détruire le mythe bourgeois du couple conjugal, en appelant à des alliances consensuelles qui confèrent aux femmes une pleine égalité. Au final, à travers ces textes qui appellent à la fin du patriarcat et des modèles de féminité préjudiciables, l’auteure ouvre une perspective nouvelle sur les lois et statuts actuels.

José de Acosta’s De procuranda Indorum salute: A Call for Evangelical Reforms in Colonial Peru contextualizes and analyzes the deployment of Catholic missionary forces in the Andes. Its exhaustive approach to the ecclesiastic and political reforms of late-sixteenth-century Peru exposes the philosophical and legal underpinnings of Spain's colonial policies. As this book analyzes José de Acosta’s De procuranda Indorum salute, one of the most important treatises of the colonial period, it explores influences and intentions and reveals context and subtext. Comprehensive in its appraisal of Acosta’s intellectual achievement, this book is essential for scholars and students of this early period of Christian and European expansion in the Americas. Not only does Gregory J. Shepherd examine Acosta’s missionary manual against the controversial backdrop of Las Casas and Sepúlveda, but he also reconstructs the political atmosphere surrounding Toledo’s massive and intrusive transformation of Andean life. Most importantly, this text carries out a thorough study of the ideologies – Christian, Jesuit, and European – underlying Acosta’s appeal for political, social, and ecclesiastic reform.

The only up-to-date and comprehensive text and reader of Algerian literature available in English, Algerian Literature: A Reader’s Guide and Anthology offers the reader a historical and critical overview of the literature from the early twentieth century to the present, introduces Algerian authors, and provides selections from a wide range of their writings, many translated here for the first time. It begins with an overview chapter that charts the evolution of Algerian literature and puts it in its proper historical context, followed by five thematic chapters: decolonization and cultural affirmation, the War of Independence, modernization and its discontents, emigration, and history. The chapters begin with introductions on the themes under discussion and the selections are preceded by biographies of the authors, as well as detailed summaries of the larger works from which they are extracted. Finally, each chapter concludes with a bibliography and sources for readers seeking additional information and insight. The selections included in Algerian Literature: A Reader’s Guide and Anthology have been carefully chosen to reflect the richness and diversity of Algerian literature. Accordingly, they are extracted from various literary genres: novels, plays, and poems. Furthermore, they are from works that belong to different literary movements: realism, modernism, and postmodernism. The variety and the outstanding quality of the selections, along with the superb introductions, summaries, and biographies make Algerian Literature: A Reader’s Guide and Anthology an ideal text for courses in Algerian, Francophone, and world literature courses. It will also be of interest to general readers outside the classroom who want to broaden their literary horizons.

The translations by Juan Ramón Jiménez, first resident of the Caribbean to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, have been neglected, likely because many of them were published under the name of his wife, Zenobia Camprubí Aymar, along with many of his poems. Close analysis of the style, along with personal letters and diaries, reveals his significant participation in these works. The translations were a crucial source of psychological and financial support during the long exile from Spain after the Civil War. Other elements in the process were the Nobel-winners Rabindranath Tagore, William Butler Yeats, and André Gide. Intertextual incorporations from Shakespeare, the King James Bible, Rubén Darío, and Ezra Pound are noteworthy, as Juan Ramón and Zenobia maneuvered between the Symbolist and Imagist poetic movements, experimenting with different theories of translation, from Dryden to Jakobson. As Jiménez constantly revised his own work, hitherto unpublished annotations prove important to understanding this journey.

Le poète Etzer Vilaire (1872–1951) a fait l’objet de nombreuses critiques de la part des intellectuels car son œuvre s’écarte de la conception dominante de la poésie haïtienne adossée à une politique ouverte et une place importante accordée à la “couleur locale” et à la langue créole, en tant qu’incarnation d’une conscience raciale et nationale. Je défends la thèse selon laquelle de tels rejets renforcent une conception idéologique et contraire à l’histoire de la poésie haïtienne. Celle-ci est incompatible avec la vision et le projet esthétiques de Vilaire qui visent à élever le statut d’Haïti comme nation et à démontrer la qualité de sa littérature à l’étranger. Mon étude de Vilaire revêt un certain intérêt, car l’auteur a été en grande partie méprisé et négligé par de nombreux critiques littéraires. Alors qu’il est considéré comme un poète mineur, j’établis que Vilaire a fait preuve d’innovation, au sens où il s’est écarté des canons de la littérature haïtienne traditionnelle. Il a introduit de nouveaux sujets, notamment en poésie, et ravivé le rôle du poète. Étant donné qu’il a bousculé la tradition littéraire haïtienne, certains critiques ont condamné son œuvre à laquelle ils dénient toute place dans la littérature haïtienne. Dans ce travail, j’aborde cette controverse au sujet de son œuvre et démontre, via l’analyse de ses poèmes, qu’il reflète les idées de son temps et la préoccupation de ses prédécesseurs. Mes recherches mettent également l’accent sur le fait que Vilaire n’était pas uniquement un poète, mais également une figure politique. Et c’est en tant que poète et homme politique qu’il a défendu son pays, sa race et a mis au défi ses collègues de s’engager sur cette voie. Je souligne le fait que, contrairement à d’autres auteurs contemporains de son époque, la notion de religion a modelé le contenu de son travail. Enfin, je démontre que Vilaire a été une personnalité influente dans la littérature haïtienne. Au nom de ses conceptions littéraires, de sa perception de la langue française et de sa tentative de défense de sa race, il a été un précurseur du mouvement de la négritude. Ce livre sera utile aux chercheurs et lecteurs qui s’intéressent à la poésie francophone, à la politique, et à la religion.

Volery and Venery in the French Wars of Religion is the first book-length study to provide an analysis of literary and cultural texts through the lens of people’s perspectives on hunting in the context of the French Wars of Religion. Court poets such as Jodelle and Ronsard highlight the central role of the king in the hunt. The study examines cynegetic scenes and attitudes toward hunting in the works of Sebastian Brant, Erasmus, Rabelais, Jodelle, Ronsard, Ceppède, Montaigne, and Aubigné. An effort is made to relate the artistic representation of the hunt to the details of the hunt presented in the hunting manuals of Du Fouilloux, De Thou, Franchières, and Arcussia, among others. At a time when the monarchy needed to reflect stability and continuity, the figure of the king dominates cynegetic exercise.Losse argues that hunting remained a major preoccupation in France in spite of the disruptions and violence caused by the Wars of Religion. The analysis examines some basic questions about hunting in early modern France. How did religious affiliation affect attitudes toward hunting? Did the violence of the Wars of Religion change how people viewed cruelty to animals? Falconry and large game hunting offer a perspective from which to view the cultural and political life leading up to and through the Wars of Religion.Historians of the hunt, students of early modern Europe, and graduate students in cultural studies or anthropology will find the work to provide a unique perspective on political and social institutions. Museums of hunting will find this book vital to their mission of instructing modern audiences on the centrality of hunting to aristocratic life.

Several poetic and prose compositions in early Italian literature contain references to the bubonic plague and other illnesses that were used in the language both literally and metaphorically. The first detailed description of a plague epidemic, however, was written by Giovanni Boccaccio in the introduction to The Decameron. It is a precise and dramatic view of the physical, social, and medical conditions of Florence during the epidemic of 1348. The Theme of the Plague in Italian Letters follows the subsequent developments, both in poetic and prose works, until the time of the plague of Milan of 1630. With the report of Giuseppe Ripamonti and other writers, the plague became not only a medical issue but also a topic involving the laws of the time as they appear in the trials of the presumed untori (spreaders of the disease). A combination of faith, fear, and superstition led the legal officials and the populace to imagine that the plague was a divine punishment and was deliberately spread by individuals of criminal nature. Arrests and trials involving interrogations and the use of merciless physical tortures (a legitimate procedure in Europe at that time) brought about a formidable reaction led by early humanitarians, such as Cesare Beccaria and Pietro Verri, who determined the eventual changes in the laws and legal procedures. The Plague of Milan of 1630 by Giuseppe Ripamonti, the treatise by L. A. Muratori Del Governo della Peste, 1720, and several interventions contributed to a series of radical changes that appeared in the works of Alessandro Manzoni, such as The Betrothed and The History of the Pillar of Infamy that are discussed in part or in full in this study.

Covering nine major works of Catalan writer Terenci Moix, Reflexive Writing and the Negotiation of Spanish Modernity: Autobiography and Fiction in Terenci Moix’s Novels places Moix’s fictional prose against the backdrop of his autobiographical novels, thus highlighting the importance of the author’s daily life experiences and their transmutation into the virtuality of fiction. This study, the first to look at Moix’s works in both Catalan and Castilian, and in both autobiography and fiction, contests the implicit critical perspective that examines this period using the dichotomies of modernity/postmodernity and autobiography/fiction. It proposes Spanish modernity as a unique phenomenon that produces a distinctive personality as a result of the tensions of the period. Arthur J. Hughes’s examination of Moix’s modernity forces a new look at the notion of Spanish postmodernity usually assumed to be a result of the transition to democracy after the death of Franco, providing a new perspective on the separation of autobiographic and fictional genres that argues for the reflection of one in the other.

This book focuses on Henry IV of France as he is presented in selected works by Voltaire, Alfred de Vigny, Alexandre Dumas père, and George Sand. The book depicts King Henry from his earliest years until his assassination, and shows how Henry was a dominant figure in life and an overwhelming figure as a memory in the minds of his descendants and his subjects. Special mention is made of the St. Bartholomew’s Day’s Massacre, the conquest of the throne, the Edict of Nantes, the religious conversions, and the ladies and multiple offspring of King Henry.This book will be of interest to students of both nineteenth-century French literature and sixteenth-century French history courses, as a text or as a supplement.

In A Fragmented Caribbean Empire, Jerome Teelucksingh examines some of the personalities and organizations that are often overlooked in analysis of the Caribbean region and its diaspora, and in particular the Indo-Caribbean presence in literature, migration and politics. Most of the existing scholarship on the Caribbean has tended to overlook this and other ethnic, religious and cultural minorities. The author utilizes interviews and delves into diverse archival sources to create a paradigm of a region with a rich historical past and a promising future. Research on indentureship and migration to North America and Britain elucidates the strong transnational ties between the Caribbean and other regions of the world, and shows how the Caribbean can be conceptualised as a global ‘empire’. Behind this lies the author’s unwavering conviction that the Caribbean should be acknowledged as important and given its rightful place in global history.

The protagonist of the novel Zárate, Santos Zárate was a historical figure. A Venezuelan highwayman with a stronghold in the forest of Güere, he terrorized the valleys of Aragua for some twelve years. The action of the novel takes place in 1825, a few years after Venezuela had sealed its independence from Spain by defeating the Spanish forces at the Battle of Carabobo (June 24, 1821). At this time, General Francisco José de Paula Santander was vice president of the Gran Colombia, the conglomerate of Colombia and Venezuela that had fought Spain for its freedom. General José Antonio Páez governed the Venezuelan region, with his headquarters in Valencia. The entire nation readied itself to confront the great scourge of the times—the terrible and feared marauders that sowed apprehension and terror among the residents of the valleys of Aragua.There is in the novel the exaltation of an elite agrarian way of life, idyllic, edenic, that contrasts vividly with the violence of life in the llanos and, especially, with the activities of the highwaymen. Moreover, there is a delicate love story that develops pari passu with the official activities of the main protagonists. The development of the female characters may seem a bit quaint for today’s tastes, though they are beautiful and carefully drawn. An irrepressible humor, at times subtle, pervades the entire novel.

In this groundbreaking study of Francophone Jewish poetry of the Shoah, Gary D. Mole engages with an extensive corpus of poetry by more than forty poets, all of whom were active after the war in France, Belgium, Switzerland, or Quebec but who came originally from Eastern Europe, North Africa, or the Middle East. Some were adolescents or adults during the war, either in hiding, interned or deported, first-hand witnesses to the Nazi persecution of European Jews. Others were hidden children, survivors writing of their buried traumatic experiences many years later. And a second-generation born after the war became postmemory proxy witnesses. Broadly chronological in approach, the book places the poetry in its various social, political, and historical contexts, underlines the specific geographical locations of the authors, and offers close thematic, formal, stylistic, and linguistic readings of the selected texts, highlighting some of the major aesthetic and ethical problems raised. Lucidly written, this book throws critical light, for scholars and nonspecialists, on a rich and unjustly neglected corpus, arguing convincingly for its inclusion in current debates on French-language literary representations of the Shoah and more widely in what is commonly referred to as "Holocaust Poetry.""Voices of Pain, Cries of Silence is a comprehensive, lucid, and erudite study of Francophone Jewish poetry of the Holocaust. Unlike the work of English-language Holocaust poets, French-language verse has been until now largely ignored. By ensuring that Francophone Jewish poets are finally heard, Voices of Pain, Cries of Silence constitutes an important scholarly intervention in the study of Holocaust literature."—Helena Duffy, Professor of French, University of Wrocław, Poland"An astonishing, comparative, comprehensive, and powerful scan of the various forms of poetic writing in French about the Shoah, never presented in this scope before, by authors belonging to a large variety of national and cultural backgrounds, providing the foundation of texts to be considered in future scholarship on poetry of the Shoah in other languages."—Thomas Nolden, Professor of Comparative Literary Studies, Wellesley College, Mass