Dying For France

In the past century Western attitudes toward the soldier’s death have undergone a remarkable transformation. Widely accepted at the time of the First World War – when nearly ten million soldiers died in uniform – as a redemptive sacrifice on behalf of the nation, the soldier’s death is increasingly regarded as an unacceptable tragedy. In Dying for France Ian Germani considers this transformation in the context of the history of France over the expanse of five centuries, from the Renaissance to the present. Blending military history with the history of culture and mentalities, Germani explores key episodes in the history of France’s wars to show how patriotic models of the soldier’s death eclipsed those inspired by the aristocratic code of honour, before themselves giving way to disillusioned representations. First-hand testimony of soldiers, surgeons, and others provides the basis for vivid descriptions of how a soldier encountered death, on and away from the battlefield. Works of art and print culture are used to analyze how soldiers’ deaths were represented to the public and to discern how popular attitudes evolved over time. Encompassing France’s major external conflicts and its civil wars, this study also considers the experiences of soldiers recruited from the French colonial empire. Relating changes in the perception of military mortality to broader changes in society’s relationship with death, Dying for France highlights essential turning points in the rise and fall of the patriotic ideal of the soldier’s death.

In the past century Western attitudes toward the soldier's death have undergone a remarkable transformation. Widely accepted at the time of the First World War - when nearly ten million soldiers died in uniform - as a redemptive sacrifice on behalf of the nation, the soldier's death is increasingly regarded as an unacceptable tragedy. In Dying for France Ian Germani considers this transformation in the context of the history of France over the expanse of five centuries, from the Renaissance to the present. Blending military history with the history of culture and mentalities, Germani explores key episodes in the history of France's wars to show how patriotic models of the soldier's death eclipsed those inspired by the aristocratic code of honour, before themselves giving way to disillusioned representations. First-hand testimony of soldiers, surgeons, and others provides the basis for vivid descriptions of how a soldier encountered death, on and away from the battlefield. Works of art and print culture are used to analyse how soldiers' deaths were represented to the public and to discern how popular attitudes evolved over time. Encompassing France's major external conflicts and its civil wars, this study also considers the experiences of soldiers recruited from the French colonial empire. Relating changes in the perception of military mortality to broader changes in society's relationship with death, Dying for France highlights essential turning points in the rise and fall of the patriotic ideal of the soldier's death.

The contrast between battlefield and home front, soldier and civilian was the basis for memory and collective gratitude. Postwar commemoration, however, also grew directly out of the long and agonized search for the remains of hundreds of thousands of missing soldiers, and the sometimes contentious debates over where to bury them. For this reason, the local monument, with its inscribed list of names and its functional resemblance to tombstones, emerged as the focal point of commemorative practice. Sherman traces every step in the process of monument building as he analyzes commemoration's competing goals--to pay tribute to the dead, to console the bereaved, and to incorporate mourners' individual memories into a larger political discourse."--Pub. description.

Although today in France church attendance is minimal, when death occurs many families still cling to religious rites. In exploring this common reaction to one of the most painful aspects of existence, Thomas Kselman turns to nineteenth-century French beliefs about death and the afterlife not only to show how deeply rooted the cult of the dead is in one Western society, but how death and the behavior of mourners have been politicized in the modern world. Drawing on sermons preached in rural and urban parishes, folktales, and accounts of seances, the author vividly re-creates the social and cultural context in which most French people responded to death and dealt with anxieties about the self and its survival. Inspired mainly by Catholicism, beliefs about death provided a social basis for moral order throughout the nineteenth century and were vulnerable to manipulation by public officials and clergy. Kselman shows, however, that by mid-century the increase in urbanization, capitalism, family privacy, and expressed religious differences generated diverse attitudes toward death, causing funerals to evolve from Catholic neighborhood rituals into personalized symbolic events for Catholics and dissenters alike--the civil burial of Victor Hugo being perhaps the greatest symbol of rebellion. Kselman's discussion of the growth of commercial funerals and innovations in cemetery administration illuminates a new struggle for control over funeral arrangements, this time involving businessmen, politicians, families, and clergy. This struggle in turn demonstrates the importance of these events for defining social identity. Originally published in 1993. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

An exquisite novel of North Africans in Paris by "one of the most original and necessary voices in world literature" WINNER OF THE 2021 PEN TRANSLATION PRIZE Paris, Summer 2010. Zahira is 40 years old, Moroccan, a prostitute, traumatized by her father's suicide decades prior, and in love with a man who no longer loves her. Zannouba, Zahira's friend and protege, formerly known as Aziz, prepares for gender confirmation surgery and reflects on the reoccuring trauma of loss, including the loss of her pre-transition male persona. Mojtaba is a gay Iranian revolutionary who, having fled to Paris, seeks refuge with Zahira for the month of Ramadan. Meanwhile, Allal, Zahira's first love back in Morocco, travels to Paris to find Zahira. Through swirling, perpendicular narratives, A Country for Dying follows the inner lives of emigrants as they contend with the space between their dreams and their realities, a schism of a postcolonial world where, as Taïa writes, "So many people find themselves in the same situation. It is our destiny: To pay with our bodies for other people's future."

How do we learn to die? Most of us spend our lives avoiding that question, but this luminous book--a major best-seller in France--answers it with a directness and eloquence that are nothing less than transforming. As a psychologist in a hospital for the terminally ill in Paris, Marie de Hennezel has spent seven years tending to people who are relinquishing their hold on life. She tells the stories of her patients and their families. de Hennezel teaches us how to turn death--our loved ones' or our own--from something lonely and agonizing into a sacred passage. She discusses the importance of an honest reckoning, the value of ritual, the necessity of touch. In imparting these lessons, Intimate Death becomes a guide to living more fully, more intensely, than we had thought possible. "Unique...Of all the books I have read about the endings of our lives, this elegiac testimony has taught me the most."--Sherwin B. Nuland, M.D., author of How We Die "The quiet, obvious truths [de Hennezel] discovers in her work--these things have a kind of cumulative power."--Washington Post Book World From the Trade Paperback edition.

From fashion to food and their famous je ne sais quoi attitude toward life itself, everybody wants to be French. But a passion can quickly turn into an obsession. The City of Light begins to dim when the body of a teenage girl is discovered floating in the Seine—and then another—and it quickly becomes clear that the Paris police are out of their depth. When the desperate American mother of a newly missing teen comes to beg for Claire’s help to find her troubled daughter before it’s too late, how can Claire say no?

'You're 82 years old. You've shrunk six centimetres, you only weigh 45 kilos yet you're still beautiful, graceful and desirable' – so begins André Gorz's 'open love letter' to the woman he has lived with for 58 years and who lies dying next to him. As one of France's leading post-war philosophers, André Gorz wrote many influential books, but nothing he wrote will be read as widely or remembered as long as this simple, passionate, beautiful letter to his dying wife. In a bittersweet postscript a year after Letter to D was published, a note pinned to the door for the cleaning lady marked the final chapter in an extraordinary love story. André Gorz and his terminally ill wife, Dorine, were found lying peacefully side by side, having taken their lives together. They simply could not live without one another. An international bestseller, Letter to D is the ultimate love story – and all the more poignant because it's true.