Joie De Vivre In French Literature And Culture

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.

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.

In the tradition of Bringing up Bebe and French Toast, Cathy Yandell's The French Art of Living Well is a delightful look at French culture, from literature to cuisine to humor and more, showing how the French have captured that magic elixir known as joie de vivre. What is joie de vivre, and why is it a fundamentally French concept? In search of those ineffable qualities that make up the joy of living, this lively book takes readers on a voyage to France through forays into literature, history, and culture. How does art contribute to daily life? Why is cuisine such a central part of French existence? Why are the French more physical than many other cultures? How do French attitudes toward time speak volumes about their sense of pleasure and celebration? And finally, to what extent is this zest for life exportable? These and other questions give way to a dynamic sketch of French life today. Peppered with anecdotes and humor, this book uncovers some of the secrets of the celebrated French art of living well. Drawing from her years of living in France as a student, professor, and mother, Yandell crafts an honest and profound appraisal of French culture and how la joie de vivre can be developed in anyone’s life.

The Art of the Text contributes to the fast-developing dialogue between textual studies and visual culture studies. It focuses on the processes through which writers think and readers respond visually and, in essays by researchers in literature, screen and visual studies, the volume explores the visuality of the literary and non-literary text, with a sustained focus on French material of the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Visuality is appraised here not as a state, but as a set of processes of adaptation, resistance, negotiation, and transformation. By reading visually, the contributors here reactivate the visual-textual relations of canonical texts - from Romanticism to Naturalism, Surrealism to high Modernism; from film to fan literature, television to picture language.

'Neither spoke another word, they were gripped by a shared, unthinking madness as they plunged headlong together into vertiginous rapture.' Orphaned with a substantial inheritance at the age of ten, Pauline Quenu is taken from Paris to live with her relatives, Monsieur and Madame Chanteau and their son Lazare, in the village of Bonneville on the wild Normandy coast. Her presence enlivens the household and Pauline is the only one who can ease Chanteau's gout-ridden agony. Her love of life contrasts with the insularity and pessimism that infects the family, especially Lazare, for whom she develops a devoted passion. Gradually Madame Chanteau starts to take advantage of Pauline's generous nature, and jealousy and resentment threaten to blight all their lives. The arrival of a pretty family friend, Louise, brings tensions to a head. The twelfth novel in the Rougon Macquart series, The Bright Side of Life is remarkable for its depiction of intense emotions and physical and mental suffering. The precarious location of Bonneville and the changing moods of the sea mirror the turbulent relations of the characters, and as the story unfolds its title comes to seem ever more ironic.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries secular French scholars started re-engaging with religious ideas, particularly mystical ones. Mysticism in the French Tradition introduces key philosophical undercurrents and trajectories in French thought that underpin and arise from this engagement, as well as considering earlier French contributions to the development of mysticism. Filling a gap in the literature, the book offers critical reflections on French scholarship in terms of its engagement with its mystical and apophatic dimensions. A multiplicity of factors converge to shape these encounters with mystical theology: feminist, devotional and philosophical treatments as well as literary, historical, and artistic approaches. The essays draw these into conversation. Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary range of contributions from both new and established scholars, this book provides access to the melting pot out of which the mystical tradition in France erupted in the twenty-first century, and from which it continues to challenge theology today.

This is the first book to study how Haitian authors – from independence in 1804 to the modern Haitian diaspora – have adapted Greco-Roman material and harnessed it to Haiti’s legacy as the world’s first anti-colonial nation-state. In nine chronologically organized chapters built around individual Haitian authors, Hawkins takes readers on a journey through one strand of Haitian literary history that draws on material from ancient Greece and Rome. This cross-disciplinary exploration is composed in a way that invites all readers to discover a rich and exciting cultural exchange that foregrounds the variety of ways that Haitian authors have ‘hacked classical forms’ as part of their creative process. Students of ancient Mediterranean cultures will learn about a branch of the Greco-Roman legacy that has never been deeply explored. Experts in Caribbean culture will find a robust register of Haitian literature that will enrich familiar texts. And those interested in anti-colonial movements will encounter a host of examples of artists creatively engaging with literary monuments from the past in ways that always keep the Haitian experience in central focus. Written in a broadly accessible style, Hacking Classical Forms in Haitian Literature appeals to anyone interested in Haiti, Haitian literature and history, anti-colonial literature, or classical reception studies.

“Vive la Sociale”: This rousing, revolutionary statement, written on a bright red banner across the top of James Ensor's Christ's Entry into Brussels in 1889, served as a visual manifesto and call to action by the Belgian artist (1860-1949), one that announced with an insistent, public voice the centrality of his art practice to the cultural discourse of modern Belgium. This provocative declaration serves as the title for this new study of Ensor's art focusing on its social discourse and the artist's interaction with and at times satirical encounter with his contemporary milieu. Rather than the alienated and traumatized Expressionist given preference in modern art history, Ensor is presented here as an artist of agency and purpose whose art practice engaged the issues and concerns of middle class Belgian life, society and politics and was informed by the values and class, race and gendered perspectives of his time. Ensor's radical vision and oppositional strategy of resistance, self-fashioning and performance remains relevant. This book with its timely, nuanced reading of the art and career of this often misunderstood “artist's artist”, invites a re-evaluation not only of Ensor's social context and expressive critique but also his unique contribution to modernist art practice.