Book Reviews

James Valender, ed. Homenaje a María Zambrano: Estudios y correspondencia. México: El Colegio de México, 1998. 313 pp.

Linda M. Willem. Galdós's Segunda Manera: Rhetorical Strategies and Affective Response. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1998. 200 pp.

Patricia Francis Cholakian. Women and the Politics of Self-Representation in Seventeenth-Century France. University of Delaware Press, 2000. 219 pp.

Richard E. Goodkin. Birth Marks. The Tragedy of Primogeniture in Pierre Corneille, Thomas Corneille, and Jean Racine. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. xi + 281 pp. $57.50.     

Recent Books in the Field of Romance Languages and Literatures

Mercedes Agulló y Cobo. La Poesía española en 1961. (Cuadernos Bibliográficos, VII). Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Madrid, 1963, Pp. 62.

Frederick B. Arlz. From the Renaissance to Romanticism. Trends in Style in Art, Literature, and Music, 1300–1830. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962, Pp. x, 311.

Theodore Besterman. Studies on Voltaire and the 18th Century. Geneva: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1962. Pp. 263.

Germaine Brée. Gide. Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963. Pp. 302.

Lucile Kathryn Delano. Spain, Reality and Legend. Rock Hill, South Carolina: Winthrop College, 1964, Pp. 145. $1.50.

Wallace Fowlie. A Reading of Proust. New York: Doubleday &; Co., 1964. Pp. 307.

Edward Inman Fox. Azorín as a Literatury Critic. New York: Hispanic Institute in the United States, 1962. Pp. 176.

Rinaldo Froldi. Il Teatro valenzano e l'origine della commedia baroca. (Istituto di letteratura Spagnola e ispano-Americana della Università di Pisa). Pisa: Editrice Tecnico-Scientifica, 1962. Pp. 112.

Peter Gay. The Party of Humanity. Essays in the French Enlightenment. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964. Pp. 290.

Herbert S. Gershman, Kernan B. Whitworth, Jr. Anthology of Critical Prefaces to the Nineteenth-Century French Novel. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1962. Pp. vii, 233.

J. D. Hubert. Molière and the Comedy of Intellect. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962. Pp. xvi, 275.

Willis Knapp Jones, ed. Spanish-American Literature in Translation. New York: Ungar, 1963. Pp. xxi, 469.

Maxim Newmark. Dictionary of Spanish Literature. Paterson, New Jersey: Littlefield, Adams and Company, 1963. Pp. 352.

Muriel Rukeyser, ed. and translator. Selected Poems of Octavio Paz. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press, 1964. Pp. 171.

Nilida Salvador. Revistas argentinas de vanguardia (1920–1930). Buenos Aires: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, 1962. Pp. 109.

Baltasar Samper. Investigación folklórica en México. I. México: Departamento de Bellas Artes, 1962. Pp. 653.

Friedrich Soleürr. Miguel de Unamuno. Dichterphilosoph des tragischen Lebensgefuhls. Bern and München: Francke Verlag, 1962. Pp. 169.

Francis Steegmuller. Apollinaire. New York: Farrar, Straus and Co., 1963. Pp. 365.

Phillip A. Wadsworth. Tristan l'Hermite: Poésies, choisies et annotées. Paris: Seghers, 1962. Pp. 150.     

Roman noir et drapeau noir: Didier Daeninckx and the libertarian legacy

Abstract

The crime novelist Didier Daeninckx originally established himself as an author of historical crime fiction. His 1984 Daeninckx, D. (1984) 2011a. Meurtres pour mémoire. Paris: Folio Policier. [Google Scholar] novel, Meurtres pour mémoire, in particular challenged occluded and intertwined memories of the Occupation and the Algerian War of Independence. Since then, and through his subsequent writings and political activities, Daeninckx has been recognised as giving voice to a range of marginalised communities and memories. Much academic study has therefore concentrated on the recovery of the past in Daeninckx’s fiction, approaching his work from the perspective of cultural history and memory studies, considering it a form of memory activism. This article offers a new perspective on Daeninckx’s political engagement. It will examine Daeninckx’s three contributions to Éditions Baleine’s collaboratively authored detective series Le Poulpe: Nazis dans le métro (1996), Éthique en toc (2000) and La Route du Rom (2003). It will argue that they are informed by a memory of France’s broad libertarian tradition which constitutes a hidden referent essential to understanding the formulation of the ethico-political counter-communities to which many of his characters (and his ideal, implied reader) belong. More particularly, it will argue that these communities form the basis of a new model of political engagement beyond party, state and class, suggesting not only the persistence but also the adaptability of libertarian thinking in Daeninckx’s work and the French roman noir.     

From nation to population: the racialisation of ‘Métis’ in the Canadian census†

ABSTRACT. Between 1996 and 2001 the ‘Métis population’ of Canada skyrocketed from 204,000 to 292,000, an astonishing and demographically improbable increase of 43 per cent. Most puzzling about this ‘increase’ is not so much the unpersuasive explanations offered by statisticians and others but, more fundamentally, the underlying assumption that such a thing as a ‘Métis population’ exists at all. In contrast, I argue that such an idea constitutes an artifact of Canada's racial/colonial episteme in which ‘the Métis’– formerly an indigenous nation invaded and displaced in the Canadian nation‐state's westward expansion – have been reduced in public and administrative discourse to include any indigenous individual who identifies as Métis: reduced, in other words, to (part of) a race. The paper argues further that the authority of the Canadian census as a privileged forum of contemporary meaning‐making in Canadian society is such that the lack of explicit Census categories to distinguish Métis Nation allegiance further naturalises a racialised construction of Métis at the expense of an indigenously national one.     

Paris and Panoramic Vision: Lieux de Mémoire,Lieux Communs

From the totalizing perspectives of the panorama to metonymic fragments of a monumental Paris, what is celebrated is representational tradition and innovation. In an ongoing representation of Paris cityscapes, pictorialism of the nineteenth century offers an insight into (and an example of) what has come to be known as lieux de mémoire, while at the same time questioning the legacy through an interrogation of lieux communs. Through painting and photography in the nineteenth and early to mid-twentieth centuries, this article addresses legacies in pictorialism, both in and of the nineteenth century, exploring how this pictorial legacy is interpreted and develops and how, in Hamon's terms, images of Paris increasingly propose ‘des référents “en raccourci”’. The partiality of the representation (in both senses of the term) is evidence both of the cultural prevalence of the legacy and of its potential for reinterpretation.     

Homo politicus; the political careers of Pierre Pflimlin and Jacques Chaban‐Delmas

Chastenet, P. and P., Chaban (Seuil, 1991), 606pp., 149R, ISBN 2 02 013535 3

Pflimlin, P., Mémoires d'un Européen de la IV^e à la V^e République (Fayard, 1991), 391pp., 150F., ISBN 2 21 302809 9     

José Zorrilla in Mexico: Transatlantic Romanticism and the Question of Artistic Labour

This article explores the strategic use of literary form in the Mexican writings of José Zorrilla. The article focuses on México y los mexicanos (1856), a letter Zorrilla wrote to his fellow Spanish Romantic playwright, Ángel de Saavedra, the Duke of Rivas. Zorrilla’s México y los mexicanos is a rare piece of epistolary writing in Spanish Romanticism as well as one of the first literary histories of Mexico. Often overlooked in the letter, however, is Zorrilla’s economic critique of the precarious condition of artists in both Mexico and Spain. A conservative moderado, Zorrilla could not air his concerns publicly without the threat of retribution from his fellow conservative colleagues in Spain. Zorrilla thus used the epistolary form, the article argues, in order to surreptitiously introduce the economic plight of artists into mainstream Spanish as well as Mexican political discourse. Read in this context, Zorrilla’s letter makes visible the fundamental role a transatlantic Romantic vision of labour played in shaping nineteenth-century political discourse in both the Iberian Peninsula and Latin America.     

“UNABLE TO RESIST”: ON THE “POSSIBILITY” OF “IMPOSSIBILITY” AND CHRISTOPHE BOUTON'S TIME AND FREEDOM

This essay reflects critically on Martin Heidegger's remarks about authenticity and death with the aid of Christophe Bouton's Temps et liberté (2002), translated by Christopher Macann as Time and Freedom (2014). It first raises general questions concerning the possible thematic relationship between human endeavoring (action) and the experiences of finitude and freedom. Heidegger's Being and Time is particularly useful for exploring this relationship, but certain problems emerge when using this text for accessing the essay's themes. To wit: there are good reasons for mistrusting readings of Being and Time as a “practical” guide for grounding action. Against the practical reading, the essay wishes to reclaim the ontological‐existential significance of Heidegger's text. Although Bouton's treatment of Being and Time excludes its ontological dimensions and is entirely practical, even to the point of disregarding certain theoretical risks inherent in this approach, Bouton's study is indispensable for situating Being and Time in a historical‐intellectual context, whereby the experiences of freedom and time are understood within certain metaphysical presuppositions rendering them difficult to establish together on reliable grounds. Following Bouton's lead, the essay shows that the hermeneutic differences between practical and ontological readings of Being and Time can be explored through reflections on what Heidegger might have meant by the term “Möglichkeit” (“possibility”), from which Bouton infers “freedom.” It is alleged that Bouton does not fully consider all of Heidegger's assertions regarding Möglichkeit, most problematically the claim that the human being's most essential “possibility” is its “impossibility,” that is to say, its death.     

Hybrids of the Romantic: Frankenstein,Olimpia, and Artificial Life

Hybride der Romantik: Frankenstein, Olimpia und das künstliche Leben . Dieser Beitrag untersucht Vorstellungen über die Möglichkeit der Erzeugung künstlicher Lebewesen in der Zeit der Romantik und die damit verbundenen Ängste am Beispiel zweier fiktionaler Texte: Mary Shelleys Frankenstein und Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmanns Sandmann. Dr. Franksteins Monster und Dr. Spalanzanis Automat verkörpern – auf unterschiedliche Weise – die Möglichkeit einer Wendung wissenschaftlicher Produkte und insbesondere künstlicher Hybride ins Monströse. Ihre Geschichten thematisieren das Grauen, das vom drohenden Kontrollverlust ausgeht und als der modernen Wissenschaft innewohnende Gefahr selbst nach der Zerstörung der monströsen Kreaturen bestehen bleibt. Der Begriff des Unheimlichen, von Ernst Jentsch und Sigmund Freud mit Bezug auf Hoffmanns Sandmann formuliert und 1970 von dem japanischen Robotiker Masahiro Mori als Phänomen „des unheimlichen Tals“ (Uncanny Valley) weiterentwickelt, erlaubt weitere Einblicke in die Frage nach künstlichen Lebewesen und ihre Interaktion mit Menschen. Summary: Hybrids of the Romantic: Frankenstein, Olimpia, and Artificial Life . This essay analyzes fantasies and fears related to the possible creation of artificial humans in two influential pieces of Romantic literature, namely E.T.A. Hoffmann's Der Sandmann and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Both the automaton Olimpia and Dr. Frankenstein's monster are hybrid creatures. These dystopian figures represent the Romantic fear of the loss of control over the outcome of human endeavour, they symbolize the dangers immanent in modern science and technology. As hybrids, Olimpia and Frankenstein's monster are capable of breaking apparently unpenetrable boundaries, such as those between human and non-human, and between life and death. As such, these creatures become “unheimlich” (uncanny), a critical term developed by Ernst Jentsch and Sigmund Freud, who directly referred to Hoffmann's Sandman. The term “uncanny” was further developed by the Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in the 1970s. Mori's investigation of human responses to androids (“Uncanny Valley”), shows the persistence of doubts and fears surrounding artificial humans far beyond the Romantic times, and opens new questions related to the issues of creation, reproduction, hybrids, hubris and gender.     

First large‐scale provenance study of pigments reveals new complex behavioural patterns during the Upper Palaeolithic of south‐western Germany

The use of red iron‐based earth pigments, or ochre, is a key component of early symbolic behaviours for anatomically modern humans and possibly Neanderthals. We present the first ochre provenance study in Central Europe showing long‐term selection strategies by inhabitants of cave sites in south‐western Germany during the Upper Palaeolithic (43–14.5 ka). Ochre artefacts from Hohle Fels, Geißenklösterle and Vogelherd, and local and extra‐local sources, were investigated using neutron activation analysis (NAA), X‐ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The results show that local ochre sources were continuously and systematically accessed for c.29 500 years, with periodic events of long‐distance (about > 300 km) ochre acquisition during the Aurignacian (c.35–43 ka), suggesting higher mobility than previously suspected. The results reveal previously unknown long‐term, complex spatio‐temporal behavioural patterns during the earliest presence of Homo sapiens in Europe.     

Chirac: Digne héritier du gaullisme ou vieux routard rad‐soc?

Biffaud, O. and Mauduit, L., La Grande Méprise, (Grasset, 1996), 279 pp., 119 F., ISBN 2 246 52321 4

Chariot, J., Pourquoi Jacques Chirac? (Éditions de Fallois, 1995), 331 pp., 125 F., ISBN 2 87706 254 6

Perrineau, P. and Ysmal, C. (eds), Le Vote de crise: L'élection présidentielle de 1995 (Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1995), 349 pp., 144 F., ISBN 2 7246 0678 7     

The ideals and origins of the Franco-German,sister cities movement, 1945–70

Vattel's Mélanges de littérature, de morale et de politique (Thoughts on literature, morals and politics) was published at Neuchâtel by the Editeurs du Journal Helvétique in 1760 and this is the first English translation. It was republished under the title, Amusemens de littérature, de morale et de politique in 1765. Vattel's text provides evidence of his response to the issues facing Europe's states in the 1750s, and in doing so provides another perspective on his best known work, Le droit des gens (Law of Nations) of 1757. Vattel emerges as a reformer steeped in debates about the future of the European state system, and particularly Europe's small states and republics like Switzerland.     

Memory that governs by itself? Appropriations of Versailles memory

Abstract

Versailles memory has been a cornerstone of the traditional paradigm of lieux de mémoire. However, its transnational dimension has never been fully explored. Covering more than three centuries, this article identifies three antagonistic patterns of transnational Versailles memory that carry ambivalent references to ‘Europe’: war versus peace; monarchical versus republican legitimization; and universalistic versus particularistic conceptions of power. Actors referred to Versailles’ architecture to substantiate their positions toward French hegemonic ambitions: from counter-buildings by the Sun King’s rivals; political redefinitions during changing regimes after 1789 via Franco-German rivalries in the War of 1870; international reactions to the Peace Conference in 1919; and up to Versailles as a World Heritage Site. Analysing these three constitutive patterns, this article challenges the dominant Franco-centrist Versailles master narrative as non-French actors contested such hegemonic views. References to Versailles as a symbol of both American and Brazilian national independence also bring out global dimensions of Versailles memory.     

Ethnohistorical geography and aboriginal rights litigation in Canada: memoir of an expert witness

Since the early 1950s, evidence from ethnohistorical geography has played an important role in aboriginal rights claims and litigation in North America. I became involved in Canadian aboriginal and treaty rights litigation over 35 years ago. My participation has included several landmark cases: Regina v. Horseman (treaty rights), Delgamuukw v. Regina (Comprehensive title claim), and Regina v. Powley (Métis rights). Most of the evidence that I have presented over the years has dealt with various aspects of the changing spatial economies of First Nations and Métis communities from Ontario to British Columbia. The Hudson's Bay Company's vast archive has been the primary source for this data.     

On the origin of the term ependyma

The term ependyma is considered as a translation of the expression integumentum ventriculorum cerebri or Überzug der Hirnhöhlen [the lining of the brain ventricles] in German used by the Wenzel brothers (1812). The first documented usage of this term is found in the work of the German anatomist Karl Ernst Bock from the year 1839, but nobody has ever claimed authorship of the word. Formulations such as “so-called” are used in connection with the term, avoiding any reference to a specific originator. The term first started being used in anatomical literature written in German. In its subsequent history, various interpretations of the meaning of the term have emerged, and certain attempts have also been made to change its formal aspect.     

Index for Volume VII (1960)

Abstract

Martine Debaisieux, ed. Le Labryinthe de Versailles: Parcours critiques de Molière à La Fontaine. A la Mémoire d'Alvin Eustis. Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. 215 pp.

Albert W. Halsall. Victor Hugo and the Romantic Drama. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998. xxvii + 251 pp. $60.00.

K. M. Sibbald, ed. Guill én at McGill: Essays for a Centenary Celebration (Ottawa Hispanic Studies 19). Ottawa: Dovehouse Editions, 1996.

Maria Teresa de Feitas and Claude Leroy, eds. Brésil L'Utopialand de Blaise Cendrars. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1998. 392 pp.

Adrianna M. Paliyenko. Mis-reading the Creative Impulse: The Poetic Subject in Rimbaud and Claudel, Restaged. Southern Illinois University Press, 1997. xvi + 205 pp.

Danièle de Ruyter-Tognotti and M. van Strien Chardonneau, eds. Le roman francophone actuel en Algérie et aux Antilles. (Cahiers de recherches des instituts néerlandais de langue et de littérature françaises 34). Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1998. 161 pp. $26.00.

Patricia E. Grieve. Floire and Blancheflor and the European Romance. (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 32). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. xiii + 240 pp.

Donald E. Schurlknight. Spanish Romanticism in Context. Of Subversion, Contradiction and Politics: Espronceda, Larra, Rivas, Zorrilla. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998. 178 pp.

Joyce Tolliver. Cigar Smoke and Violet Water: Gendered Discourse in Emilia Pardo Bazán. Lewisburg, Penn., and London: Bucknell University Press and Associated University Press, 1998. 219 pp.

John C. Wilcox. Women Poets of Spain, 1860–1990: Toward a Gynocentric Vision. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1997. xix + 366 pp.

Pedro Guerrero Ruiz and Veronica Dean-Thacker. Federico García Lorca: El color de la poesía. Murcia: Universidad de Murcia. Servicio de Publicaciones, 1998. 212 pp.

Gerardo Diego. Obras completas: Prosa. Tomos IV, V. (Memoria de un poeta, vol. 1, 2.) Edited by Francisco Javier Díez de Revenga. Madrid: Alfaguara, 1997. 816 pp., 802 pp.     

A new Early Jurassic damselfly from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Odonata: Campterophlebiidae)

Nel, A. & Weis, R. March 2017. A new Early Jurassic damselfly from the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg (Odonata: Campterophlebiidae). Alcheringa 00, 000–000. ISSN 0311-5518.

André Nel [anel@mnhn.fr], Institut de Systématique, Évolution, Biodiversité, ISYEB-UMR 7205—CNRS, MNHN, UPMC, EPHE, Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Sorbonne Universités, 57 rue Cuvier, CP 50, Entomologie, F-75,005, Paris, France; Robert Weis [rweis@mnhn.lu], Musée national d’histoire naturelle, Luxembourg, Section Paléontologie, 25, rue Münster L-2160 Luxembourg, Grand-Duché de Luxembourg.

Gallodorsettia kronzi gen. et sp. nov., the first representative of the damselfly family Campterophlebiidae from the Toarcian of Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, is described herein. Its closest relative is the genus Dorsettia, known from the early Lower Jurassic of UK and China. The Campterophlebiidae seem to be rare in the Early Jurassic of Western Europe, despite being one of the most diverse odonatan families at that time, especially in Asia.     

CUERDA SECA CERAMICS FROM AL‐ANDALUS,ISLAMIC SPAIN AND PORTUGAL (10TH−12TH CENTURIES AD): INVESTIGATION WITH SEM–EDX AND CATHODOLUMINESCENCE*

Since little is known about the cuerda seca technique, our aim has been to complete an initial analysis of 11th‐century cuerda seca by studying fragments from the 10th century (Pechina, Almería) and the 12th century (Mértola and Almería), so as to establish the diachronic evolution of this technique. Characteristics specific to cuerda seca ceramic glazes were investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and quantitative chemical analysis with energy‐dispersive X‐ray spectrometry (EDX). The chemical compositions of the different‐coloured glazes (green, black, yellow and white) have given us valuable indications about the evolution of the technique. The opacification mode and the firing process were also investigated. With the help of cathodoluminescence (CL) and the study of modern ‘cuerda seca’ glazed ceramics, new hypotheses regarding the number of firing stages, taking into account glaze and paste transformations and their interactions, are put forward.