Rêves et visions dans le Liber de exemplis et similitudinibus rerum de Jean de San Gimignano

Dans le Liber de exemplis et similitudinibus rerum, Jean de San Gimignano consacre le septième livre aux produits de l’imagination, et plus particulièrement aux visions et aux rêves. Il y développe une réflexion qui vise à montrer à ses lecteurs supposés, en premier lieu aux prédicateurs, de quelles manières ceux-ci peuvent trouver leur place dans un sermon. L’article étudie comment le dominicain italien a envisagé l’utilisation des rêves bibliques et de leur interprétation à des fins homilétiques ainsi que l’attitude somme toute ambiguë de l’auteur du Liber de exemplis à l’égard des traités d’oniromancie.     

Spectres,monstres et fantômes: Les Chants de Maldoror et le spectacle de la fantasmagorie

As an introduction to his show in the Capucins' convent, Etienne Robertson states, "Gentlemen, the spectacle about to take place under your very eyes is not a frivolous one. It was created for the thinking man, for the philosopher who enjoys wandering among the tombs" (qtd. in Remise 41). The nineteenth century, and Robertson in particular, grant phantasmagoria a large place in history, even though the concept and the technique existed long before.

With such a success, it should not be surprising that phantasmagoria found its home in literature, especially in Isidore Ducasse's (Comte de Lautréamont's) texts. Indeed, Maldoror's Cantos, in which visual effects hold a significant place, seem to occur behind a thick fog that the reader appears to have difficulty escaping. Just as the spectacles of phantasmagoria are not meant for a "frivolous" audience, as Robertson said, the Cantos are not meant for a reader whom Lautréamont defines as "naive." This article will focus on the visual arts that were prevalent at the time and their influence on the Cantos. Using Roland Barthes's theory, the author shows that Maldoror's Cantos can be read as a spectacle of phantasmagoria in writing.     

Critique du signe et de la representation de rousseau a aujourd'hui∗

It has come to be increasingly recognized that The Prince fails to offer a viable and practical guide to successful political action. Violent force provides Machiavelli's theory with the only even tentative form of purposive action he can theoretically sustain. In violence, elements of the action itself seem to appear as consequences, thus restoring a semblance of connection between deliberate action and outcomes. As a result, successful political action becomes less a question of examples and precepts than a matter of improvisational daring, a kind of action that arises directly from the immediate situation itself. In this connection, Machiavelli's representation of Cesare Borgia serves as an inspirational example of the improvisatory prince. In the final analysis, action per se emerges as the only rival to fortuna. Impetuosity replaces skill and wisdom, meeting the capriciousness of fortuna with a form of action equally riotous. This seems less discouraging from the perspective of the theory once we recognize that Machiavelli's point of view has shifted from that of an imagined individual prince to the interests of the political field of action itself. From there, it is action itself that sustains the possibility of politics.     

Diffusion et Réception de la Dynamique La Correspondance Entre Leibniz et Wolff

By analysing the correspondence between Leibniz and Wolff, this article aims to present the expository modalities used by Leibniz to transmit his dynamics and the metaphysical system underpinning it. The point is here to study the ambivalence of the vocabulary of action, both as object of the conservation principle and as the essence of substance. By examining the way Wolff receives the dynamics of action, it is possible to highlight, as early as 1705, the uniqueness of his metaphysical framework. While publicizing the dynamics, he propounds a meaning of substance that is unequivocally different.     

Le matérialisme historique et l'historiographie des pays d'Europe centrale et de l'est

Le matérialisme historique a connu un certain succès dans la Pologne des années trente, mais sa domination intellectuelle après‐guerre résulte de pressions gouvernementales. Les institutions étrangères à l'idéologie marxiste furent fermées ; l'enseignement, la recherche, l'édition passèrent entre les mains des historiens marxistes ; une histoire fondée sur l'étude des moyens de production, des masses, de la lutte des classes fut privilégiée au détriment de l'histoire culturelle et politique. Tandis que des historiens poursuivaient des recherches dans cette perspective, E. Rostworowski publia en 1978 la première oeuvre importante distincte du matérialisme historique, ouvrant la voie à de nouvelles approches.     

Le principe de circulation et l'échec de la mythologie transeuropéenne

We have sought to identify an aspect of the repression of Enlightenment cosmopolitanism complementary to the creation of national identities in XIX^th-century Europe and the intervening war period. The idea of a common civilization would be maintained by the reciprocal capacity of translating national languages, because of their Indo-European common origins. The utopia of the language would replace the material route of the Enlightenment. It is the failure of the construction of European Indianist myth and not its success which explains the ideological diverting of the relations between language and nation. The missed promotion of the Gypsy language in the academic world illustrates this failure perfectly. After the First World War, the transformation of the principle of nationalities in ethnopolitics removed even the memory of this common ambition.     

L’Histoire, la Fable et le Fabuleux Analyse de la notion de fabuleux

Paul Hazard has clearly shown the concomitance ofThe Crisis of the European consciousness in various domains, under diverse aspects and diverse interrogations. This crisis, these new issues which arise concern as well the concept of temporality which was then in vogue. This article seeks to study its emergence through a specific question which concerns the status and the significance to be given fables and myths which we have inherited from Antiquity. Thanks to the studies by abbé Anselme, Fontenelle, Nicolas Fréret, the chevalier de La Barre and Lévesque de Burigny of the notion of the marvelous, as found in fables, we can better grasp the development of an historical concept.     

Remarques sur l'emploi de l'ablatif et du génitif de qualité chez Tacite

Suetonius' Life of Augustus 52 emphasises Augustus' restraint with regard to divine honours and may have been written with the intention of contradicting Tacitus (Annales 1.10). Suetonius' statement that it was common for temples to be offered to proconsuls in the Republican period is not supported by the archaeological and epigraphical evidence. Two passages from Cicero's letters (ad Q.Fr. 1.1.26; ad Att. 5.21.7) have been seen as supporting evidence. They do not, however, necessarily provide evidence for the existence of temples to proconsuls, although it is possible that they may have been the source for Suetonius' statement.     

Le scepticisme et les hypothèses de la physique

The History of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza is often called upon to support three theses: first, that Descartes had a dogmatic notion of systematic knowledge, and therefore of physics; second, that the hypothetical epistemology of physics which spread during the xviith century was the result of a general sceptical crisis; third, that this epistemology was more successful in England than in France. I reject these three theses: I point first to the tension in Descartes’ works between the ideal of a completely certain science and a physics replete with hypotheses; further, I argue that the use of hypotheses by mechanical philosophers cannot be separated from their conception of physics; finally I show that, at the end of the xviith century, physicists in France as well as in England spoke through hypotheses and I examine different ways of explaining this shared practice. Richard H. Popkin’s book serves therefore as a starting point for insights into the general problem: to what extent and for what reasons some propositions in physics have been presented as hypotheses in the xviith century?     

L'Édit de Nantes et l'indifférence hollandaise

Did the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes find, in the Netherlands, an echo comparable to the one caused by the revocation of this same Edict, a century later? A first inquiry through documents directly related to events of that period (letters of politicians, pamphlets, synod acts, etc.) do not provide any revealing account of a Dutch interest in the French biconfessionalism settlement. The hypothesis put forward in this paper in order to explain this silence from the Dutch side are based on the stake shifting between France and the Netherlands, at that time, concerning tolerance.