Le Décor Peint de la Maison Médiévale: Orner pour signifier en France avant 1350

Abstract

The remarkable survival of considerable elements of a large rose window at Elgin Cathedral allows an accurate reconstruction of its form. The design can be shown to be from the mainstream of rose window tracery patterns in northern Britain and can be related to the pre-1390 west front of the cathedral. When reconstructed the design of the front shows close affinities with the west front of Arbroath Abbey which also featured a large circular window. Certain elements of the tracery also show similarities with the eastern rose window reconstructed at Fountains Abbey and indicate strong links with sources in northern England.     

Le Socialisme français en crise

This article analyses the gravity and reasons for the crisis currently affecting the French Socialist Party. Going beyond the electoral disasters of 2014, it situates this crisis within the context of the destabilisation of the French party system due to growing divisions on the left and on the right caused by the evolution of the European Union in the current context of economic crisis. The left/right cleavage that structures the functioning of the political system is being called into question by an alternative cleavage that increasingly opposes the supporters of European integration against their opponents. The cross-cutting nature of these two cleavages will henceforth prevent the left from uniting on a programme of government. Within the Socialist Party itself this phenomenon is a factor of serious division and, as a result, makes the government's parliamentary base more fragile. It further deepens the long-standing differences on economic policy because of the explicit choice made by the Socialist government in favour of a supply-side approach. The Socialist Party seems to have arrived at the end of a political cycle where it will have to make choices that it has postponed for many years, with the risk of breaking up and with the threat of starting an electoral and political decline that could ultimately deprive it of its status as a party of government.     

Leçons Privées

While numerous signs and traces remain from the public lectures given during the early modern era in German universities, mentions of the private lessons held by the teachers at their homes are seldom found. This study intends to appraise the importance of these private lectures both for teachers and students as well as for the functioning of the universities. In addition, a close look at these lessons appears to enable us to understand how the seminar form was born and how it became rooted in German universities during the 19^th century.     

Le jugement des fléches

Diagrams, schemata, itineraries, we are accustomed to forms of arrowheads in representation. These forms often evoke movements that writing necessarily freezes on the paper while they propose to themselves to express their dynamics. Recent progress in techniques of communication and of expression permit us at times to surmount these difficulties. When they can spread out into space (and time) of a prop able to entrer in its turn into movement (a machine — or simply a hand), this “liberated” forms permit us to remove (or at the every least to rattle) important epistemological obstacles which subsist in practice as in theory.     

Serge Gainsbourg and Le Défi américain

This article discusses how the singer-songwriter, Serge Gainsbourg, responded through the medium of song to the new socio-economic model which the USA came to represent, especially during the 1960s. Although certain songs express an ambivalent attitude towards the promotion of the société de consommation as well as the proliferation of American mass culture in France, these particular processes of modernisation are ultimately viewed as inexorable. The collection of songs discussed in this article makes an original contribution to perennial debates regarding France's relationship with the USA.     

Le cosmopolitisme entre chaos et république

Sans résumé PierreHassner est agrégé de philosophie. Directeur de recherche émérite au Centre d'études et de recherches internationales (CERI) de la Fondation nationale des sciences politiques, il a publiéLa Violence et la paix. De la bombe atomique au nettoyage ethnique (Paris, Esprit, 1995; 2^e éd. remaniée Paris, Seuil, 2000)La Terreur et l'Empire (Paris, Seuil, 2003) et a dirigéTotalitarismes (avec JacquesRupnik et GuyHermet, Paris, Economica, 1984) etVents d'Est. Vers l'Europe des états de droit? (avec PierreGrémion, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1990). Il a réalisé de nombreux travaux de philosophie politique (en particulier sur Kant et Hegel) et en relations internationales (surtout sur le nationalisme, le totalitarisme et la guerre). Ce texte a été écrit à l'occasion d'une conférence, présentée en anglais, à un colloque de l'Institut Nexus à Tilburg (Pays-Bas) en 1998, puis actualisé pour une conférence à la New School of Social Research de New York en 2000.