Écriture, institution et société le travail littéraire dans la Compagnie de jésus en France (1620–1720)

For the past few years, a renewal of historical studies has begun on the intellectual work of the old Company of Jesus. In this paper, we would like to emphasize the place and the process of literary activities in France between 1620 and 1720, by describing the attempts to create an intellectual apostolate. Two approaches have been applied here: on the one hand, from an institutional point of view, we will estimate the importance of intellectual work in the spectrum of responsibilities inside the Congregation; on the other hand, the analysis based on several antijesuit polemics will point to the social communication of the Order.     

Fanuensis ergo mercator ou le petit monde d'un homme d'affaires génois,le juge Guarnerius (1210–1221)

Analysis of thirteenth-century Genoese minute-books frequently offers precise details about Genoese society and the economy of Genoa at that time. By re-grouping the entries relating to a single personage, the judge Guarnerius, one realises that the famous dictum Januensis ergo mercator, “Genoese therefore merchant”, needs reconsideration in the light of the fact that, though all the Genoese were effectively involved in commercial transactions, some were much more engaged than others. Thus Guarnerius, because of the scale of his investments and the role played around him by members of his family or household, appears in the years 1212–1220 as an early example of the Genoese professional merchant. The question arises whether, from the start of the thirteenth century, there was not already at Genoa a group of specialised businessmen from which a truly professional class of merchants was about to evolve. If such a hypothesis is confirmed, some reflections on the origins of Genoese capitalism are called for.     

Déni,connaissance, responsabilité: le régime stalinien et la grande famine ukrainienne de 1932–3

The great 1932–3 famine in Ukraine and Kuban, considered a major disaster in twentieth-century European history, is starting to be recognised as the opening act of a terrible cycle of violence against the populations of a vast area in the heart of Europe, perpetrated by the two great totalitarian regimes that were Nazism and Stalinism. As James Mace, the pioneer in studying this famine, has written, the Ukrainian famine was a ‘man-made famine’. It was the consequence of an extreme political violence – the forced collectivisation of rural areas. The Stalinist regime exhibited a total indifference to human suffering. Famine was just ‘collateral damage’ of modernisation introduced by collectivisation. Beyond the total denial of famine by Stalinist authorities, this article raises the double question of its knowledge and its responsibility, using new sources. How far can the chain of decision-making that led to the famine and its aggravation be reconstructed? What did the executives of the Party know about what was happening in starving rural areas? Which argumentation and which explanatory strategy were they developing in their correspondence to deal with the reality they were denying?     

Le Texte et le corps: la pensée dialectique de Diderot dans Le Supplément au voyage de Bougainville

By using a dialogical method in Le Supplément au voyage de Bougainville (1772), Diderot contrasts two places: the civilized European world and the primitive island of Tahiti. The dialogical structure of his work entails a questioning of the concept of libertinage through the theme of the corporeal. Indeed, the dialectical method he employs in the text unifies his vision on what the body represents. This work will demonstrate that for Diderot the body can be defined as three entities: the text, the physical, and the social. All these three categories are intertwined for him. Using them as a leitmotiv enables him to call into question the moral and social conventions of his own country.     

Origine,développement et ancrage territorial des microbrasseries artisanales : le cas de l'Est-du-Québec

This article focuses on the development of a new industry, namely the brewing industry, in the peripheral region of Southeastern Quebec. Its objective is to understand and describe the main activities of the microbreweries and to detect their contribution to the development of Southeastern Quebec, namely the Lower-Saint-Lawrence and the Gaspé peninsula-Magdelen islands regions. The results of our analysis allow us to shed new light on the contribution of this industry to the development of these two regions.     

Chenet,François: Psychogenèse et cosmogonie selon le Yoga-Vāsistha 'Le monde est dans l'âme'

Indo-Iranian Journal -