Memory and History: Liturgical Time and Historical Time

This article investigates the differential structure and representation of time in memory and history. It examines two moments in Jewish historical thought—in the Middle Ages, and in works written within and after the Holocaust—and demonstrates the fundamentally liturgical nature of Jewish historical memory in selected texts from these two periods. Following the groundbreaking work of Yerushalmi, it seeks to demonstrate that for Jews, historical experience is incorporated into the cyclical reenactment of paradigmatic events in Jewish sacred ritual. Recent or contemporary experiences acquire meaning only insofar as they can be subsumed within Biblical categories of events and their interpretation bequeathed to the community through the medium of Scripture, that is to say, only insofar as they can be transfigured, ritually and liturgically, into repetitions and reenactments of ancient happening. In such liturgical commemoration, the past exists only by means of recitation; the fundamental goal of such recitation is to make it live again in the present, to fuse past and present, chanter and hearer, into a single collective entity. History, in the sense that we understand it to consist of unique events unfolding within irreversible linear time, is absorbed into cyclical, liturgical memory.
This article argues that the question of Jewish history—both medieval and post-Holocaust—poses in a compelling fashion the question of the relationship between memory and history more generally, and serves to contest the current tendency in academic historiography to collapse history into memory. It claims that to the extent that memory "resurrects,""re-cycles," and makes the past "reappear" and live again in the present, it cannot perform historically, since it refuses to keep the past in the past, to draw the line, as it were, that is constitutive of the modern enterprise of historiography.     

Benedictine reform and pastoral care in late Anglo‐Saxon England

This article challenges the traditional assumption that the so‐called Benedictine reform produced a clear demarcation between secular and monastic communities in late Anglo‐Saxon England and, consequently, between, on one side, those who had pastoral responsibilities towards the laity and, on the other, those characterized by monastic seclusion. Though to varying degrees, the evidence available for both reformed and newly founded Benedictine communities suggests that the late Anglo‐Saxon monks, especially those serving the urban cathedrals of Winchester, Worcester and Canterbury, could be actively involved in the delivery of such pastoral provisions as preaching, baptism, attending the dying, and burial. Monastic communities therefore represented yet another factor influencing the lively and quickly developing pastoral landscape of late Anglo‐Saxon England.     

A Carved Romanesque Springer with Voussoirs in Church House,Gloucester Cathedral

A Romanesque double-springer and five voussoirs, decorated with foliate carving and pellet, have been reused as a door-head in the ground floor of Church House, Gloucester Cathedral. The carved stones are illustrated, together with a reconstruction of the original double arch, which may have come from an early 12th- century pulpitum screen or the arcade of the first Norman cloister.     

Rural France in Europe: new challenges

This article examines the specificity of rural France in Europe and assesses the nature of the new challenges confronting it. Discussing the changes affecting the peasant world and French rural society, it aims to provide a balanced picture of the agricultural question by linking it to the issue of ruralité. Rural France has now become an object of debate not only for French society, but also for the future of European agriculture. The article also analyses to what extent France remains original in its position as the most ‘rural’ of the western European states by examining its relationship to its territoire and its integration into a global economy.     

Abroad and Home: Colonial Culture in France

Lehning, J.R., Peasant and French; Cultural Contact in Rural France during the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 239pp., £14.95, ISBN 0 521 46770 5

Sahlins, P., Forest Rites; The War of the Demoiselles in Nineteenth Century France (Harvard University Press, 1994), 188pp., £11.95, ISBN 0 674 30896 4     

Only Muslim: Embodying Islam in Twentieth-Century France

Apollinaire, G., Alcools, trans. Donald Revell (University Press of New England, 1995), 171pp., £20.50 hbk., ISBN 0 8195 2224 4, £10.75 pbk, ISBN 0 8195 1228 1

Bredin, J.‐D., L'Affaire (Fayard/Julliard, 1993), 856pp., 198F.

Burac, R., Charles Péguy. La révolution et lagrâce (Laffont, 1994), 347pp., 139F.

Freeman, E.T., Rostand: Cyrano de Bergerac (Glasgow Introductory Guides 34, 1995 76pp., £3.95, ISBN 0 85261 467 5

French Pocket Dictionary, English‐French, French‐English (Harrap, 1995), 712pp., £6.99, ISBN 0 245 60575 4

INSEE, L'Economie française (Librairie générale française, 1995), 282pp., ISBN 2 253 90520 8

Lloyd, H., Bonjour Tristesse (Glasgow Introductory Guides to French Literature 35, 1995), 60pp., £3.95, ISBN 0 85261 469 1

Raymond, J., Eluard (Seuil, 1995), 220pp., ISBN 2 02 023561 7

School French Dictionary (Larousse, 1994), 480pp., £5.50, ISBN 2 03 401761 7

Soulez‐Larivière, D., L'Avocature (Seuil, 1995), 350pp., 140F., ISBN 2 02 023510 2