The Pícaro as Jester in the Spanish Picaresque

Abstract

Jean Blacker. The Faces of Time: Portrayal of the Past in Old French and Latin Historical Narrative of the Anglo-Norman Regnum. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. xv + 263 pp.

Gretchen Rous Besser. Germaine de Staël Revisited. (Twayne's World Authors Series, 849.) New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994. xvii + 181pp. $23.95.

John Claiborne Isbell. The Birth of European Romanticism: Truth and Propaganda in Staäl's 'De l'Allemagne, 1810–1813. (Cambridge Studies in French, 49.) Cambridge University Press, 1994. xiii + 269 pp. $59.95.

Michael Sprinker. History and Ideology in Proust: A la recherche du temps perdu and the Third French Republic. (Cambridge Studies in French, 50.) Cambridge University Press, 1994. xii + 232 pp. $54.95.

William J. Kennedy. Authorizing Petrarch. Cornell University Press, 1994. ii + 301pp.

M. J. Woods. Gracián Meets Góngora: The Theory and Practice of Wit. Warminster: Aris and Phillips, 1995. vi + 120 pp.

Cristóbal Cuevas García, ed. Jardiel Poncela. Teatro, vanguardia y humor. Barcelona: Athropos, 1993. 302 pp.

Roberta Johnson. Crossfire: Philosophy &; the Novel in Spain, 1900–1934. The University Press of Kentucky, 1993, xi + 234 pp.

Kenton V. Stone. Utopia Undone: The Fall of Uruguay in the Novels of Carlos Martínez Moreno. Lewisburg: Bucknell U P, 1994. 217 pp. $35.00

Carol Maier, Roberta L. Salper, eds. Ramón María del Valle-Inclán: Questions of Gender. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1994. 264 pp.

Walter Mignolo. The Darker Side of the Renaissance. Literacy, Territoriality, and Colonization. University of Michigan Press, 1995. 426 pp. $39.50.

José Raimundo Maia Neto. Machado de Assis, the Brazilian Pyrrhonian. (Purdue Studies in Romance Literatures, 5.) Purdue University Press: 1994. 231pp. $35.95.     

Patients and practitioners: Three hundred years of Western medicine

Ludmerer, Kenneth M. Learning to Heal: The Development of American Medical Education. New York: Basic Books, 1985. xv + 346 pp. $21.95 cloth.

Morantz‐Sanchez, Regina Markell. Sympathy and Science: Women Physicians in American Medicine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. xii + 464 pp. $24.95 cloth.

Porter, Roy, ed. Patients and Practitioners: Lay Perceptions of Medicine in Pre‐Industrial Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. 356 pp. $49.50 cloth.     

A Once and Future Greatness: Raymond Aron,Charles de Gaulle andthe Politics of Grandeur

Charles de Gaulle devoted his life to cultivating French grandeur, a politics that attempted to carve out an equal and independent role for France among the great powers of the world. One who frequently criticized de Gaulle's ideas of grandeur was the eminent social theorist, Raymond Aron. Although Aron was generally supportive of de Gaulle and supported him ‘every time there was a crisis’, he never hesitated to criticize de Gaulle, sometimes quite sharply. Aron's lifelong friendship with de Gaulle was thus marked by alternating bouts of mutual irritation and respect: Aron worried that de Gaulle's theatrics were sometimes detrimental to French national interests while de Gaulle fretted that Aron's commitment to French greatness was less enthusiastic than it should havebeen.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate Aron's reaction to de Gaulle's politics of grandeur. Despite his reputation for ‘lucidity’, Aron was often ambivalent about de Gaulle's ambitions for France. We argue that Aron's ambivalence stemmed from his political creed, or from his commitment to a political philosophy that - as de Gaulle sensed - allowed for few settled convictions. This paper reviews Aron's assessment of two issues at the heart of de Gaulle's politics of grandeur, namely, the effort to promote a sense of national unity and the effort to create a nuclear force. In both areas, we witness a remarkably ambivalent Aron, one who struggled to soften the harsher edges of the excesses of what he considered to be the excesses of grandeur and find his way to a more moderate and coherent position.     

The ‘Wicked Machinery of Government':1 Malta and the Problems of Continuity under the New Model Administration

This is a study focused on the early years of British rule in Malta (1800–13). It explores the application to the island of the ‘new model’ of colonial government, one based on direct rule from London mediated by the continuation of existing laws and institutions. Systemic deficiencies are identified. These tended to undermine the effectiveness of direct British rule. This study also reveals, in the context of legal and constitutional continuity, unresolved tensions between modernity and tradition. The political stability of the island was damaged and the possibility of continued British possession was threatened.     

The Invisible Dance: The Supreme Court and the Press

Abstract

In America, Tocqueville writes, men were born equal; they did not have to become so.¹ But he is not unaware of the radical democratic character of the American revolution of which Gordon Wood has reminded us.² Prior to 1776, Tocqueville observes, the democratic principle was “far from dominating the government of society.” It was the Revolution that made it “the law of laws.” “The war was fought and victory obtained in its name” (1:1, ch. 4. 59).