Publisher's Synopsis
Claire VIAL: Clothing the debate: textiles, text-isles and the economy of gift-giving in four Middle English Breton lays Textiles, both as clothes and elements of the codified knightly costume, play a major structuring role in the Breton lays. Whether embodied in recurring poetic motives or staged in descriptive pauses, these text-isles, or recognisable textual islands, contribute to the spiralling aesthetic of the Breton lays with issues of their own, involving narrative and character development, processes of social signposting and potential theatricality. Pieces d'etoffes, vetements, elements du costume chevaleresque... sont dotes d'une fonction structurante majeure dans les lais bretons en moyen-anglais. Sous la forme de motifs poetiques iteratifs ou de pauses descriptives singulieres, ces ilots textuels recurrents participent de l'esthetique en spirale caracteristique des lais anglais, qu'ils enrichissent de problematiques qui leur sont propres, liees au developpement des personnages et de l'intrigue, a l'affichage du statut social et aux effets de theatralite. Denis LAGAE-DEVOLDERE: "Nothing of what is writ" (4.2.199): silenced texts in Measure for Measure Focussing on an aspect often neglected by critics, this paper suggests a word-by-word exploration into the trajectory of the various written texts, letters or "writs" in Measure for Measure. With the New Historicism notion of negotiable, volatile authority/auctoriality, this is an attempt at probing into the political and dramatic consequences of the letter-writing activity and its implications on the ever slippery notion of truth. Such "writs" are turned into instruments of manipulation, and deceit, which defy reason, and call for what one could call blind faith, from both the characters on stage and the off-stage audience. En s'interessant a un aspect souvent neglige par la critique, cet article propose une analyse detaillee de la trajectoire des messages ecrits dans Measure for Measure. Il examine les consequences dramatiques et politiques de l'activite d'ecriture frenetique, notamment celle du Duc Vincentio, producteur de textes a la fois vrais et faux, lus ou tus, a suivre a la lettre ou a lire a l'envers. On verra ainsi comment Shakespeare utilise la chose ecrite et l'evenement d'ecriture pour en faire un signifiant dramatique qui est bien plus qu'un procede?: par-dela les notions d'autorite et d'auctorialite ainsi mises a mal, les textes de Measure for Measure interrogent le concept de connaissance et celui de verite, explicitement decline dans sa version plurielle, et invitent les personnages comme les spectateurs a un acte de foi dramatique. Guyonne Leduc: The dramatic import of letters within letters in Frances Burney's Evelina (1778) That no attention has been paid to the rather numerous letters within letters in this epistolary novel might seem surprising for any critic studying Evelina. Yet a careful reading of those letters within letters, that seem to pass unnoticed in a novel where sight is the most important of the five senses and where the (mis) interpretation of signs is central, proves rewarding if only from a dramatic viewpoint. Indeed, some of those (enclosed, copied, mentioned, commented upon, etc.) letters within the letters collected by the "editor" trigger not just one of the two plots (the quest for Evelina's name and, at least, social identity) but also changes in geographical places, new turns in the two plots (the second one being the love plot), a comic episode, etc. If some of them thwart the reader's expectations, all of them make it possible to approach one of the key issues broached in the novel. Les lettres dans les lettres, pourtant assez nombreuses dans ce roman epistolaire, n'ont pas retenu l'attention, ce qui peut paraitre etonnant pour quiconque etudie Evelina. Pourtant, une lecture minutieuse de ces lettres dans les lettres, qui semblent passer inapercues dans un roman ou la vue est le plus important des cinq sens et ou l'interpretation (erronee) des signes est centrale, s'avere fructueuse, ne serait-ce que du point de vue dramatique. En effet, quelques-unes de ces lettres (incluses, recopiees, mentionnees, commentees, etc.) dans les lettres collationnees par l' editeur declenchent, non seulement l'un des deux intrigues (la quete du nom et de l'identite, au moins sociale, d'Evelina), mais aussi des changements geographiques, des tournants dans les deux intrigues (la seconde etant l'intrigue amoureuse), un episode comique, etc. Si certaines decoivent les attentes du lecteur, toutes permettent d'aborder l'une des questions-cles traitees dans le roman. Jean-Francois BAILLON: Tableaux vivants, still lives: tracing Terence Davies in The House of Mirth (2000) This article attempts to trace the presence of Terence Davies as author of The House of Mirth through three distinct but concurrent strategies. First, the recurrent use of symmetrical patterns at every level appears to link the film to Davies's previous output and signals the presence of a mega-narrator. Secondly, the structuring reference to classical Hollywood melodrama can be referred both to Davies's previous films and to his own personal taste. It is also a way for him to claim his attitude to the source material as fundamentally cinematic. Lastly, self-referential scenes at key moments in the narrative foreground the nature of the film as artefact. Cet article tente de reperer les traces de la presence de l'auteur Terence Davies dans The House of Mirth au moyen de trois procedures distinctes mais convergentes. D'abord, l'usage recurrent de figures symetriques a tous les niveaux relie le film a la production anterieure de Davies et signale la presence d'un mega-narrateur. Ensuite, la reference structurante au melodrame hollywoodien classique renvoie aussi bien aux films precedents de Davies qu'a son propre gout personnel. C'est aussi pour lui un moyen de revendiquer l'essence profondement cinematographique de son attitude envers le texte-source. Enfin, quelques scenes autoreferentielles situees a des moments cles du recit mettent en avant la nature du film comme artifice. Antoine CAZE: Helen in Egypt et Trilogy: les ecritures de guerre de H. D. Toute l'oeuvre de H.D. s'enracine dans l'experience de la guerre. Cet article s'attache a montrer comment cette condition premiere de l'ecriture conduisit la poete americaine a inscrire les grandes sequences poetiques que sont Helen in Egypt et Trilogy dans l'intervalle qui a la fois relie et separe les modes epique et lyrique. En depit de l'ordre de composition de ces deux recueils - le premier etant posterieur de dix ans au second - la recriture du mythe qu'est Helen in Egypt, transposant l'epopee sur un mode lyrique, est ici envisagee comme le creuset dans lequel se forge l'ecriture de Trilogy: evenement traumatique a maints egards pour H.D., la guerre dont se nourrit son imaginaire ne peut en effet etre abordee qu'a rebours du temps, dans une logique de l'apres-coup (Nachtraglichkeit) que rejoue ici la relation entre mythe antique et histoire contemporaine. La voix a la fois transpersonnelle et intime que cree H.D. dans Trilogy - celle d'une communaute lyrique - peut alors etre comprise comme la tentative d'une mediation qui lui permettrait d'articuler le trauma. H.D.'s entire oeuvre is premised upon the experience of the war. In this article, I attempt to show that such a seminal condition for her writing led H.D. to pitch the tone of her war-related poetic sequences-Helen in Egypt and Trilogy-in the middle ground between the epic and the lyric. In spite of the chronological order of composition of these two books, the first written some ten years after the second, I contend that H.D.'s re-writing of the Helen story, transposing it from the epic to the lyric, can be understood as the crucible in which the materials for Trilogy are melted. For indeed, H.D. can deal with the traumatic event of the war, which so deeply affected her imagination, only by going against the current of time, according to a logic of the aftershock (Nachtraglichkeit) which is structurally implicit in the way she intertwines Greek myth with twentieth-century history. The poetic persona which H.D. creates as a speaker in Trilogy, both transpersonal and intimate, may thus be seen as an attempt on her part to mediate and articulate trauma. Yves FIGUEIREDO: De Mount Auburn a Central Park: aux origines du park movement Le park movement americain a ete tres largement etudie et historicise depuis les annees 1970, mais ses origines ont fait l'objet de peu d'etudes. Il serait le produit de l'action combinee de trois facteurs: urbanisation et industrialisation, developpement du tourisme et des loisirs, renouveau du regard sur la nature. Cet article examine les limites de ces interpretations sur la periode precedant immediatement la creation des premiers parcs et etudie l'apport des cimetieres paysagers au developpement du park movement. The American park movement has been extensively studied and historicized since the beginning of the 1970s, but its origins have been little documented or analyzed. It is understood as resulting from the combined action of three factors: urbanization and industrialization, development of tourism and leisure, evolving perceptions of nature. This paper examines the limits of such interpretations on the period immediately preceding the foundation of the first parks and studies the contribution of rural cemeteries to the park movement. Andrew DIAMOND: Cutting through the "Fog of War": World War II and the fracturing of the New Deal order in the urban North While the New Deal created a new relationship between ordinary citizens and the feder
