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      • Trusted Partner
        March 2023

        “Witness to the Mutilations of the Sky”

        Fiction and testimony in the work of Mohammed Dib

        by Hervé Sanson

        From his earliest writings, Algerian writer Mohammed Dib (1920-2003) never gave in to the use of didactic, transparent language, nor to the expectations of so-called “commissioned” literature. It's the work of the language in its syntactic cutting, the weighing of the letter, that's important. In fact, the Dibian witness is masked: he conceals within himself what I'd like to call a literary witness, i.e. a textual device, plural in its declensions, which, going against the expected, allows for other times, (re)plays the texts in their unspoken, questions the memory of the texts, renews the very conception of the witness and asks the following question: what witness when fiction gets involved? This essay, covering fifty years of uninterrupted creation, sets out to delineate the various passages of witness that Dib's work encourages, but cannot avoid questioning the very nature of exegesis and the position of the exegete: do I become, at the end of this relay, the ultimate witness who wishes, from the depths of his heart, to pass the baton to a new guarantor? Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        April 2025

        Invasions

        Fears and fantasies of imagined wars in Britain, 1871-1918

        by Christian K. Melby

        Invasions is an ambitious, new and authoritative study of one of the defining cultural products of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. By the outbreak of war in 1914 invasion-scare fiction had profoundly changed British society, becoming not just a vibrant part of popular culture, but a reference point among military planners, advertisers, and politicians. This intersection between politics and culture, between entertainment and war planning, sets invasion-scare stories apart as one of the most versatile and interesting fictional products in modern British history. Building on recent work in both history and literature studies, Invasions is the first study of invasion-scare fiction to examine both the form (that is, fiction) and the function (the political argument) of the genre.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        February 2023

        Politics, performance and popular culture

        Theatre and society in nineteenth-century Britain

        by Peter Yeandle, Katherine Newey, Jeffrey Richards

        This collection brings together studies of popular performance and politics across the nineteenth century, offering a fresh perspective from an archivally grounded research base. It works with the concept that politics is performative and performance is political. The book is organised into three parts in dialogue regarding specific approaches to popular performance and politics. Part I offers a series of conceptual studies using popular culture as an analytical category for social and political history. Part II explores the ways that performance represents and constructs contemporary ideologies of race, nation and empire. Part III investigates the performance techniques of specific politicians - including Robert Peel, Keir Hardie and Henry Hyndman - and analyses the performative elements of collective movements.

      • Trusted Partner
        April 2023

        The Misery of Literature

        by Djawad Rostom Touati

        “His great novel, his “immense contemporary social fresco”, his “made-in-bladi human comedy” - in the words with which he dazzles his virtual contacts - was now out of the question. To those who still asked him: “What's the status of this novel?”, he invariably replied: “Perhaps under other skies. Here, all we promote is mediocrity. And everyone would nod in agreement, wishing him well.” Djawad Rostom Touati Farid, Malia, Rami, Adib and other characters wander through La civilisation de l'ersatz, the second part of the trilogy: Le culte du ça, each equipped with their own socio-cultural baggage, some motivated to change the course of their lives, sure that the sun is much warmer elsewhere; others resigned to the idea that the world is as it is: just a two-variable equation - dominated/dominant -; and still others, self-sufficient, seeking redemption in the misfortunes of others, make their way between the strata of a society in turmoil, the victim of a frozen past, a sequestered present and a future held hostage. In La civilisation de l'ersatz, both neo-prolo-aspirants-bourgeois who don't even know they're there, replace each other between the fingers of a born writer. Everything is relativity: time, space, not to mention the mind...

      • Trusted Partner
        February 2021

        The Wind has Said its Name

        by Mohamed Abdallah

        “A wise malice radiated from his features, and one always had the impression that he knew more than he was willing to say, that a shrewd reflection lurked behind his smiles. His quick wit and good humor were the delight of La Mauresque and its surroundings; a reminder through his quiet charm that the world could still harbor delicacy.” Mohamed Abdallah Oran, autumn 1954. At La Mauresque, a space symbolizing a whole country in turmoil, in the heart of the indigenous city of Oran, the doubts of its occupants multiply and questions abound. Journalists, politicians, novelists, poets and artists grapple with a pivotal moment in their countries' history. The old world is dying, while the new one is slow to emerge for them. Hesitations and initiatives abound. They are trying to navigate by sight in an ocean so vast that it merges with the horizon; a horizon they sometimes seem to forget, but which the author has tried to give readers a constant view of through his novel: Le Vent a dit son Nom (The Wind Has Said Its Name). Multiplying references to emblematic figures in the awakening of consciences to freedom, Mohamed Abdallah attempts to offer a fresh look at the role that men of letters, intellectuals and, more generally, people of culture can play, at a time when a Nation is preparing to face new trials. These are themes that still resonate today.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2017

        Imperialism and juvenile literature

        by Jeffrey Richards

        Popular culture is invariably a vehicle for the dominant ideas of its age. Never was this truer than in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when it reflected the nationalist and imperialist ideologies current throughout Europe. It both reflects popular attitudes, ideas and preconceptions and it generates support for selected views and opinions. This book examines the various media through which nationalist ideas were conveyed in late-Victorian and Edwardian times: in the theatre, "ethnic" shows, juvenile literature, education and the iconography of popular art. It seeks to examine in detail the articulation and diffusion of imperialism in the field of juvenile literature by stressing its pervasiveness across boundaries of class, nation and gender. It analyses the production, distribution and marketing of imperially-charged juvenile fiction, stressing the significance of the Victorians' discovery of adolescence, technological advance and educational reforms as the context of the great expansion of such literature. An overview of the phenomenon of Robinson Crusoe follows, tracing the process of its transformation into a classic text of imperialism and imperial masculinity for boys. The imperial commitment took to the air in the form of the heroic airmen of inter-war fiction. The book highlights that athleticism, imperialism and militarism become enmeshed at the public schools. It also explores the promotion of imperialism and imperialist role models in fiction for girls, particularly Girl Guide stories.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2023

        Sleep and its spaces in Middle English literature

        Emotions, ethics, dreams

        by Megan Leitch

        Middle English literature is intimately concerned with sleep and the spaces in which it takes place. In the medieval English imagination, sleep is an embodied and culturally determined act. It is both performed and interpreted by characters and contemporaries, subject to a particular habitus and understood through particular hermeneutic lenses. While illuminating the intersecting medical and moral discourses by which it is shaped, sleep also sheds light on subjects in favour of which it has hitherto been overlooked: what sleep can enable (dreams and dream poetry) or what it can stand in for or supersede (desire and sex). This book argues that sleep mediates thematic concerns and questions in ways that have ethical, affective and oneiric implications. At the same time, it offers important contributions to understanding different Middle English genres: romance, dream vision, drama and fabliau.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        1997

        Toward a History of Ukrainian literature

        by George G. Grabowicz

        The work of the famous American-Ukrainian Slavologist and Ukrainian scholar Hryhoriy Hrabovych interprets the history of Ukrainian literature in several main ways: theoretical, comparative, immanent and historiographical. The book includes his studies, essays, and polemics written over the years. They were mainly produced in times of a sharp confrontation between official Soviet and Western approaches to literary studies. Today, after Ukraine gained its independence, there is an urgent need for a thorough reassessment of various scientific traditions and paradigms as well as a review of the canon of Ukrainian literature, its histography and methodology. The vast majority of these works were published in English or in sources unavailable for the Ukrainian reader, including specialist researchers. This edition can significantly reorient our understanding of the history of Ukrainian literature and enable a rethinking of Ukrainian cultural and intellectual processes.

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        March 2017

        Night Watchman: A Selection of Poems by Yu Kwang- chung

        by Yu Kwang-chung

        This collection of poems chosen and translated by Yu Kwang-chung, the poet himself, covers over eighty poems from 1958 to 2014. Unlike other poetry anthology, the poems in Night Watchman have been handpicked by the author personally. It includes classic works like Nostalgia, Jadeite Cabbage, Four Songs of Nostalgia, A Tug of War with Eternity, On the Rivers and Lakes, etc. and poems in different styles which have never beenpublished in the mainland before. These works, translated into English by the author,combine the charm of classic Chinese literature and the spirit of modern western literature, and embody the sound interaction between writing and translating.

      • Trusted Partner
        October 2019

        Impassive Rivers

        by Akram El Kebir

        “In any case, when you decide to try harga, it's because you no longer expect anything from life. Or that you expect a lot!” (Akram El Kebir) The summer of 2018 was particularly deadly in Oran, as the discovery of harraga corpses being fished out of the Mediterranean was commonplace. That same summer saw the commissioning of a water cab, the Rossinante II, which made the daily shuttle between Oran and the small seaside town of Aïn El Turk. A cafe owner in a small estaminet in Sidi El Houari, Zaki, at the age of 24, led a dull, boring life, with no prospects for the future other than to cherish the hope of one day attempting the harga. It was only the fear of ending up eaten by fish that dissuaded him. That said, as soon as he heard about the water cab, an absurd idea occurred to him: what if he hijacked the boat and headed for the Iberian coast? He won't be alone in this crazy adventure, as his neighborhood friends Okacha and Anis, and other outcasts, are sure to follow him. But these modern-day Don Quixotes shouldn't claim victory too soon! They'll learn the hard way that hijacking an entire ship is no picnic. They'll have to face up to the Italian crew, as well as the rest of the passengers. Passionate debates ensue, in a sort of impromptu Citizens' Assembly, where all issues affecting society are discussed. On the eve of the February 22nd Revolution, Zaki has eyes only for one of his hostages, the impetuous Nafissa...

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        December 2009

        Intertextuality in modern Arabic literature since 1967

        by Luc Deheuvels, Mike Thompson, Barbara Michalak-Pikulska, Paul Starkey

        This volume of essays is the first to be dedicated to the subject of intertextuality in modern Arabic literature. Beginning with a general overview of the topic by Roger Allen, it brings together essays on a range of writers from all parts of the Arab world, including, among others, Edwar al-Kharrat, Sa'd Allah Wannus, Najib Mahfuz, Rabi' Jabir, Salim Matar and the recently deceased Sudanese writer al-Tayyib Salih, whose seminal work Season of Migration to the North heralded a new phase in the modern Arabic literary tradition. The volume, which also includes two essays on aspects of intertextuality in Gulf literature, also discusses transformations of popular medieval literature such as the Alf Layla wa-Layla (the Thousand and One Nights) in modern Arabic literature. ;

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies

        History of Chinese Modern Popular Literature

        by Fan Boqun

        A pioneering academic project by Fan Boqun, a founder in the field of Chinese popular literature research, the book is divided into eight compilations: "Social Romance", "Martial Arts Making", "Detective Stories", "Historical Stories", "Humorous Stories", "Popular Drama", "Popular Journals" and "Chinese Modern Popular Literature Memorabilia".

      • Trusted Partner
        October 2014

        The education system in colonial Algeria (1833-1962)

        Statistical and historiographical review

        by Kamel Kateb

        ‘‘The means of dominating a people and assimilating it is to take possession of childhood and youth: this cannot be done by coercion, but the moral means are numerous and effective... The object of our efforts must be the extension of Arabic-French teaching: it is through this that we will take possession of the new generations almost from the cradle.’’ (Leroy-Beaulieu, 1887). (Leroy-Beaulieu, 1887). What is the record of French education in Algeria during the period of colonisation? After 132 years of French presence in Algeria (annexed to France in 1838), how many Algerians (French Muslims, indigenous French subjects) had a sufficient knowledge of the French language, and how many of them had learned to read and write in French? Was compulsory schooling for children aged 6 to 13, in accordance with the J. Ferry law of 1882, applied in Algeria? How many Algerian children attended state schools? How many went to lycée and university? What was the number of students at the time of the country's independence? How many doctors, engineers, primary and secondary school teachers did Algeria have at the time of its independence? What was the status of local languages (Arabic, dialectal Arabic, Berber) in the Algerian education system? As well as answering the questions listed above, this book attempts to analyse the objectives assigned to French schools in Algeria and to study the attitudes of the various populations to the objectives pursued. What role did education play in the various forms of colonial ‘confrontation’? What was the role of the elites produced by the colonial education system? And what role and place did they occupy in the struggle for Algerian independence? Were they the driving force behind the independence movement, as the Europeans in Algeria feared? Or did they mediate between colonisation and the mass of the colonised, as the enlightened ideologists of the colonial system hoped?

      • Trusted Partner
        June 2021

        Twelve Lectures on Modernist Literature

        by Liu Qinghua

        "Twelve Lectures on Modernist Literature" is a review and appreciation of the main modernist literary schools in the 20th century made by the literary critic Liu Qinghua. This book outlines the formation, development, ideological origins, theoretical foundations, and ideological and artistic characteristics of modernist literature. It is divided into eleven topics, respectively, on symbolism, stream of consciousness novels, futurism, expressionism, and surrealism. , Existentialism, Beat Generation and other genres have done systematic research and exposition, and at the same time analyzed and commented on representative writers and works of each genre. For literature lovers and researchers at home and abroad, this book is a rare desk book.

      • Trusted Partner
        November 2022

        The Doors of the Poem

        Tribute to Habib Tengour

        by Sagawe Regina Keil, Hervé Sanson

        The twenty-seven contributions gathered here and superbly illustrated by Hamid Tibouchi - critical studies and creative texts - pay tribute to a work that is at the forefront of Algerian and, more broadly, contemporary letters, but paradoxically still little-known. On the occasion of Habib Tengour's seventy-fifth birthday, this volume is intended to open up new avenues of research into this work, and provide a more accurate understanding of the issues at stake. Tributes from his peers - poets from all over the world - give the book an affective, carnal dimension, extending the researchers' analyses with unexpected echoes. “Tengour warns us: “Only those with the right intention enter the poem! LES PORTES DU POEME thus opens on one of the most important poetic voices of his generation (Prix Dante in 2016, Prix Benjamin Fondane in 2022, Prix Dante Alighieri in 2023, for his body of work).

      • Trusted Partner
        Anthologies (non-poetry)
        2021

        Not Only Kobzar. The Anthology of Ukrainian literature. 1792–1883 (in two books)

        by Mykhailo Nazarenko

        Ukrainian literature of the 19th century was far more exciting and diverse than one might imagine. Mykhailo Nazarenko's anthology contains one hundred and fifty texts that are not known or very little known to the modern reader (some of them are reprinted for the first time after 150 years of oblivion). These texts help to understand Ukrainian literary movement in a wider context. The compilation starts with the "The Song of the Black Sea Army" by Anton Golovaty. This novel precedes the famous "Aeneid" and marks the beginning of the printed literature "in the contemporary Ukrainian language". "It is not time..." by Ivan Franko is the last one in the compilation and describes further evolution of the independent Ukrainian literary word. The compilation also contains fifty essays about each of the authors: why did they write in a particular that way and about what? Why did some turn out to be forgotten, while others are remembered for their works?

      • Trusted Partner
        Literature & Literary Studies
        October 2002

        The question of literature

        The place of the literary in contemporary theory

        by Gerard Greenway, Elizabeth Beaumont-Bissell

        As literary theory has grown more influential, interdisciplinary and sophisticated, it has come to concern itself with a much greater range of issues and objects than those traditionally considered literary. It now addresses philosophy, history, psychology, politics and the media. Addressing a central and fundamental, but relatively neglected, issue in literary theory, this title seeks to recontextualise how theory has changed our understanding of literature and its questions by relating literature to the institution of the university, to ethical judgements and values, new media and computer technology and the nature of representative democracy. ;

      • Trusted Partner

        Earth’s Epic: How Far is 4.6 Billion Years

        by Miao Desui

        Earth’s Epic: How Far is 4.6 Billion Years is a new book from Professor Miao Desui, an internationally renowned paleontologist and science writer. He has written many popular science works with good sales and reputation, and has won dozens of honors. In Earth’s Epic, he explains earth science to teenagers for the first time.   In Earth’s Epic: How Far is 4.6 Billion Years, the author tells about the history of earth’s evolution, secrets in rocks, crustal movement, life evolution history recorded by fossils, earth minerals using popular and poetic language, showing readers the epic scene of earth’s evolution. As a popular science book, the Earth’s Epic is characterized by the concept of general education. In the book, Professor Miao Desui uses straightforward language, builds a scientific and rigorous knowledge system with multiple humane philosophies interwoven within the text, eliminates the barriers between science and liberal arts, and integrates geography, biology, history, physics, chemistry, literature, and other multiple disciplines. The book transmits the spirit of science, inspires interdisciplinary thinking, and enables readers of all ages to read and obtain knowledge from it.   Since published, Earth’s Epic has repeatedly appeared on the authoritative lists of the industry and won the Best China Books of 2021. It has been recommended by multiple media, such as China Book Review, China Publishing Today, China Reading Weekly, China Science Daily, China Press Publication Radio Film and Television Journal, and We Love Science. Besides, Shen Shuzhong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; Chen Qifan, vice chairman of the China Science Writers Association; and Zhou Shangyi, professor of the Faculty of Geographical Science of Beijing Normal University, and many other experts have also given it high praise.

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