Foreign Language Study : French

From 1830 to 1870 advertising brought in its wake a new understanding of how the subject read and how language operated. Sara Thornton presents a crucial moment in print culture, the early recognition of what we now call a 'virtual' world, and proposes new readings of key texts by Dickens and Balzac. more...

Price: $75.00

Parlez-vous Français like a local with the help of the Utterly Confused series. Providing an ideal, easily accessible, instructional guide to one of the two most popular foreign languages taught in the United States, this new Utterly Confused self-study handbook is ideal for both students and adults looking for a user-friendly introduction to their language studies. Based on the highly successful Utterly Confused format, this guide introduces beginners, in a unique conversational style and format, to the basic pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary needed for effective communication. more...

Price: $16.95

Helen Abbott examines the verse and prose poetry of Baudelaire and Mallarmé, together with their critical writings, to address how their attitudes towards the performance practice of poetry influenced the future of both poetry and music. Abbott considers the meaning of 'voice' in terms of rhetoric, the human body, exchange, and music, showing that Baudelaire and Mallarmé exploit the complexity and instability of voice to propose a new aesthetic situating poetry between conversation and music. more...

Price: $99.95

Taking as its point of departure the notion of community in mid-twentieth century French literature and thought, this ambitious study seeks to uncover the ways in which Breton, Bataille, Sartre and Barthes used literature and art to engage with the question of reconceptualizing society.  In exploring the relevance these writings hold for contemporary debates about community, Lubecker argues for the continuing social importance of literary studies. Throughout the book, he suggests that literature and art are privileged fields for confronting some of the anti-social desires situated at the periphery of human rationality. The authors studied put to work the concepts of Thanatos, sado-masochism and (self-)sacrifice; they also write more poetically about man's attraction to Silence, the Night and the Neutral. Many sociological discourses on the question of community tend to marginalize the drives inherent within these concepts; Lubecker argues it is essential to take these drives into account when theorising the question of community, otherwise they may return in the atavistic form of myths. Moreover if handled with care and attention they can prove to be a resource. more...

Price: $110.00

This study provides a detailed account of the "Fables", including humour, the representation of animals, the literary qualities and the "moraliste" core. Dr Slater brings to light veiled satirical attacks, allusion to forgotten works and literature, and traces the obscure currents of thought, all this in the service of explicating the "fable" element. more...

Price: $180.00