Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

Monday, June 29, 2026

Anonymous; Sayers trans, The Song of Roland (11thC or 12thC; 1957)

Anonymous.
The Song of Roland.
Translated by Dorothy L. Sayers.
Book Series: Penguin Classics.
London: Penguin Books, 1957.

Book Information : Publisher; Google Books; Wikipedia; GoodReads.com; Amazon.com.

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Translator Information : Dorothy L. Sayers
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Wikipedia Articles : The Song of Roland; French Literature; History of France; History of Spain
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Some Other English Translations of The Song of Roland :
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Notes:

I recently started reading Don Quixote and following the assigned reading in Roberto González Echevarría's lecture course Cervantes' Don Quixote. The character Alonso Quijano has become obsessed with the literature of Chivalric romance. In his early lectures González Echevarría discusses the literary predecessors of Don Quixote; there is a large body literature from the preceding 500 years before Don Quixote that influenced it and with which I was (and remain) unfamiliar. To satisfy my own obsessive inclinations I wanted to clarify the sequencing, relationships, and characteristics of these literary predecessors. Here is my general outline, with some of the more prominent examples, sometimes with the details of a recently published edition (there are sometimes/often more than one recent edition to choose from).
Disclaimer: This is a rough draft; I have not read this literature.
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  1. General Background Topics
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  3. Chanson de geste [Song of Heroic Deeds]
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  5. Chivalric romance
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  7. Italian Literature
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  9. French Literature
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  11. Spanish Literature before Don Quixote
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  13. Don Quixote

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Saturday, April 26, 2025

Mérimée, Carmen and Other Stories (2008)

Prosper Mérimée.
Carmen and Other Stories.
Translated by Nicholas Jotcham.
Book Series: Oxford World's Classics.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989, 1998, 2008.

Book Information : Publisher; Google Books; GoodReads.com; Amazon.com.

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Wikipedia Articles :
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Thursday, August 25, 2022

Negri, ed., Great French Short Stories (2004)

Great French Short Stories.
Edited by Paul Negri.
Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, 2004.

Book Information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.

Book Series: Dover Thrift Editions.

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Wikipedia Articles :
Contents of Great French Short Stories :
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Saturday, January 08, 2022

Molière, The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays (2001)

Molière.
The Misanthrope, Tartuffe, and Other Plays.
Translated by Maya Slater.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
This edition first published in 2001.

Book Information: Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.

Book Series: Oxford World's Classics.

This book contains the following plays:
  1. The School for Wives, 1662.
  2. The School for Wives Criticized, 1663.
  3. The Impromptu at Versailles, 1663.
  4. Tartuffe, 1664.
  5. The Misanthrope, 1666.
  6. Les Femmes savantes [The Clever Women], 1672.

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Author Information:
  • Molière (1622–1673), Wikipedia.
  • Maya Slater, MayaSlater.com.
  • Dr Maya Slater, Senior Research Fellow, Modern Languages and Cultures, School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, Queen Mary University of London.

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Wikipedia Articles:
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Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus (1955)

Albert Camus.
The Myth of Sisyphus.
Translated by Justin O'Brien.
New York: Vintage International (Vintage Books / Penguin Random House), 2018.
First published: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955.
Originally published: Le Mythe de Sisyphe, Librairie Gallimard, France, 1942.

Book Information: Publisher; Wikipedia; Google Books; Amazon.com.

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Author Information:
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In Our Time:
  • Melvyn Bragg, Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells, "Camus," In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, 03 January 2008.
    • Professor Peter Dunwoodie, Emeritus Professor of French Literature, Department of English and Creative Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London.
    • David H. Walker is/was Emeritus Professor of French, School of Languages and Cultures, University of Sheffield.
    • Christina Howells, Emeritus Professor of French, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford.

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Thursday, November 25, 2021

Camus, The Stranger (1993)

Albert Camus.
The Stranger.
Translated by Matthew Ward.
Introduction by Peter Dunwoodie.
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Everyman's Library volume 139.

This translation first published: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.
Originally published in French as L'Étranger by Librairie Gallimard, France in 1942.

Book Information: Publisher; Wikipedia; Google Books; Amazon.com.

Book Series: Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics Series.

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Author Information:
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In Our Time:
  • Melvyn Bragg, Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells, "Camus," In Our Time, BBC Radio 4, 03 January 2008.
    • Professor Peter Dunwoodie, Emeritus Professor of French Literature, Department of English and Creative Writing, Goldsmiths, University of London.
    • David H. Walker is/was Emeritus Professor of French, School of Languages and Cultures, University of Sheffield.
    • Christina Howells, Emeritus Professor of French, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford.

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Tuesday, November 23, 2021

Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (2014)

Barbara W. Tuchman.
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.
New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014.
(First published: New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.)

Book Information: Publisher; Wikipedia; Google Books; Amazon.com.

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Author Information:
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Video: Barbara Tuchman
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Wikipedia Articles:
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Tuchman tells this history from the perspective of the French. Most of my reading on this period has been from the English point of view, so Tuchman's work is an interesting contrast.

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Wednesday, October 13, 2021

Aldrich, Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion (1996)

Robert Aldrich.
Greater France: A History of French Overseas Expansion.
New York: St. Martin's Press (Palgrave Macmillan), 1996.

Book Information: Google Books; Amazon.com.

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Author Information:
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Wikipedia Articles:
  • French colonial empire, 1534–1980.
    (After reading Aldrich's Greater France I feel obliged to warn the reader that this Wikipedia article treats many topics in a very abbreviated manner.)
  • Overseas France, France d'outre-mer, l'Outre-mer, les DOM-TOM.
Miscellaneous Items:
  • Copra, "dried coconut kernels from which coconut oil is expelled", noted by Aldrich as an export commodity from some French colonies.
  • groundnut, Bambara groundnut, a legume from West Africa.

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Aldrich's Greater France is a very good introduction to the French overseas empire since 1830; however, it appears that it is currently out-of-print. Aldrich's Notes and Bibliography contain extensive references to the French literature so I am sure his book remains a useful guide for more serious students and readers of French. Some more recently published books (in English) on this topic include:
  • Frederick Quinn. The French Overseas Empire. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishers (Greenwood Publishing Group), 2000.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  • Todd Shepard. The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2006.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  • Pierre Brocheux and Daniel Hémery. Indochina: An Ambiguous Colonization, 1858-1954. Translated by Ly Lan Dill-Klein. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2009.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]
  • David Todd. A Velvet Empire: French Informal Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021.
    [Publisher; Google Books; Amazon.com.]

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