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The article considers the royal gardens during the reign of King Louis XIV of France, by focusing on the commissioned prints by Israël Silvestre depicting the first fêtes of Louis' reign, the Grand Carousel of 1662 held on the grounds of the Louvre in Paris, France, and the pleasures of the enchanted isle 1664 held at on the grounds of Versailles. Topics include pageantry and state, iconography and symbolism, and books of the festivals produced by the Petite Académie established for that purpose.

France in the early 1960s witnessed on the one hand a soaring demand for rock and twist music, and, on the other, popular and commercial resistance to foreign-language songs. This combination created an enormous opportunity for French-language remakes (‘adaptations’) sung by artists who could benefit from massive promotion by a record industry that was not yet multinational. Through a statistical analysis of hit parades from 1960 to 1970, a watershed decade for the globalisation of popular music, this article quantifies the ‘adaptations’ wave and contextualises its rise and decline. By way of conclusion, an epilogue jumps forward some 30 years to consider radio quotas and the adoption of English by young French songwriters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers music’s interpretive functions in Varda’s 2008 documentary Les Glaneurs et la glaneuse. The film’s score references the director’s collaborative history with other composers throughout her career. In particular, the author is interested in what Varda’s musical collaborations can tell us about her creative process and her own sense of authorship. The author also claims that Les Glaneurs’ musical selections allow the filmmaker to aurally signify her reflections about the state of contemporary French citizenship. Thus, this essay considers how Les Glaneurs uses French popular music to reflect on the cultural and political significance of economically marginalized French citizens who steal out of economic necessity. The author will attend to the formal construction of the film’s heterogeneous score and discuss the musical contributions from three of Varda’s frequent collaborators, along with Varda’s participation. In doing so, the author argues that Les Glaneurs’ score gives us a fuller understanding of the director’s use of the term ‘gleaning’ in relation to her work as a filmmaker. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An interview with historian Henry Rousso is presented, translated by Laure Astourian and originally published in the book "Mémoires occupées: Fictions françaises et Seconde Guerre Mondiale," edited by Marc Dambre. He addresses the collective memory of the World War II era in France in relation to his books "Le Syndrome de Vichy: De 1944 à nos jours" and "Vichy, un passé qui ne passe pas." The relation of history to historical fiction on the era is addressed.

A literary criticism of the book "Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome: ou l'Éccole du Libertinage" by Marquis de Sade is presented. It outlines the lifestyle of four wealthy libertines, hidden locations and secret torture chambers in the castle Château de Silling , the technique of titillation is also expressed in the book. An overview of the story is also given.

This article proposes a postcolonial reading of some passages of the famous book by Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters (2004). It makes visible French assumptions that sustain Casanova's interpretation of Latin American modernity. Playing with the tide of an old film by William Friedkin, the author names the narrative based on these assumptions, The French Connection. He analyzes three striking key moments in its development within the book of Casanova. Firstly, the moment of literary independence that would be obtained by Ruben Darío at the end of the 19th century; secondly, the moment of the liberating discover)' of “authentic" Latin American identity that would occur in Paris during the avant-garde era, and lastly, the global recognition that would come in the 1960s with the literature of the Boom novels. The author argues for a change of perspective beyond the myth of French universalism which may allow us to understand France, its society, its peculiarities and characteristics, within the context of the strategies, the logic and the beliefs that nourish its complex power relationship with Latin American culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of sexuality in the music and careers of young female singers, sometimes known as copines, in France during the 1960s. Particular focus is given to performers Sylvie Vartan, Sheila, and Françoise Hardy. It is suggested that while popular music served as a vehicle for young men to challenge sexual norms, the music performed by young women and its reception often reinforced these norms. According to the author, the sexual revolution of the 1960s did not signal the end of the objectification of women or challenge notions of girlhood and young womanhood. Details on sexual themes in song lyrics are presented. Flirting and media coverage of female performers are also discussed.

Scholars working on French keyboard music from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries have been strongly aware of the close connection between music and language. By mapping linguistic ideas to musical thoughts, this study identifies the origins of this connection and traces how stylistic changes and performance attitudes were influenced by linguistic concepts. During the seventeenth century, in both musical and linguistic realms, an awareness of a certain weakness in existing language led to attempts to purify it. From the 1650s, the desire for logic, clarity, and order also shaped the development of French keyboard music and propelled the rationalization of usage in music. This development paralleled, to a certain extent, the codification of the French language. In both cases, such classification was, however, only partial. By resorting to the notion of le bon goût, musicians silently confessed to the greater variety that took place in practical music-making when compared to theoretical rules. An enriched understanding of le bon goût within a broader cultural context refines our approach to performing this music. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Sacred music at the court of Louis XIII (r.1610-43) has received much less scholarly attention than that of the following reign: in part due to the lack of surviving musical sources associated with the Chapelle Royale from the period, and in part because of the strikingly conservative and functional nature of the little that does survive, there certainly seems to be little incentive for detailed consideration of this period. Literary evidence, however, suggests that we should perhaps look for venues outside the Chapelle Royale—indeed, such evidence points to the performance of sacred music by the Musique de la Chambre alone, and to collaborations between the Chambre and the Chapelle at important ceremonial events throughout the early part of the 17th century, even if, on our current understanding, no specific pieces from these occasions survive. Fortunately, however, a re-examination of an important manuscript source dating from the period (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, V ma Ms.rés.571) brings to light a repertory of sacred music from c.1620 to 1640 that can now be associated with the Chambre, such works also providing a credible model for collaborations between the Chambre and Chapelle at Louis XIII’s dinner table. In this light, Nicolas Formé’s famous Mass for two choirs, the Missa Æternae Henrici Magni (1638), appears also to represent a collaboration between Chambre and Chapelle, with the scoring and musical techniques associated with each ensemble reflected in the disposition of the two choirs. Since Henri Sauval famously credited Formé with the development of the double-choir model which featured in the earliest grands motets (especially those of Jean Veillot from c.1660), it now seems clear that the grand motet as a genre grew out of collaborations between the Chambre and Chapelle dating back into the 16th century rather than, as is often suggested, from any Absolutist imperative emanating from the Sun King’s court. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a historiographical review of the state of research on the study of Renaissance travel literature and social life. It describes the mid-20th century revolution in the historiography of the French Renaissance, the work of historians Geoffroy Atkinson and Clarence Rouillard, and the influence of the work of anthropologists Alfred Métraux and Claude Lévi-Strauss. Other subjects under discussion include the bibliographic book "La Littérature géographique française de la Renaissance: Répertoire bibliographique" by Atkinson, the book "Le Huguenot et le sauvage" by Frank Lestringant, and "La Conquéte de l’Amérique: La question de l’autre" by Tzvetan Todorov.

The article presents an examination into the history of French opera and ballet throughout the 19th-century. Details are given profiling the development of the relationship shared between the two performance arts during the Restoration period as well as the Second Empire, highlighting changes in legal policy and common production management trends. Particular attention is given to the gradual distinction and separation of the Grand Opéra and Petit Opéra genres with their differing treatment of dance.

This article explores the unique dramatic rapport between the voice and the instrumental accompaniment — either as obbligato instruments or as a simple continuo line — in select examples of early 18th-century French cantatas. Through examples by Campra, Morin, Bernier and Montéclair, it presents a taxonomy of the different types of dramatic interaction by looking primarily at recitatives. The study shows that composers turned instrumental music into an essential part of the drama by legitimizing its presence either as a diegetic occurrence, a representation of sound — musical, human or otherwise — heard by the singer or as an external manifestation of the singer’s inner self. In its most basic form, the interaction between singer and instrumental music helps the listener envision the dramatic action, as in Campra’s La dispute de l’Amour et de l’Hymen, where the sound of a bourrée gradually interrupting Venus’s sleep heralds the arrival of Love and Hymen. Another type involves the representation of imagined sound, as in Morin’s Le naufrage d’Ulisse , where brief interjections of the storm interrupt the singer as if materializing from his narration of past events. Composers sometimes turned mimesis into diegesis as in Montéclair’s Le dépit généreux, where a descending chromatic bass depicting the singer’s urge to weep becomes his real weeping in the following aria, or in Bernier’s L’amour vainqueur, where the instrumental interjections first represent the singer’s attempts to burst into song, then represent actual singing when they turn into the ritornello of the following aria. More overtly theatrical interactions between singer and instruments can be found in Montéclair’s Le retour de la paix, where the ‘fight’ between violins and singer is an allegory of war, and in Campra’s Le Jaloux where the singer engages in a dramatic tête-à-tête with the violins, whose sound becomes a dramatic interlocutor for the singer throughout the entire piece. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the information provided in manuscript and contemporary printed sources is limited and often confusing, the author attempts to list all occasions (over 60) where Lully used recorders in his ballets, comedies-ballets and tragedies en musique. Each such context is then examined to ascertain its purpose, and the results tabulated, with general and detailed commentaries, under 13 recorder associations and symbolisms. They show that in his early works Lully employed recorders in much the same way as had earlier composers of ballets de cour, but that he took full advantage of a range of opportunities in the tragedies en musique to extend and develop his use of recorder symbolism. This greater and wider usage coincides with the redesign by his wind-prayers of the early 17th-century or 'late Renaissance' recorder as the more refined and expressive late Baroque instrument. Lully's use of the new recorders in sleep scenes and pompes funèbres occasions in particular excited considerable approbation. The author suggests that Lully contributed to the revival of the recorder in the last three decades of the 17th century leading to its later use by composers such as Handel and Bach. A series of illustrations linked to the text shows the cultural background to the recorder symbolisms so potently developed in the music of Lully. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Se presenta información acerca del "Colloque International Relire Jean-Pierre Vernant" que se llevó a cabo en París, Francia, del 9 al 11 de octubre de 2008. Los temas abordados incluyeron la obra del filólogo e historiador Jean-Pierre Vernant, el sacrificio en el mito de Prometeo y los símbolos plásticos según Vernant.

The article explores ways in which French poet and author Charles Baudelaire inspired the literary genres of mystery, crime fiction, and detective novels in the nineteenth century. It tracks the origins of the genre from the memoirs of French policeman Eugène François Vidocq, leader of the first France's Brigade de Sûreté; to the short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” by Edgar Allen Poe; to Baudelaire's French translation of Poe's story. Other subjects considered include the impact of technological innovations on 19th century European society; Baudelaire's modern art aesthetics; and urban landscapes, duality, and the 1863 the Salon des Refusés in Paris, France in Baudelaire's writings.

Abstracts for articles appearing within this issue are presented on topics including historical pageants in twentieth-century Great Britain, a comparative study of eighteenth-century church polity in Scotland and England, and a study of two French appeals for alms to assuage hunger written in 1662 during the Counter-Reformation.