La Concierge is a diary-like book of fictionalized, life-like figures, around whom revolve other individuals, permanent presences or passersby, engaged in their daily trivial, or not so trivial, activities. It somewhat reminds one of books written by the French author Françoise Sagan, who became an instant success with her triad Bonjour Tristesse, Un Certain Sourire and Aimez-vous Brahms, subtle character novels encompassing young girl diaries, experiences, night scenes of Sorbonne students, endless sequences of dance spots and nightclubs until the wee hours, love triangles and quadrangles. The book is a mini-version of Balzac’s or Saroyan’s Comedie Humaine and Human Comedy. It is a sort of candid camera of the heart and modern mores…(more similar to camcorder images). The collection of characters met as they come to pass around the Concierge desk, also reminiscent of XVIIth century’s La Bruyere's Caracteres (Characters). With parading personages from the most attractive and personable to the exquisitely obnoxious, the space around the Concierge desk is a living observation laboratory of psychological images and situations. In this multiplicity of scenarios, somehow similarly to La Bruyere’s work, the unifying thread is the master idea to expose the ridiculous and the false which in daily activities, despite their meaninglessness, arouse much passion and controversy.

The twelve essays in Women and Wealth in Late Medieval Europe re-examine the vexing issue of women, money, wealth, and power from distinctive perspectives - literature, history, architectural history - using new archival sources. The contributors examine how money and changing attitudes toward wealth affected power relations between women and men of all ranks, especially the patriarchal social forces that constrained the range of women s economic choices. Employing theories on gender, culture, and power, this volume reveals wealth as both the motive force in gender relations and a precise indicator of other, more subtle, forms of power and influence mediated by gender.

THIS EDITION: The Mystery of the Yellow Room (in French, Le Mystère de la chambre jaune) is a classic French 'locked-room' mystery novel written by Gaston Leroux. (A Dual-Language Book Project) 2Language Books

Part of a series that provides reading and writing practice for adult beginners in foreign languages, this activity book provides a variety of exercises, steering clear of grammar drills. Answers are provided. The book is suitable for class use or for self-study.

Zone is the fruit of poet-translator Ron Padgett’s fifty-year engagement with the work of France’s greatest modern poet. This bilingual edition of Apollinaire’s poetry represents the full range of his achievement from traditional lyric verse to the pathbreaking visual poems he called calligrams, from often-anthologized classics to hitherto-untranslated gems, from poems of cosmic breadth to a poem about his shoes. Including an introduction by the distinguished scholar Peter Read, helpful endnotes, a preface, and an annotated bibliography by Padgett, this new edition of Apollinaire stands out not only for its compact and judicious selection of the essential poems but also as the work of an important American poet. The Washington Post has said, “No praise can be too high for Ron Padgett’s translations.”

Rewriting Wrongs: French Crime Fiction and the Palimpsest furthers scholarly research into French crime fiction and, within that broad context, examines the nature, functions and specificity of the palimpsest. Originally a palaeographic phenomenon, the palimpsest has evolved into a figurative notion used to define any cultural artefact which has been reused but still bears traces of its earlier form. In her 2007 study The Palimpsest, Sarah Dillon refers to “the persistent fascination with palimpsests in the popular imagination, embodying as they do the mystery of the secret, the miracle of resurrection and the thrill of detective discovery”. In the context of crime fiction, the palimpsest is a particularly fertile metaphor. Because the practice of rewriting is so central to popular fiction as a whole, crime fiction is replete with hypertextual transformations. The palimpsest also has tremendous extra-diegetic resonance, in that crime fiction frequently involves the rewriting of criminal or historical events and scandals. This collection of essays therefore exemplifies and interrogates the various manifestations and implications of the palimpsest in French crime fiction.

'In the end you're tired of this antiquated world' Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) is the most significant French poet of early modernism, and the most colourful. His exuberant, adventurous poetry matched the eventful times through which he lived, and his experimentalism heralded a new artistic order. In the Paris of the belle époque, Apollinaire's prolific writing - poems, short stories, erotic novels, art criticism - as well as his magnetic personality brought him fame and even some notoriety. His two great collections of poetry, Alcools and Calligrammes, made his reputation, and they include love poems as well as the war poetry for which he is best known. Apollinaire coined the word 'surrealism', and he led the literary and artistic avant-garde right up to his death two days before the Armistice, weakened by injuries received earlier in the War. This new selection by Martin Sorrell covers the full range of Apollinaire's career, and includes some of the poet's inventive pictorial calligrams. The introduction and notes explore his seminal role in the culture of the twentieth century. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

Voyage au bout de la nuit (1932), by Louis-Ferdinand Celine (1894-1961), and Zazie dans le metro (1959), by Raymond Queneau (1903-1976), were two revolutionary novels in their transposition of spoken language into written language. Since their publication they have been adapted into a broad range of media, including illustrated novel, bande dessinee, film, stage performance and recorded reading. What happens to their striking literary voices as they are transposed into media that combine text and image, sound and image, or consist of sound alone? In this study, Armelle Blin-Rolland examines adaptations sparked by these two seminal novels to understand what 'voice' means in each medium, and its importance in the process of adaptation.