The integration of the blind into society has always meant taking on prejudices and inaccurate representations. Weygand's highly accessible anthropological and cultural history introduces us to both real and imaginary figures from the past, uncovering French attitudes towards the blind from the Middle Ages through the first half of the nineteenth century. Much of the book, however, centers on the eighteenth century, the enlightened age of Diderot's emblematic blind man and of the Institute for Blind Youth in Paris, founded by Valentin Haüy, the great benefactor of blind people. Weygand paints a moving picture of the blind admitted to the institutions created for them and of the conditions under which they lived, from the officially-sanctioned beggars of the medieval Quinze-Vingts to the cloth makers of the Institute for Blind Workers. She has also uncovered their fictional counterparts in an impressive array of poems, plays, and novels.The book concludes with Braille, whose invention of writing with raised dots gave blind people around the world definitive access to silent reading and to written communication.
This book provides a "birds eye" view of social change in France during the "long seventeenth century" from 1589-1715. One of the most dynamic phases of French history, it covers the reigns of the first three Bourbon kings, Henri IV, Louis XIII, and Louis XIV. The author explores the upheavals in French society during this period through an examination of the bonds which tied various classes and groupings together: including rank, honour, and reputation; family, household and kinship; faith and the Church; and state and obedience to the King. Acting as a social glue against instability and fragmentation, in periods of great transformation some of these social solidarities are eroded whilst new ones emerge. Sharon Kettering shows how nuclear family ties emerged at the expense of extended kinship ties, while traditional rural ties were eroded by a combination of demographic crisis and agricultural stagnation. Urban ties of neighbourhood, sociability and work increased with rapid urbanisation. By 1715, France had become a more peaceful and civilised place, and this book discusses some of the reasons why.
French Politics and Society is the ideal companion for all students of France and French politics with a strong reputation for its lucidity and lively exposition of the French polity. This third edition remains a highly readable text and offers a broad, critical and comprehensive understanding of French politics. The book provides an excellent description of French institutions and ensures readers access to background information through discussing historical developments, political forces, public policy, and the evolution of important aspects of French society. Key updates for the third edition include: extensive updates including the Chirac, Sarkozy and Hollande presidencies; inclusion of constitutional and state reform coverage since 2008; the French party system and evolution of the French left and right; more on France’s positioning with regards to Brussels and the impact of the European economic crisis. French Politics and Society is essential reading for all undergraduates studying French politics, French studies, European studies or comparative politics.
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." (Edmund Burke) Roosevelt Theodore Roosevelt Franklin attempts to make it through life day by day. Roosevelt is a widower, who lost his beloved wife to cancer and a retired history professor, and he has not stopped grieving. He and his two closest friends, also retired and who have also lost loved ones, form a paranormal investigation group. They hope to find an answer to the question: is there life after death? When asked by a local teacher to investigate a possible haunting of her house, the group discovers an evil beyond anything they could have imagined. This is no mere ghost. Maledicus, who was in life a pimp, torturer, and murderer during Caligula's reign in Rome, in death has become a sociopathic demon that attacks the weak and the innocent. Maledicus threatens a five year old child's life and soul. Terrified by what they have discovered, Roosevelt and his friends must choose to either walk away from this threat , or to do battle with this ancient creature at the potential loss of their sanities, their lives, and their souls.
These essays, three of them previously unpublished, explore the competing claims of innovation and tradition among the lower orders in sixteenth-century France. The result is a wide-ranging view of the lives and values of men and women (artisans, tradesmen, the poor) who, because they left little or nothing in writing, have hitherto had little attention from scholars. The first three essays consider the social, vocational, and sexual context of the Protestant Reformation, its consequences for urban women, and the new attitudes toward poverty shared by Catholic humanists and Protestants alike in sixteenth-century Lyon. The next three essays describe the links between festive play and youth groups, domestic dissent, and political criticism in town and country, the festive reversal of sex roles and political order, and the ritualistic and dramatic structure of religious riots. The final two essays discuss the impact of printing on the quasi-literate, and the collecting of common proverbs and medical folklore by learned students of the "people" during the Ancien Régime. The book includes eight pages of illustrations.
In the spring of 1775, a series of food riots shook the villages and countryside around Paris. For decades France had been free of famine, but the fall grain harvest had been meager, and the government of the newly crowned King Louis XVI had issued an untimely edict allowing the free commerce of grain within the kingdom. Prices skyrocketed, causing riots to break out in April, first in the market town of Beaumont-sur-Oise, then sweeping through the Paris Basin for the next three weeks. Known as the Flour War, or the guerre des farines, these riots are the subject of Cynthia Bouton's fascinating study. Building upon French historian George Rud&é's pioneering work, Bouton identifies communities of participants and victims in the Flour War, analyzing them according to class, occupation, gender, and location. As typically happened, crowds of common people (menu peuple) confronted those who controlled the grain-bakers, merchants, millers, cultivators, and local authorities. Bouton asks why women of the menu peuple were heavily represented in the riots, often assuming crucial roles as instigators and leaders. In most instances, the people did not steal the provisions but forced those they cornered to sell at a price the rioters deemed &"just.&" Bouton examines this phenomenon, known as taxation populaire, and considers the growing &"sophistication of purpose&" of rioters by placing the Flour War within the larger context of food riots in early modern Europe.
This study plots a narrative course through the French Revolution examining the elements behind the breakdown of the 18th-century monarchic state. It presents a picture of the tensions throughout the revolutionary decade.
The Third Republic, known as the ‘belle époque’, was a period of lively, articulate and surprisingly radical feminist activity in France, borne out of the contradiction between the Republican ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity and the reality of intense and systematic gender discrimination. Yet, it also was a period of intense and varied artistic production, with women disproving the critical nearconsensus that art was a masculine activity by writing, painting, performing, sculpting, and even displaying an interest in the new "seventh art" of cinema. This book explores all these facets of the period, weaving them into a complex, multi-stranded argument about the importance of this rich period of French women’s history.
This thoroughly revised, updated and expanded new edition of an established text surveys the cultural, social and political history of France from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune through to Emmanuel Macron's presidency. Incorporating the newest interpretations of past events, Sowerwine seamlessly integrates culture, gender, and race into political and social history. This edition features extended coverage of the 2007-8 financial crisis, the rise of the political and cultural far right and the issues of colonialism and its contemporary repercussions. This is an essential resource for undergraduate and taught postgraduate students of history, French studies or European studies taking courses on modern French history or European history. This text will also appeal to scholars and readers with an interest in modern French history. 'Richly informative and lucidly presented, Sowerwine's France since 1870 offers essential reading for students and researchers. Particularly powerful is the new final chapter, which draws on historical expertise to explore and explain the literary and political malaise of contemporary France.' – Jessica Wardhaugh, University of Warwick, UK. 'This third edition is unparalleled in its reach and excellence as a history of modern France from 1870 to the present. Sowerwine seamlessly integrates culture, gender, and race into political and social history. His incorporation of the newest interpretations of past events as well as the historical perspective he lends to current events such as terror attacks, new laws regarding labor and marriage, modern globalization, neo-liberalism-as well as to France's darkening mood--make this highly readable book a true masterpiece.' – Elinor Accampo, University of Southern California, USA. 'Her recent social and economic challenges have cast deep shadows into the story of modern France that Charles Sowerwine tells so clearly. Those dark questions about culture, politics and society have their full place in this This scholarly but accessible reassessment of French history since 1870. This edition raises new questions about France's story, directly and compellingly, and remains the key text for readers who are curious about modern France.' – Julian Wright, Northumbria University, UK. 'Following on the fine precedent set by earlier editions, this masterful survey offers students and the public alike a readable and illuminating account of the tortuous and ever intriguing path of French history since 1870.' – George Sheridan, University of Oregon, USA.
