December 2011
2 posts
4 tags
"Pale Fire," the poem itself →
Given the ludic vitality of Kinbote’s portions of the book, it is not surprising that Shade’s subtle, meticulously wrought poem should have received short shrift. Most readers tend to think of the poem as the grace that must be perfunctorily said before we sit down to the meal of the commentary. It is this imbalance that a new edition of “Pale Fire” seeks to redress. In a move that is likely...
3 tags
Jane Gallop: The Deaths of the Author →
Except from: The Deaths of the Author: Reading and Writing in Time by Jane Gallop. Duke University Press, 2011.
I go back to Roland Barthes to see what he meant by the catch phrase and also to get a fuller sense of his theory of the author. In Barthes’ writing about authors, we find actually two deaths — the abstract, polemical death of the slogan and a moving, more bodily death of the ...
3 tags
Translating in the Dark →
Tim Parks, NYRblog:
Why do those “usual reliable translators” often give us work that we feel is wooden or lackluster, thus inviting the poets to get involved? Teaching translation, I frequently deal with students who write well in their mother tongue, but whose translations into that tongue lack fluency. This brings us to a paradox at the heart of translation: the text we take as...
November 2011
3 posts
3 tags
Comparative Literature Studies, vol.48:3, 2011
Special issue: Trials of Trauma
Guest Editors: Michael G. Levine and Bella Brodzki
Articles:
Hannah Arendt’s Death Sentences / Judith Butler
Legal but Criminal: The Failure of the “Russian Nuremberg” and the Paradoxes of Post-Soviet Memory / Sergey Toymentsev
The Klaus Barbie Trial: Traces and Temporalities / Christian Delage
Australian Trials of Trauma: The Stolen...
3 tags
Jean-Christophe Igalens : Casanova. L’écrivain en... →
Vient de paraître:
L’écrivain rêvé de Casanova est une figure du dégagement. Le Vénitien veut communiquer ses idées, mais esquiver leur imputation ; écrire sa vie, mais éviter les conséquences de la reddition de compte et du dévoilement. L’écrivain en ses fictions, entre objet social, enjeu moral, instance imaginaire et figure impliquée par les textes, vise à comprendre la construction...
October 2011
7 posts
3 tags
Kindle en français →
Tim Carmody at Wired:
When I saw that French was one of the supported interface languages for the new entry-level Kindle, I knew that a new Kindle store en français would not be far off. Now it’s here, with 35,000 French-language titles for Kindle available now and the 99-Euro Kindle shipping to Amazon.fr customers on October 14.
If you read French, whether you live in France, Belgium,...
1 tag
Will the ebook kill the footnote? →
NYTimes. By Alexandra Horowitz:
The footnote jousting could soon be moot, as the e-book may inadvertently be driving footnotes to extinction. The e-book hasn’t killed the book; instead, it’s killing the “page.” Today’s e-readers scroll text continuously, eliminating the single preformed page, along with any text defined by being on its bottom. A spokesman for the Kindle assured me that it...
2 tags
Balzac, gourmet →
Balzac himself was an early devotee of authentic cuisine. His gastronomical ideal consisted of fresh ingredients with no added spices, and no complicated sauces. He wanted vegetables picked straight out of the garden, poultry raised in the backyard, stock simmered for hours and thickened only by the gelatin extracted from the bones. Needless to say, he did not think much of Parisian cooks....
2 tags
English words Nabokov found difficult →
3 tags
Writing History in the Digital Age →
Comment on essays from October 6th to November 14th, 2011.
Has the digital revolution transformed how we write about the past — or not? Have new technologies changed our essential work-craft as scholars, and the ways in which we think, teach, author, and publish? Does the digital age have broader implications for individual writing processes, or for the historical profession at...
2 tags
The reinvention of the night →
Craig Koslofsky EVENING’S EMPIRE A history of the night in early modern Europe
In 1710, Richard Steele wrote in Tatler that recently he had been to visit an old friend just come up to town from the country. But the latter had already gone to bed when Steele called at 8 pm. He returned at 11 o’clock the following morning, only to be told that his friend had just sat down to ...
1 tag
Harvard Cultural Observatory presents Bookworm →
Bookworm demonstrates a new way of interacting with the millions of recently digitized library books. The Harvard Cultural Observatory already collaborated with Google Books on the Google ngrams viewerthat has data for years. Bookworm doesn’t work so closely with Google Books: instead, it uses books in the public domain so you can explore the information we know about a book from many ...
September 2011
2 posts
3 tags
Read/Write Book: Le livre inscriptible →
En entrant dans l’ère de l’informatique en réseau, le livre devient inscriptible. Son développement ne suit plus la ligne droite de la traditionnelle chaîne du livre, mais se diffuse par ramifications réticulaires. Comme un oignon, il se pare de multiples couches d’informations, ajoutées par différents métiers, mais aussi par les lecteurs. Ensemble, ils participent à une vaste entreprise ...
3 tags
The Millions: The Life and Afterlife of Literary... →
Includes recommended books on the state of theory today.
