No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis analyses the simplification of fashion in the French "beau monde" at the end of the eighteenth century. It reveals that the simplified fashion of the 1770s and 1780s was the result of a new feeling for nature. New perceptions of the body led physicians to plead for a new fashion, more respectful of the natural characters of the body. On the aesthetic level, natural simplicity was meant to be the only way to recover original truth and energy. Moreover, anglomania, by way of sustained exchanges with England, contributed to the development of a simpler and more egalitarian fashion. This new feeling for nature reflects profound changes in the French society at the end of the century. The idea of nature, defined according to the values and ideals of a rising bourgeoisie, conveyed a bourgeois spirit no longer restricted to a narrow social group.

Sodomy and buggery are two elements of the wide historical and literary problematic of the Gay Past. During the French Renaissance, many images were closely related to unnatural vices: hermaphroditism, representation of the foreigner, effeminacy, and so on. In order to avoid anachronical statements, our study will be preceded by an historical and methodological essay that will bring us to a literary concept, l'imagologie. / In many ways, religious reforms in the last decades of the Sixteenth Century added to the complexity of the image of the sodomite. We know that the Holy Bible and religious writings put a stigma on such practices. But the hermaphrodite, the mignon, and some motifs from Antiquity were also known or discovered, transformed or travestied. / Finally, the image of the sodomite built up in French Renaissance literature is neither similar to today's Gay person, nor to an oversimplified figure of a medieval sinner. Its organization and meaning will depend mostly on the type of work in which it appears. Moreover, Italian and North-African epistemologies, and polemics using effeminacy or mollities set-ups add to the complexity of the discursive structure.

No description available.

The history of publication of Pascal's Pensées is one of conflict and contention at many levels. This is studied in relation to four editions which have emerged from engagement with the fragmented text, each marking a milestone in the evolution of editorial practice and mastery over the work of the dead author. The text is presented as target, bystander, and agent of conflict. The first two chapters deal with motivation to publish, target readership, and the sources of conflict themselves. Chapter three examines these issues with respect to the original edition (L'Édition de Port-Royal), and the subsequent three chapters examine respectively the editions of Prosper Faugère, Léon Brunschvicg, and Louis Lafuma. The narrative charts the gradual approach to the currently accepted presentation of the fragments, and the long persistence of efforts to imagine Pascal's plan for an apology for Christianity, against a reluctance to take account of the authority of existing documents. The reception of these editions provides clues to why the Pensées have an eternal youthfulness and a constant appeal to editors. I argue that the apology lies in the fragments, however they are arranged, that all editors have accepted their apologetic intent, and that their universal significance springs from the deep sensibility they express about the human condition.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.