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The article aims to analyze the ontological diffusion of bucolic songs in pastoral novels, taking in consideration the historical and aesthetic evolution of their writing. It demonstrates that shepherds’ songs, as original emblems of the Bergeries, evolve into various topical formulations of sound, within the framework of the complex evolution of pastoral romance in France, in the 16th and especially in the 17th century. Based on a fairly broad corpus (Sannazar, the first French Bergeries, Diana de Montemayor and its French translations, L'Astrée and its sequels), it highlights the formal vicissitudes and the dissonances suffered by pastoral song, in the temporal dynamic which marks these aesthetically hybrid Arcadian texts.

Keywords: Pastoral Novel, Roman pastoral, Chant pastoral, Pastoral Song, Honoré d’Urfé, Honoré d’Urfé, Montemayor, Montemayor, L’Astrée, L’Astrée, Los siete libros de la Diana, Los siete libros de la Diana

When Clément Marot tells how his father taught him to be a poet, in L’Enfer, the epistle « Au Roy » from La Suite and L’Eglogue au Roy, soubs les noms de Pan, & Robin, his account often gets fictional. Actually, this twisting of the autobiographic truth corresponds to the rewriting of topoi taken from allegorical initiation narratives. Marot draws on these topoi for a rhetorical purpose – when he defends himself or asks for goods – but also for an aesthetic one – for the poet uses them to redefine his art and the very exercise of the profession of court poet.

Keywords: Clément Marot, Jean Marot, filiation, rhétorique

Virtually neglected by literary scholars thus far, Clément Vautel’s Madame ne veut pas d’enfant (1924) is part of a subgroup of Belle Époque novels, including Jane de La Vaudère’s Les Demi-Sexes (1897), exploring the controversial subject of women’s reproductive freedom. The bulk of the Vautel’s characters fall into one of two groups: those who embrace the slogan “Croissez et multipliez” in the name of repopulating France and those who support a woman’s right to make her own decisions about having children. These debates replicate the real-life ones going on between pro-natalists and neo-Malthusians, the latter led by Paul Robin, whose Ligue pour la régénération humaine hosted lectures on birth control, sold contraceptives, distributed brochures, and supported abortion rights. The fact that Motherhood has become a significant topic of scholarly inquiry over the past decade and a half is all the more reason to investigate what Vautel has to say.

John Foster Dulles, then Secretary of State under the presidency of Eisenhower, once said there are two ways to conquer: by the clash of arms or through the economic control. The motto of the former WWII British SBS Commandos (Special Boat Service)used to be "United we conquer" and the one from the SAS (Special Air Service) used to be "Who dare win ", both of these commando troops or irregulars were in tactical competition framed by strategic cooperation where the light forces overcame heavier and overnumbering forces. Unity and daringness seem to be their secret weapon, but neither so secret nor so exclusive, comparatively to the recipe of tactical competition framed by strategic co-operation and coordination. "Superior numbers on the battlefield are an undoubted advantage, but skill, better organization, and training, and above all a firmer determination in all ranks to conquer at any cost, are the chief factors of success. Half-hearted measures never attain success in war and lack of determination is the most fruitful source of defeat" wrote Anthony Wilden1. The Chinese "Chii" (close to the latin "anima": heart, mind, courage) may be translated to "determination" and not by "energy" as it uses to be with the western obsession and compulsion of matter, energy and big power at the expense of high determination or "Tai Chi". The Chinese "Lii" - though its primal senses are "Law", "Rationality" and "Reason", "Rite" and "Harmony" - may be viewed as "Skill". Here, Asia is the Far East and mainly Japan, the "mother tiger" and her "baby tigers ", namely Korea (South), Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. The ride of the dragon is oriented elsewhere and devastated Viet Nam (the smaller dragon) - by its independence wars and communist insulation and isolation - is not yet in the game. Strategy is both an organizational level of action and a type of action based on disguise, deception, uncertainty, flexibility and adaptation.

Indigenous peoples experience various forms of domination, exclusion, and discrimination at both the national and territorial community levels. This study examines the situation of indigenous peoples in Northern Cameroon, highlighting both the historical and socio-political processes and mechanisms that have worked to bring about their cultural domination. In this part of Cameroon, indigenous peoples are confronted with a dynamic of cultural downgrading expressed through a logic of leveling implemented by the dominant social groups. The social relationship suggests the supremacy of the cultural values of the conquering Islamic societies over indigenous cultural values. For indigenous peoples, the expression of cultural rights is a daily struggle. The indigenous cultural movement that has been developing in recent years is part of this perspective of reclaiming cultural identity while at the same time revealing the desire of indigenous peoples to live and exist according to the cultural values that distinguish them. Cultural rights constitute one of the major development issues for human communities in Northern Cameroon.

This is an essay about contemporary Hongkong cinema and culture. It focuses on the film Rouge (1987), which was adapted from the novella Yanzhi kou (1986) by Li Bihua and directed by Stanley Kwan. Ruhua, a female ghost, comes back from the underworld in the 1980s to look for her lover decades after they committed suicide together. Her search reveals the details of a type of romance which seems to have disappeared in the contemporary world. The essay examines the strong sense of nostalgia emanating from this melancholic love story from several perspectives: the filmic image, ethnography, the agency of chance, and the fantasy of an alternative community in a Hongkong caught in the crisis of its imminent "return" to China by 1997.

This study is conceived as an interdisciplinary historical, theological, educational and anthropological research of the construction of a Catholic identity on the basis of the “self” and the non-Christian “other”, in this case Islam, in the narrative and discursive settings of Church history textbooks for primary and secondary religion education in French Canada (Québec) and in Belgium (1870-1950). In recent years, a huge amount of studies, starting from the analysis of textbooks, on cultural identities and educational mentalities have been produced in the classical history of education. Nevertheless, such studies have almost been a blind spot in theology and religious education. In concrete, we will appeal to a number of theological concepts like “inclusivism” and “exclusivism”, who are particularly suited to shed a light on the process of constructing a cultural identity.

As champions and the detractors of the female cause confronted one another repeatedly in writing from the fifteenth century onward, their arguments made their way into many handbooks and etiquette books addressed to men and women of the European élite. The French versions of these Renaissance texts were widely published and read during the sixteenth century. This study focuses in particular on the echoes and dramatizations of debates concerning the excellence and dignity of women in the most popular French versions of Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, Vivès’ De institutione feminae christianae, and Guevera’s Dial of Princes, as well as Boaistuau’s Institution des princes chrétiens. Fear of losing power, examples of strong women, misogynist denial, dissenting voices—all have their place in these texts and lend an element of paradox to the their exhortations to female perfection, made in the context of a reinforced gender roles and an explosion of contradictory discourses on the subject of female nature.

Keywords: Querelle des femmes, Institutions des élites, Traductions françaises imprimées, Castiglione, Vivès, Guevara, Boaistuau

Keywords: Topos, Auberge, Histoire comique, Narrativité, Espace

Officially, the Jewish presence in New France was prohibited under the French regime. Nevertheless, Esther Brandeau arrived there in 1738 and refused to convert. As peripheral figures in a predominantly Christian world, Jews like Brandeau used several strategies to survive and become chameleonic figures. This study aims to highlight Brandeau as she is portrayed in the archives as well as by the author Pierre Lasry, who wrote the very first novel about this historical character. Through this comparison, we can observe the relationship between reality and fiction, history and literature, the historian and the writer. Brandeau’s story serves as a reminder that Sephardic Jews settled not only in the Mediterranean basin following their expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula, but well beyond Europe, including in Canada.

Keywords: Canadian Jewish fiction, Esther Brandeau, Les Juifs en Nouvell-France, Jews of New France, l'identité juive dans la littérature québécoise, le roman historique