Images and themes in 'le Lys dans la vallee'

The thesis is a style-study of le Lys dans la vellee. Previous assessments of the novel's style have often been unfavourable. This derives at least in part from critics ' tendency to concentrate to on selected parts of the novel - whether to illustrate the Honore de Balzac-Felix de Vandenesse identification, or Balzac's supposedly flawed prose. The partiality of such approaches may be remedied by acknowledging the creative autonomy which Balzac has delegated to his 'creature', Felix de Vendenesse, and by seeing the novel as Felix's valiant bid for creativity, as Felix's coherent vision of his past and of the world. Balzac does, moreover, give Felix ample motivation for writing such a narrative. Although, then, an examination of the historical context in which le Lys was written confirms that many of its themes are cliches of the period, their combination, organisation, -and justification are unique. Felix's vision is epitomised in the way he establishes verbal links between experiences separated in time but related in intensity of feeling. The objects he describes are infused with his own subjective values, and become, therefore, what are called material images. These centre in groups on the four natural elements of earth, air (light and sound), fire and water, and on the various references to movement in the narrative. All these images and themes are then seen to converge on the plant, especially in the descriptions of the bouquets, which are thus at the centre of a network of correspondences whose source and brilliant internal justification are to be found in the description of Felix the poet-child-mystic. However brilliantly coherent, this vision is also the escapist fantasy of a child who never progresses from his adolescent fixations. Hence the importance of Natalie de Manerville's rejoinder. Hence, too, the originality of Balzac in composing a supremely coherent but at the same time supremely vitiated 'paradis imaginaire'.<p

Banning the Boy. Homosex, Censorship and the Work of Éric Jourdan

Quels sont les effets de la censure sur la perception et la construction de l’ “identité gay” ? Une réponse à cette question sera fournie par un examen de l’œuvre d’Éric Jourdan dont les textes ont été frappés de quatre formes de censure : censure par l’État suite à l’intervention de la Commission du Livre ; ingérence des maisons d’édition ; les révisions pratiquées par l’auteur en amont de la publication ; l’autocensure au cours de la rédaction d’un texte. Les effets de ces différentes sortes de censure sont les suivants : d’un côté, l’interdiction de son premier roman, Les Mauvais anges, pendant près de trente ans, conforte Jourdan dans sa liberté de pensée et d’écrivain. D’un autre côté, cette interdiction le cantonne dans la catégorie “écrivain gay”, voire “écrivain érotique gay’” – catégories dont il n’a cure. Il s’ensuit que la censure crée et promeut la catégorie même que la censure – et l’écrivain – refusent : l’identité gay

Homosexualités et fictions en France de 1981 à nos jours

Le 27 juillet 1982, le gouvernement socialiste français abrogeait l’article 331, alinéa 2, du Code pénal datant de l’Occupation et permettant de punir “d’un emprisonnement de six mois à trois ans et d’une amende de 60 à 20 000 francs toute personne qui aura commis un acte impudique ou contre-nature avec un individu mineur du même sexe” – une disposition qui n’existait pas pour les actes hétérosexuels. Le 25 juin 1984, Michel Foucault mourait à Paris du sida. Le début des années 80 voit ainsi..

Models for Access to Maternal Smoking cessation Support (MAMSS): a study protocol of a quasi-experiment to increase the engagement of pregnant women who smoke in NHS Stop Smoking Services

Background: Maternal smoking is a key cause of poor outcomes for mothers, babies and children and Wales has higher rates of smoking in pregnancy than any other UK country. Despite various improvements within the NHS Stop Smoking Service to strengthen the intervention for pregnant women, referrals and successful quit attempts for this group have continued to remain extremely low. A key element of UK national guidance for smoking cessation during pregnancy is to provide a flexible and tailored service to help increase levels of engagement. This study aims to test the effectiveness of three different models of service delivery to address the gap in the evidence base about how to deliver a flexible, tailored smoking cessation service to pregnant women. Methods: This study will adopt a quasi-experimental design over a 12 month period. The setting is four of Wales’ seven Health Boards using an integrated approach between maternity services, local public health teams and the NHS Stop Smoking Service. Core recommendations from UK public health guidance are being implemented across intervention and usual care sites. Stop smoking support for pregnant women in intervention sites is being delivered more flexibly than in usual care sites. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches will be adopted to capture important contextual information and consider multiple perspectives. A health economic analysis will be undertaken using a cost-consequences analysis approach. The primary outcome measure is engagement with stop smoking services (defined as having at least one face-to-face therapeutic contact with a clinician). Discussion: Supporting pregnant women to stop smoking is a challenging area of public health. The proposed study will address several areas where there are key evidence gaps relating to smoking cessation interventions for pregnant women. Specifically, how best to encourage pregnant women to attend a specialist stop smoking support service, how to deliver the service and who should provide it

Multiple novel prostate cancer susceptibility signals identified by fine-mapping of known risk loci among Europeans

Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified numerous common prostate cancer (PrCa) susceptibility loci. We have fine-mapped 64 GWAS regions known at the conclusion of the iCOGS study using large-scale genotyping and imputation in 25 723 PrCa cases and 26 274 controls of European ancestry. We detected evidence for multiple independent signals at 16 regions, 12 of which contained additional newly identified significant associations. A single signal comprising a spectrum of correlated variation was observed at 39 regions; 35 of which are now described by a novel more significantly associated lead SNP, while the originally reported variant remained as the lead SNP only in 4 regions. We also confirmed two association signals in Europeans that had been previously reported only in East-Asian GWAS. Based on statistical evidence and linkage disequilibrium (LD) structure, we have curated and narrowed down the list of the most likely candidate causal variants for each region. Functional annotation using data from ENCODE filtered for PrCa cell lines and eQTL analysis demonstrated significant enrichment for overlap with bio-features within this set. By incorporating the novel risk variants identified here alongside the refined data for existing association signals, we estimate that these loci now explain ∼38.9% of the familial relative risk of PrCa, an 8.9% improvement over the previously reported GWAS tag SNPs. This suggests that a significant fraction of the heritability of PrCa may have been hidden during the discovery phase of GWAS, in particular due to the presence of multiple independent signals within the same regio

Les Marana de Balzac

Le lien entre sexualité et violence chez Balzac semble incontournable. Le but de cet essai est donc de voir si cette violence, dans le texte Les Marana, témoigne d’une masculinité en crise ou d’une féminité en folie ? Publié dans les années 1830, ce texte représente un texte résolument « masculin », mais dont les personnages féminins, restent, même filtrés à travers les rêves et les désirs de l’homme, les plus forts en personnalité, en envergure et en durée. Les hommes, de leur côté, conjuguant le libertin dix-huitièmiste, l’éphèbe romantique et l’androgyne « postgendered », font preuve d’une masculinité précaire mais persistante, qui leur fait autant de mal, voire davantage, qu’elle n’en fait aux femmes qui leur survivent.The link between sexuality and violence seems inevitable in Balzac. The essay proposes to examine whether the violence, in Les Marana, shows the crisis of male identity or the madness of female identity. Published in the eighteen-thirties, the text is definitely «masculine»; however, even filtered through the male dreams and desires, the female characters remain stronger in personality, more large-sized and lasting figures. On their side, the male characters, in joining the 18th century libertine, the romantic young man and the «postgendered» androgyne, demonstrate a masculinity that is precarious but persistent, which hurts them as much, or even more, than the female characters who survive them

Scott Lee, Traces de l'excès : Essai sur la nouvelle philosophique de Balzac

Heathcote Owen. Scott Lee, Traces de l'excès : Essai sur la nouvelle philosophique de Balzac. In: Romantisme, 2004, n°125. Juifs, judéité à Paris au début du XIXe siècle. pp. 142-143

Scott Lee, Traces de l'excès : Essai sur la nouvelle philosophique de Balzac

Heathcote Owen. Scott Lee, Traces de l'excès : Essai sur la nouvelle philosophique de Balzac. In: Romantisme, 2004, n°125. Juifs, judéité à Paris au début du XIXe siècle. pp. 142-143

Donald Adamson, Balzac. Illusions perdues

Heathcote Owen. Donald Adamson, Balzac. Illusions perdues. In: Romantisme, 1983, n°40. L'argent. p. 167