Thematic influences and intertextuality in Flaubert’s novels and Maupassant’s short stories

This essay will show the influence of Flaubert’s writings and aesthetical conception on Maupassant’s short stories. For our demonstration, we chose the thematical level and the concept of intertextuality, which can be applied not only on stylistic or semantic microstructures, but also on a literary work as a whole. The examples of intertextuality are based on five fragments of Flaubert’s novels, compared to five fragments (thematically related) of Maupassant’s short stories. 

Les trois aveugles de Compiegne by Cortebarbre (13th century) and Les Trois Aveugles de Compiègne by Jean Ott (20th century): a transtextual analysis

The subject of this paper is a transtextual analysis of two texts entitled Les trois aveugles de Compiègne: a 13th-century “fabliau” and its play adaptation by a lesser-known French author, Jean Ott (1878–1935). Applying Gérard Genette’s terminology (Palimpstestes, Seuils), the author examines different levels of transformations, focusing mainly on the semantic message of hypo- and hypertext.

Provencal poets „named troubadours” in the eyes of Polish nineteenth century criticism

The interest in the Middle Ages begins in Poland in the nineteenth century with works dedicated to the poetry of the troubadours. The appearance of these essays, written exclusively in Polish, converges in time with the publication in France of the first serious works devoted to the Occitan lyric. My purpose is to try to compare these two phenomena related to the birth of medieval and Occitan studies in France and Poland. The choice of troubadours as an object of study is not fortuitous and tells us much more about the nineteenth century men and women and their time than of the Middle Ages. 

Imitation of the Ancients as Seen by Pierre de Deimier and René Rapin

In their treaties, Deimier and Rapin welcome novelty and individualism. But, if Deimier sees this creative freedom as synonymous with inventiveness, Rapin attaches it, paradoxically, to the imitation of classical antiquity. This is indeed because he is dissatisfied with the output of French writers. In his view, French letters fail to match the greatness and the sublime quality of Latin and Greek literature, which he recommends should be studied and imitated. In imitating Homer and his art, irregular but captivating and full of charm, contemporary poets can hope to create singular and incomparable works of literature.

Repetition, plurivocality and autobiographical narration in the cinema of Federico Fellini

The starting point for the analysis contained in the paper are considerations about the significance of plurivocality and tanscription in the cinema of Fellini, which was deeply influenced – as I hope to prove – by the autobiographical narration, even if its author had never said it openly. The recurrence of the motives, themes, characters and the pleasure of re-narrating are basis of Fellini’s poetics, which contains inconspicuous «the incurable adolescence which might possess us forever», as Fellini said in an interview. That is to say the optics of a boy who continues to recount his life from the deepness of the memory. It’s where the monstrous and the magic, taken from popular stories heard and experienced during Fellini’s rural childhood, are indistinguishable from normality and reality and have the same rights. The lack of a strong, dividing line between those two permits to build a world in which plurality  of voices merge in the autobiographical narration. Definition of the characteristics of this specific kind of autobiographical narration will be the final point of the paper, in which, besidefilms directly linked to Fellini’s memory places, as Vitelloni or Amarcord, such pictures as 8½ and Il Casanova di Fellini will also be featured. 

Melodramatic adaptations of François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil’s novels

The aim of the present paper is to examine the relations between the novels, published by François Guillaume Ducray-Duminil (1761–1819), and their melodramatic adaptations, w ith a particular emphasis being set on the works of René-Charles Guilbert de Pixerécourt (1773–1844). After comparing fragments of the novels with certain extracts of the melodramas, the article focuses on the similarities between the two sets of texts as well as on Ducray-Duminil’s attitude towards the fact that countless playwrights used to draw on his works in order to create their melodramas. The paper concludes with a short analysis of reasons why Ducray-Duminil’s novels were so popular amongst the dramatic writers of his times. 

Back to the future: to wake up in the middle of the French Revolution

Carbon de Flins des Oliviers writes ‘Le réveil d’Épiménide à Paris’ at the beginning of 1790, in the spirit of general enthusiasm for the French Revolution. The play is a big success, with 26 representations over a year. But surprisingly for a contemporary reader, its author has some bitter observations on the recent events and tries to show to the public, among other things, the dangers of boundless freedom of speech proclaimed by the ‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen’. He exhorts the French, as they remain active and vigorous actors on the revolutionary stage, to contemplate actively the political changes, for they can always distinguish lie form truth and for nobody can manip ulates them.