This valuable reference is an authoritative guide to 20th century French thought. It considers the intellectual figures, movements and publications that helped define fields as diverse as history, psychoanalysis, film, philosophy, and economics.

"There are suggestive and interesting contributions ... Historians of modern France and historians interested in the cultural aspects of war will find much to engage with in this stimulating collection." - French History France experienced four major conflicts in the fifty years between 1914 and 1964: two world wars, and the wars in Indochina and Algeria. In each the role of myth was intricately bound up with memory, hope, belief, and ideas of nation. This is the first book to explore how individual myths were created, sustained, and used for purposes of propaganda, examining in detail not just the press, radio, photographs, posters, films, and songs that gave credence to an imagined event or attributed mythical status to an individual, but also the cultural processes by which such artifacts were disseminated and took effect. Reliance on myth, so the authors argue, is shown to be one of the most significant and durable features of 20th century warfare propaganda, used by both sides in all the conflicts covered in this book. However, its effective and useful role in time of war notwithstanding, it does distort a population's perception of reality and therefore often results in defeat: the myth-making that began as a means of sustaining belief in France's supremacy, and later her will and ability to resist, ultimately proved counterproductive in the process of decolonization.

Publisher Description

A clear and comprehensive account of the history of French philosophy in the twentieth century.

Anglo-French Relations in the Twentieth Century is a collection of studies on the key episodes of the difficult and often discordant Anglo-French exchange over the past century. The authors critically re-evaluate: * the role of Spain in Anglo-French relations up to 1918 * the missed opportunity of the 1920s with the failure of France and Britain to find sufficient common ground and co-operation * the short-lived Anglo-French alliance and the Second World War * the degree of Anglo-French Imperial co-operation * the Suez Crisis * British and French policies on European Integration.

This unique book addresses trends such as vitalism, neo-Kantianism, existentialism, Marxism and feminism, and provides concise biographies of the influential philosophers who shaped these movements, including entries on over ninety thinkers. Offers discussion and cross-referencing of ideas and figures Provides Appendix on the distinctive nature of French academic culture

Knowing and History charts the development of Hegelian philosophy of history in France from the 1930s through the postwar period, and critically assesses its significance for an understanding of our cultural present and of the possibilities for making meaning out of change over time. Michael Roth provides detailed analyses of the works of three of the most important Hegelian thinkers: Jean Hyppolite, Alexandre Kojève, and Eric Weil. These philosophers turned to history as the source of truths and criteria of judgment: they forged connections between history and knowing as a means of confronting key modem philosophical problems, and of engaging their contemporary political concerns. By the 1950s, however, they had withdrawn from the historical in search of a more secure, hopeful subject for reflection. According to Roth, the French Hegelians' work illuminates the power and limitations of the philosophical approach to history. Further, he finds in the development of their philosophies one of the crucial transformations in modem intellectual history: the shift from a concern with questions of significance to a concern with questions of use or function. He seeks to explicate the contemporary retreat from questions of significance by situating our cultural moment in relation to its intellectual antecedents. In an Afterword devoted to French post-structuralism, the author discusses Hegel's replacement by Nietzsche as the locus of philosophical authority in France in the 1960s, and examines how this shift informs the work of Michel Foucault. Roth argues that the use of Nietzsche against a dialectical philosophy of history contributes to a serious disjunction between philosophical reflection and political judgment. Relevant to a wide variety of disciplines, Knowing and History will appeal to those specializing in intellectual history and political theory, as well as philosophers of history, critical theorists, and students of modem French thought and culture.

Romance in modern times is the most widely read yet the most critically despised of genres. Associated almost entirely with women, as readers and as writers, its popularity has been argued by gender traditionalists to confirm women's innate sentimentality, while feminist critics have often condemned the genre as a dangerous opiate for the female masses. This study adopts the more positive perspective of critics such as Janice Radway, and takes seriously the pleasure that women readers consistently seem to find in romance. Drawing on the social constructionist feminism of Simone de Beauvoir, the psychoanalytical theories of Jessica Benjamin, and a range of social theorists from Bourdieu to Zygmunt Bauman, the book uncovers the history of romantic fiction in France from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century, and explores its place in women's lives and imaginations. Romance is not defined - as it usually is - solely in terms of its mass-market form. Rather, the history of women's popular fiction is traced in its full context, as one dimension of a literary story that encompasses the mainstream or 'middlebrow' as well as 'high' culture. Thus this study ranges from the formula romance (from the pious but popular Delly to global brand Harlequin), through 'middlebrow' bestsellers like Marcelle Tinayre, Françoise Sagan, Régine Deforges, to critically esteemed stories of love in the work of such authors as Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Elsa Triolet, and Camille Laurens. Criss-crossing the boundaries of taste and class, as well as those of sexual orientation, the romance has been at times reactionary, at others progressive, utopian, and contestatory. It has played an important part in the lives of twentieth-century women, providing both a source of imaginative escape, and a fictional space in which to rehearse and make sense of identity, relationship, and desire.

During the 20th Century, France was home to many of the world’s greatest poets. This collection highlights some of the very best verse that came out of a country and century defined by war and liberation. Let Paul Auster guide you through some of the best poetry that 20th century France has to offer. “Indispensable . . . a book that everyone interested in modern poetry should have close to hand, a source of renewable delights and discoveries, a book that will long claim our attention . . . To my knowledge, no current anthology is as full and as deftly edited.”—Peter Brooks, The New York Times Book Review “One of the freshest and most exciting books of poetry to appear in a long while . . . Paul Auster has provided the best possible point of entry into this century's most influential body of poetry.”—Geoffrey O'Brien, The Village Voice