Jean-Michel d'Aron, son of Alain d'Aron, owner of the noble inn "Zum Weißen Falken" in Paris, was born in 1769. As a student, he was forced to flee during the night of the fire in Paris in 1793. He stayed in La Rochelle and Marseille before making his way to the Occitan Alps to visit an inn that was up for sale. On the way, he meets Don Luciano Varini, the leader of a criminal empire that controls the smuggling of goods in the Occitan Alps, as well as racketeering and prostitution. The encounter with Don Luciano Varini becomes a threat to Jean-Michel d'Aron and his family.

Welcome back to the mountains of Occitania! The next generation is already arriving. At the same time, however, the status quo seems more endangered than ever. The secret committee of the empire decides to liquidate Luciano. Has his time run out? Will he soon be nothing but history? He has to defend himself against an assassination attempt. Will he succeed in reorganizing his empire or will it be destroyed? And will Luciano finally manage to let go of Viktor, his dead lover from his youth?

This volume is the first dedicated to the comprehensive, in-depth analysis of constructions with nouns like ‘type’ and ‘sort’. It focuses on type noun constructions in Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages, integrating the different descriptive traditions that had been developed for each language family. As a result, a greater variety of type noun constructions is revealed than in the hitherto more fragmented literature. But attention is also drawn to the cross-linguistic similarity of the new pragmatic meanings, such as ad hoc and approximative categorization, hedging, focus and filler uses, and the new grammatical functions in NPs (e.g. phoric uses), clauses (e.g. adverbial uses) and complex sentences (e.g. quotatives). The volume offers survey chapters of type noun constructions in each language family as well as contributions focusing on specific aspects in one or two languages, such as their grammar, semantics and pragmatics, diachronic development, discursive and sociolinguistic variety. These complementary methodologies elucidate the unique cross-linguistic field of type noun constructions both descriptively and theoretically. Hence, this volume can also serve as a model for similar surveys in other functional domains.

Romance is a fertile ground for linguistic research. Instead of limiting their studies to one specialised area, some Romance scholars have managed to combine different aspects of the broad field of Romance linguistics in an impressive way. This volume is dedicated to the multifaceted research interests of Guido Mensching: Part 1 focusses on different aspects of the architecture of grammar and linguistic theory, covering Italian, Portuguese, French, Sardinian and Romance. The focus of Part 2 is on historical linguistics, discussing Old Occitan lexicography and Romance in Hebrew scripts. Part 3 is dedicated to aspects relating to plurilingualism, language contact and sociolinguistics. Part 4 explores research arguments that go beyond Romance philology but are nonetheless intertwined with it.

This comprehensive two-volume book deals with algebra, broadly conceived. Volume 1 (Chapters 1-6) comprises material for a first year graduate course in algebra, offering the instructor a number of options in designing such a course. Volume 1, provides as well all essential material that students need to prepare for the qualifying exam in algebra at most American and European universities. Volume 2 (Chapters 7-13) forms the basis for a second year graduate course in topics in algebra. As the table of contents shows, that volume provides ample material accommodating a variety of topics that may be included in a second year course. To facilitate matters for the reader, there is a chart showing the interdependence of the chapters.

The allegorical dream-vision poem, La Voie de Povreté et de Richesse, has been known mainly from its incorporation in Le Mesnagier de Paris (1392-94), an anonymous compilation of advice on good living and household management. Composed as an individual work by Jacques Bruyant, probably about fifty years earlier, the poem has now been edited on the basis of the text in the manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fr. 1563, fols 203r-221r. It is a first-person account of the dream of a newly-wed husband, who worries about the financial consequences of marriage and the threat of poverty. In long didactic monologues, allegorical figures (Raison, Entendement, and Barat) address the protagonist. He receives the choice of two pathways, one leading to Poverty, the other to Riches. He chooses the path of Diligence, paved with Perseverance, and reaches the château de Labour, for the solution to his problem lies in working to gain sufficiency. In 2634 verses, Jacques Bruyant combined the protagonist’s dream and return home to his credulous wife, with allegorical didactic discourse, and description of work experience. Common sayings and stock pieces, such as an account of the Seven Deadly Sins, are included. Pierre Gringore’s Le Chasteau de Labour, first printed in Paris in 1499, is an adaptation of the poem, marking continued interest in the subject in the fifteenth century.

The book investigates historical patterns of vowel diphthongization, assimilation and dissimilation induced by consonants – mostly (alveolo)palatals – in Romance. Compiling data from dialectal descriptions, old documentary sources and experimental phonetic studies, it explains why certain vowels undergo raising assimilation before (alveolo)palatal consonants more than others. It also suggests that in French, Francoprovençal, Occitan, Rhaetoromance and dialects from northern Italy, mid low vowel diphthongization before (alveolo)palatal consonants started out with the formation of non-canonical falling diphthongs through off-glide insertion, from which rising diphthongs could emerge at a later date (e.g., Upper Engadinian OCTO ‘eight’ > [ɔc] > [ɔ(ə̯)c] > [wac]). Both diphthongal types, rather than canonical falling diphthongs with a palatal off-glide, could also give rise to high vowels (dialectal French [li]

The Desclergues of la Villa Ducal de Montblanc (2nd edition) is a comprehensive ancestral chronicle, meticulously tracing the Desclergues family lineage from the Greek era through the Villa Ducal de Montblanc in Tarragona to the present in Belgium. This omnibus edition compiles the entire acclaimed series, offering an exhaustive account of the Desclergues of Montblanc alongside the author's other ancestral lines, including de Patin, de Patin de Langemark, Lesage, Benoit, Den Dauw, 't Kint, Surmont, de Croock, Ardan, Lammens, Decaestecker, and de Silva of Uduwara in Sri Lanka. This scholarly work is enriched by a comprehensive DNA analysis, providing genetic depth to the historical narrative. Each family line is intricately contextualized within its historical setting, with facsimile images of archival records offering tangible evidence of the past. This beautifully illustrated book presents a visually engaging experience, enhancing historical insights and making it an invaluable resource for students, historians, and anyone passionate about genealogical studies. Nico Felicien Declercq, a full professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, is a distinguished scholar. With a Ph.D. from Ghent University and an MSc from the Catholic University of Leuven, his prolific academic career encompasses numerous published works. His passion for history and genealogy led him to meticulously document his ancestral lineage, culminating in this comprehensive work. Professor Declercq's interdisciplinary approach and dedication to rigorous research have earned him a reputation for excellence in the scientific community and among genealogical enthusiasts. He is also the author of several philosophical novels published under a pseudonym.

Polyphony and the Modern asks one fundamental question: what does it mean to be modern in one’s own time? To answer that question, this volume focuses on polyphony as an index of modernity. In The Principle of Hope, Ernst Bloch showed that each moment in time is potentially fractured: people living in the same country can effectively live in different centuries – some making their alliances with the past and others betting on the future – but all of them, at least technically, enclosed in the temporal moment. But can a claim of modernity also mean something more ambitious? Can an artist, by accident or design, escape the limits of his or her own time, and somehow precociously embody the outlook of a subsequent age? This book sees polyphony as a bridge providing a terminology and a stylistic practice by which the period barrier between Medieval and Early Modern can be breached. Chapter 1 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license available at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/edit/10.4324/9781003129837