Magneto! Gandalf! Grandet!

March 11, 2015 simonrkemp Leave a comment

Someone at the BBC likes French literature, since they’ve barely finished their dramatization of Marie NDiaye’s Trois femmes puissantes and they’re already starting on Honoré de Balzac’s nineteenth-century masterpiece, Eugénie Grandet.

And this time, they have Gandalf.

Yes, Sir Ian McKellen is currently appearing as Grandet, the monstrous father to the luckless Eugénie, in a two-part radio production that you can stream (if you’re in the UK) here.

McKellen throws himself into the role with gusto (in fact, he’s just won an award for Best Actor in an Audio Drama for the performance) as the rich, miserly wine-grower who hoards his wealth while accusing his wife and daughter of turning their home into a bordello if they light too many candles in the living room. (Candles cost money, you see.) Eugénie puts up with his eccentric ways, while patiently waiting to be married off to one of the many provincial bourgeois families buzzing around her and the rumoured fortune that she’ll inherit on her father’s death. Then, cousin Charles from Paris turns up on the doorstep, hoping to move in with the family now that his father has lost all his money and, we shortly discover, his life. The prospect of another mouth to feed sends Grandet into a huge fit of grumpiness, but what he doesn’t yet know is that a much bigger problem is brewing up as the charming, handsome and sophisticated Charles catches his daughter’s eye.

Trouble lies ahead…

Eugénie Grandet is perhaps the best-loved of all Balzac’s many stories. In his prolific output and his lively storytelling he’s French literature’s closest equivalent to Charles Dickens, except that — whisper it — he’s actually better than Dickens, because all his stories take place in the same fictional universe, which means that the same characters pop up in different novels, and you can trace a single character’s life across a dozen books, now a background extra in someone else’s story, now centre-stage in their own. All Balzac’s work is available in English translation as well as in French, lots of it has been filmed (including a great version of Le Colonel Chabert with Gérard Depardieu), and it’s definitely worth your time to check some of it out.

Applying to study modern languages, Events and Competitions

Open Days in 2015

March 4, 2015 simonrkemp Leave a comment

taylor — The Taylor Institute Library, where you get to study when you’re a student here.

posted by Simon Kemp

If you’re considering applying to study at Oxford, then the best way to check us out is to come to one of our open days. The Modern Languages Faculty holds four open days in the course of the year, in which you can see some of our facilities, hear about all the courses we have available and ask questions of the tutors and current undergraduates.

Due to pressure of numbers, all the open days need to be booked for, which you can do online. The May 2nd day is our largest event, and usually gets fully booked, so it’s worth getting tickets early. The other three days, on July 1st and 2nd and September 18th, are smaller scale, but have the advantage of coinciding with the general university open day, for which all the colleges of the university open their doors for you to wander around the grounds and meet the tutors. (You don’t need to book in for college visits.)

Here’s our schedule for this year:

Open Days schedule and bookings

Open Day	Date	Programme	Bookings	Contact
Main Faculty Undergraduate Open Day	2nd May 2015	Programme	Book a place \| Amend a booking \| Cancel a booking	Nicola Gard
*Faculty Undergraduate Open Day	1st & 2nd July 2015		Registration will open in the next few months	Nicola Gard
*Faculty Undergraduate Open Day	18th September 2015		Registration will open in the next few months	Nicola Gard

After booking, you will receive a ticket via email. If you do not receive your ticket within 24 hours, please check the spam folder in your email system and, if it is not there, contact it-support@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.

Due to restricted places on our Open Days and the sheer volume of students wishing to attend, if after booking a place you are then unable to attend, please do cancel your place using the ‘cancel’ option(s) above, or email the relevant contact above to cancel your place for you.

Further Information

The Modern Languages prospectus for undergraduates is available by clicking here

A general prospectus for undergraduates is available by clicking here

Further information from Undergraduate Admissions is available by clicking here

Further details on our Open Days can be found by clicking here.

We hope to see you there.

French language, French life

Great French Lives: Joseph-Ignace Guillotin

February 25, 2015 simonrkemp 2 Comments

Joseph-Ignace Guillotin’s legacy to the French language may not be as useful an addition to your everyday vocabulary as that provided by Eugène Poubelle, but it’s perhaps more distinctively French. As well as the name for the execution device itself (la guillotine), Guillotin has also supplied us with a verb, (guillotiner, to guillotine), two further nouns (le guillotineur/la guillotineuse, who does the guillotining, and the rather less fortunate le guillotiné/la guillotinée at the business end of the device), plus, the excellent term, la fenêtre à guillotine, which sounds very much more architecturally exciting than the English sash window. Note that, like la Bastille (and unlike, say, la ville), the double-l of Guillotin and guillotine has a y-sound rather than an l-sound in French (and apparently also commonly in American English – it’s only the British that always get it wrong).

Here are three things that many people can tell you about Joseph-Ignace Guillotin:

1. He was keen on executing people.

2. He invented the guillotine.

3. He ended up getting executed himself by the device he invented.

Here, on the other hand, are three facts about Joseph-Ignace Guillotin that are actually true:

1. He was strongly opposed to the death penalty.

2. He didn’t invent the guillotine.

3. He died of natural causes in 1814.

Guillotin considered the death penalty barbarous, and was particularly sickened by the suffering inflicted by botched executions, and by the double standards that afforded more humane forms of execution to the aristocracy than to the common people.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1789 Revolution, abolition of the death penalty was most definitely not on the cards, but as an alternative measure, and a step in the right direction, he proposed to the National Assembly the following legal reform:

“Les délits du même genre seront punis du même genre de supplice, quels que soient le rang et l’état du coupable; dans tous les cas où la loi prononcera la peine de mort, le supplice sera le même (décapitation), et l’exécution se fera par un simple mécanisme.”

Crimes if the same type will be punished with the same type of penalty, regardless of the rank and estate of the guilty party: in every case where the death penalty is given out, the method will be the same (decapitation), and the execution will be carried out by simple mechanical means.

The motion was accepted, and the Assembly set about finding itself an inventor to come up a device that would fit the bill. The credit for the design and construction of the prototype guillotine goes to the trio of Jean Laquiante, Tobias Schmidt and Antoine Louis (for a short while, it seemed possible that the machine might become known as a ‘Louison’). Guillotin’s name attached to the machine as the legislator who proposed that something should be done, not as the man who created the actual solution to the problem. In fact, the naming of the device after him proved an enduring embarrassment to Guillotin and his family, so much so that the family later petitioned the government to rename the machine, and, when this was rejected, changed their own surname to avoid the association.

The story that Guillotin ended up guillotined himself is entirely mythical. There was in fact a certain Dr J. M. V. Guillotin from Lyon (no relation) who met that fate, and it’s also true that Joseph-Ignace fell foul of the Revolutionary authorities and was imprisoned for a short time during the Terror. From these two facts the myth seems to have arisen, and as usual, the truth has trouble getting in the way of a good story.

Lastly, guillotine is not the French word for that machine your school has for cutting multiple sheets of paper with very straight lines. The French call that un massicot. And yes, it’s because it was invented by a certain M. Massiquot.

Translation

Young Translators

February 18, 2015 simonrkemp Leave a comment

posted by Toby Garfitt

Why bother to expend any effort on translating from one language to another, when Google will do it for you? These days you can simply point your smartphone’s camera at any word or phrase in a sign or menu, and an app will give you its meaning. But translating literature is not quite so easy. If literary translation has always been at the heart of university language study, it is because it takes you below the surface of both language and culture. To translate even the shortest passage you have to have a developed sensitivity to nuance and register in both the languages you are dealing with, and also to the cultural connotations of the words. Is bourgeois the same as middle-class? What is ‘pride’ referring to in this particular context?

As well as the compulsory translation exercises, students of French and German at Oxford can opt to do a special “advanced translation” course in which they reflect on their own practice and on the insights of translation theory. Some of them then go on to do a master’s course in translation and/or interpreting, for instance at Bath or Edinburgh or London Metropolitan University.

Many of the Oxford tutors have published translations as well as their academic research, and some of them have won translation prizes. It is exciting to see that our undergraduates are already winning prizes before they join us. This year’s UK winner of the European Juvenes Translatores competition for 17-year-olds is Jonah Cowen, who will be coming to Magdalen College in 2016 (after a gap year) to study German and Linguistics. Here’s his video interview:

Last year’s winner, Walker Thompson, is currently at Magdalen studying German and Russian, although his winning translation was from French.

If you’re interested in entering a future competition through your school, the Juvenes Translatores website is here, and they also have a Facebook page here.

French literature, Recommended Reading

Bookshelf Book Club: Trois Femmes Puissantes (Three Strong Women) by Marie NDiaye

February 11, 2015 simonrkemp Leave a comment

posted by Simon Kemp

One of my very favourite French authors writing today is Marie NDiaye. Her stories of ordinary people and everyday situations heading disturbingly off-kilter are like a gradual slide from reality into anxiety dreams. (If you’re familiar with the work of the British novelist Kazuo Ishiguro, like the novel or film Never Let Me Go, you have some idea of what I mean).

I was planning on putting NDiaye’s La Sorcière in the book club at some point, since it’s short and accessible, funny and terrifying by turns, and has the most chilling pair of teenage girls in it that you’re ever likely to come across. I will do at some point, but since NDiaye is currently making rather a splash in the English-speaking world with a more recent novel, let’s start instead with her 2009 best-seller, Trois Femmes puissantes (Three Strong Women).

Trois Femmes puissantes won France’s top literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, in the year of publication, and its translation was a runner-up for the Man Booker International Prize. It’s not so much a novel as three interlinked stories. The three women of the title, Norah, Fanta and Khady Demba are connected tangentially but lead very different lives. Norah is a successful French lawyer who visits her estranged father in Senegal to find her brother accused of murdering her stepmother. Fanta’s story is seen through the eyes of her husband, haunted by another Senegalese murder and the disintegration of his marriage. And Khady Demba, glimpsed in the first story as Norah’s father’s maid, sets out in her own story to start a new life in Europe.

The plots of the three stories are less important than their atmosphere, which builds a sense of foreboding that terrible things may occur, and disorients the reader with unexplained events, such as the sudden appearance of Norah’s French family in Senegal, or hints of magic in the uncanny behaviour of birds that may or may not betray the presence of a human soul.

The particular reason for mentioning the novel now is that an adaptation of it is currently being broadcast on UK radio. BBC Radio Four has turned the book into an audio drama in two parts. If you’re based in the UK, Episode One is available to listen to here for the next four weeks, and the second and final episode will be broadcast next Sunday, and available on the iPlayer after that. I’m not entirely sure why they’ve gone for a two-part adaptation, which gives you one-and-a-half strong women per episode. If I were you, I’d reconstitute it into its three stories (each story is about 40 minutes long), and iPlayer them to yourself one by one. The adaptation is very faithful (unlike certain current BBC adaptations of great French literature we could mention…) and will give you an idea of what makes NDiaye such a major figure in contemporary French writing. It may even inspire you to seek out more of her work.

Applying to study modern languages, French language, Why study French?

100 Good Reasons to Study Modern Languages at University: Reason 95

February 4, 2015 simonrkemp Leave a comment

There are seven billion people on the planet. Fewer than four hundred million of them speak English as their first language. Five billion of them don’t speak English at all. If you want to talk to them, you’re going to have to learn a foreign language. Even with the ones that do speak English, you’re not going to get very far if you know nothing of their culture, and can’t understand anything they say to each other.

That should be reason enough to be considering a degree in modern languages. At Oxford, we offer courses in the two most widely spoken first languages on the planet, Chinese and Spanish, the other major languages of Europe (German, French, Italian, Czech, Slovak, Greek, Polish, Portuguese), and of the increasingly important BRIC economies (Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Hindi, Bengali), and of East Asia and the Middle East (Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Turkish), as well as minority languages like Catalan, Galician, Yiddish, Gaelic and Welsh. Most of these are available to learn from scratch, on their own or in tandem with another language or another subject. You can explore all the possibilities and combinations on our admissions pages.

How does French measure up against these other choices? Well, according to the French government, there are more than 220 million French speakers in the world, spread across five continents and 77 countries with French as an official language. It is the second most widely learned foreign language after English, and the sixth most widely spoken language in the world. French is also the only language, alongside English, that is taught in every country in the world. France operates the biggest international network of cultural institutes, which run French-language courses for close on a million learners.

The majority of French-speakers live outside Europe (which has approximately 87.5 million French speakers).

There are:

16.8 million French speakers in the Americas and the Caribbean (notably in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Haiti, Quebec and French Guyana),

2.6 million speakers in Asia and Oceania (particularly in the former colonies of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia),

33.6 million in North Africa and the Middle East (especially the ‘Maghreb’ countries of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, and Lebanon and Syria in the Middle East),

and 79.1 million speakers in sub-Saharan Africa (including Benin, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Mozambique, Niger, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mali, Niger, Togo, Central African Republic, Republic of Congo, and several others.)

French is very much a global language of the twenty-first century, and studying it at university opens doors that lead far beyond our nearest European neighbour.

French life

The Things France Does Better

January 28, 2015 simonrkemp Leave a comment

The Huffington Post celebrated Bastille Day last year with a list of fourteen things they reckon France does better than anyone else in the world. With France in the news for all the wrong reasons recently, I thought it might be a good moment to remind ourselves of everything that’s brilliant about the country. Here’s their selection:

As the French celebrate their national holiday on July 14, the love for their country will be on full display. What better way to mark Bastille Day than to give La Belle France kudos for the many stylish ways in which it trounces the rest of the world? From delectable delicacies to iconic structures, take a look at the reasons why we tip our hats — or excuse us, berets — to France for simply doing some things better than anyone else.

1) Enticing Visitors From Around The World

france tourist take picture
A tourist takes a picture of a souvenir shop at the Champs-Elysees in Paris. (AFP Photo/Jacques Demarthon)

It’s not just the French who love their country; the world loves France too. France was the world’s top tourist destination in 2012, with 83 million foreign visitors — that’s almost 20 million people more than the country’s total population.

2) Mastering The Art Of Affection

wikilove
A couple kisses during a flashmob in Paris on February 14, 2014. (AFP Photo/Francoi Guillot)

With its cute bars, the banks of the Seine and magical Montmartre, Paris consistently tops the lists of most romantic cities in the world and is a top honeymoon destination. Words like “chérie,” “amour,” and “French kiss” have become part of a global lexicon of love. And the French aren’t all talk either, as the country has consistently ranked among the countries whose inhabitants have the most sex.

3) Serving Lip-Smacking Pastries

french macarons
Macaroons at a bakery in Paris. (AFP Photo/Francois Guillot)

Croissants. Macarons. Éclairs. Madeleines. If your mouth isn’t watering just thinking of these sumptuous French pastries, you should probably have your taste buds checked. Chefs like Christophe Adam, famous for his bright-colored éclairs, andMussipontain cake master Sébastien Gaudard have developed a fan base around the world.

4) Sharing Their Exquisite Wine With The Rest Of The World

horse drawn cart is used on
A horse-drawn cart is used to collect grapes at the Laur-Bauzil domain of the Massamier la Mignarde castle near the southwestern French town of Pepieux. (AFP Photo/Pascal Pavani)

While the French have surprised the world with a significant drop in wine consumption in recent years, the average resident of the wine heartland still drinks 1.2 bottles a week. And fear not — since France remains a top wine exporter, you can still imbibe as much Bordeaux and Burgundy as you’d like. France reaped in 5.6 billion euros ($7.7 billion) from wine exports in 2012. Demand from the Asian market for French wine has bolstered exports, with China guzzling down a whopping 1.36 billion bottles of wine last year.

5) Taking Their Demands To The Streets

france protest large
Some 30,000 people protest in the streets of the French eastern city of Grenoble. (AFP Photo/Jean-Pierre Clatot

The French seem to have perfected the art of protest. Whether it’s a demonstration around a higher retirement age, train workers going on strike, or fed-up passengerspushing back against the train workers’ strike, the French are never too shy to take their demands to the streets. Alternatives Economiques writes that while the country today sees fewer strikes than it did in the ’70s, the nation still has more strikes than most other developed nations.

6) Having A Way With Words

jean paul sartre
French playwriter and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in his study in Paris, on November 28, 1948. (AP Photo)

Albert Camus, Marcel Proust, Jean-Paul Sartre: The bon mot of France is world-renowned. But did you know France has taken home 15 Nobel Prizes in Literature — more than any other nation — since the inception of the awards?

7) Serving Award-Winning, Exquisite Cuisine

france michelin restaurant
French Chef Paul Bocuse and his assistants Gilles Reinhardt, left, and Christophe Mulle, right, in the kitchen of his famed Michelin three-star restaurant L’Auberge du Pont de Collonges in Collonges-au-Mont-d’or. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

France’s gourmet tastes and history of fine dining make it no surprise that the nation received more Michelin stars than any other country in 2013. Recently, in Paris aloneyou could choose from 70 starred restaurants, 10 of which had received the exclusive three-star rating. In the Michelin rankings, only Japan comes close to challenging France’s fame for food.

8) Taking Work-Life Balance Seriously

france smartphone
People show their smartphones on December 25, 2013 in Dinan, northwestern France. (AFP Photo/Philippe Huguen)

France’s “joie de vivre” may stem in part from the government’s strong record in defending workers’ rights to disconnect. In 1998, the administration agreed on a 35-hour work week, after which overtime kicks in. And just recently
France amended national regulations stipulating that certain classes of workers should be guaranteed the ability to disconnect from remote working devices during 11-hour “rest periods.”

9) Maintaining A Laissez-Faire Attitude Toward Their Leaders’ Romantic Relationships

hollande affair
Celebrity news magazines headlining on French President Francois Hollande are on display at a Paris newstand. (AP Photo/Zacharie Scheurer)

The rumors surrounding President François Hollande’s romantic relationships have given the French much to chat about. But reports of infidelity are nothing new for French leaders: Several past presidents have confirmed their extramarital affairs. Perhaps most notorious was François Mitterrand’s orchestrated announcement of his second family, which was kept secret for 14 years of his presidency. And many French people might be understanding of their leaders’ romantic decisions: A poll from the Pew Research Center showed that the French are more accepting of infidelity than people in other countries.

10) Producing Elegant Mature Femmes Fatales

Actress Catherine Deneuve poses for photographers as she arrives in Cannes for the film festival. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus)

With elder actresses like Catherine Deneuve and politicians like Ségolène Royal, the French have a handful of classic ladies of a certain age to look up to. And while many these celebs may hold their anti-aging tactics close to their chests, some have revealedquirky strategies: “The day I stopped using soap, my life changed,” declared actress and TV presenter Léa Drucker.

11) Designing Haute Couture

givenchy paris fashion week
A model walks the runway during the Givenchy show as part of the Paris Fashion Week. (Francois Durand/Getty Images)

What can rival the iconic looks of Gaultier’s striped sailor shirt, Louboutin’s red-soled high heels or the suit jackets and pearls from Chanel? So strap on those stilettos and throw your scarf into the air if you want to even consider competing with those French fashionistas.

12) Building Beautiful Structures, Old and New

louvre exterior
A picture taken at night shows the Louvre museum Pyramid. (AFP Photo/Lionel Bonaventure

France has gifted the world with some of the most iconic and breathtaking buildings,modern and classic alike. The Centre Pompidou museum and the Flower Towerresidential building are just some of the ultra modern pieces in Paris. Meanwhile, the Palace of Versailles is a masterpiece of secular baroque architecture; the Notre Dame Cathedral is a standard bearer of Gothic style; and the Eiffel Tower once wasconsidered one of the most avant garde structures of its time. And lest we forget the grandiose chateaux, which you’ll find both in the sprawling countryside of the Loire Valley as well as in urban centers. France is among the top five countries with the most UNESCO World Heritage Sites: 39 of France’s beautiful structures are currentlyprotected with the label, with an additional 37 submitted for approval.

13) Keeping The Wheels Going Round

tour de france paris
Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish during the 20th stage of the the Tour de France in Paris, France, Sunday July 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani)

It’s no wonder that it was a Frenchman who established the world record for being the fastest recorded centenarian cyclist, at 102 years old. Indeed, the bicycle and French culture go hand in hand. Not only does the French countryside provide for some of the world’s best cycling routes, but the country is also home to the world’s foremost cycling event: Le Tour de France. While last year’s edition marked the tour’s 100th anniversary, the tradition is actually 110 years old (it was suspended during the world wars).

14) Sneaking Their Words Into The English Language

A concierge takes a reservation on January 4, 2013 in Cannes, France. (AFP Photo/Jean Christophe Magnenet)

It’s a fait accompli: The French language has sabotaged English conversation with countless words and expressions. So whether you’re an amateur or a savant of French idioms, you’ll likely experience déjà-vu when listening in on a rapport between two Francophones. And with French as an official language in 29 countries, and one of the official languages of the United Nations, it would be quite the faux pas to not expand your cache of the so-called “Language of Love.”

French life, French literature, Recommended Reading

Bookshelf Book Club: Dora Bruder by Patrick Modiano

January 21, 2015 simonrkemp 2 Comments

posted by Simon Kemp

As promised, a reading recommendation from the works of France’s newest Nobel laureate. Unusually for Patrick Modiano, Dora Bruder (1997) is actually non-fiction, but it reads so much like his novels that many of its early readers thought it was one.

The story begins when Modiano comes across a brief article in an old French newspaper, dated 31 December 1941, at which point France was under Nazi Occupation. The article was a plea for information about a missing girl, with a description of her appearance and the clothes she was last seen wearing. Here it is:

PARIS
ON RECHERCHE une jeune fille, Dora Bruder, 15 ans, 1 m. 55, visage ovale, yeux gris marron, manteau sport gris, pull-over bordeaux, jupe et chapeau bleu marine, chaussures sport marron. Adresser toutes indications à M. et Mme Bruder, 41 boulevard Ornano, Paris.

PARIS. A young girl, Dora Bruder, is missing, 15 years old, 1 m. 55, oval face, grey-brown eyes, grey sports coat, dark red jumper, navy blue skirt and hat, brown sports shoes. Any information to M. and Mme Bruder, 41 Boulevard Ornano, Paris.

For some of Modiano’s readers, this petite annonce was already familiar, since it had appeared in an earlier novel of his, with no indication at that point that it was a genuine newspaper article. As Modiano explains in Dora Bruder:

Je n’ai cessé d’y penser durant des mois et des mois. (…) Il me semblait que je ne parviendrais jamais à retrouver la moindre trace de Dora Bruder. Alors le manque que j’éprouvais m’a poussé à l’écriture d’un roman, Voyage de noces.

I couldn’t stop thinking about it for months and months. (…) I felt that I would never manage to find the slightest trace of Dora Bruder. So the lack that I was feeling pushed me into writing a novel, Honeymoon.

In returning to Dora’s story in non-fiction, Modiano isn’t simply writing her biography. Indeed, the story of the troubled Jewish girl who runs away from home, returns, and some months later is arrested, interned in Paris, and finally sent to her death in a concentration camp, has left so little mark on history that Modiano struggles to find the barest details of who she was and what she experienced.

Rather, he gives us the story of his investigation, exploring archives for mentions of her name, revisiting the places she lived to absorb their atmosphere. In the course of his research, he discovers police reports on the arrests of French Jews, desperate pleas in letters from the relatives of those taken, and letters home from the internment camps on the eve of deportation. Many of these find their way into Modiano’s book verbatim, so that at some points Modiano’s own account fades behind a collage of documents from the Occupation. And intertwined with these strands of Dora’s story, the story of Modiano’s research, and the fragments of other stories of those caught up in the Holocaust, comes one further narrative strand, which is Modiano’s own story, and the roots of his obsession in his own troubled family background. Modiano’s father, we learn, was a Jewish man who survived the Holocaust through his close association with a band of collaborationist thugs, the Rue Lauriston Gang, who at one point intercede after he has been arrested to save him from deportation to the death camps. This difficult legacy of a father who was both Jew and collaborator, victim and accomplice in the Holocaust, lies at the root of all Modiano’s writing, but rarely as clearly shown as here.

Like all Modiano’s books, Dora Bruder is short, written in simple, accessible French, and a very powerful piece of writing.You’ll find no better introduction to France’s années noires, and the uneasy memories of those years in contemporary French society. Here, to finish, is a short extract from the book, in which Modiano visits the military barracks where Dora was held with other Jewish people, before being sent to Drancy, and thence to Auschwitz:

Le boulevard était désert, ce dimanche-là, et perdu dans un silence si profond que j’entendais le bruissement des platanes. Un haut mur entoure l’ancienne caserne des Tourelles et cache les bâtiments de celle-ci. J’ai longé ce mur. Une plaque y est fixée sur laquelle j’ai lu :

ZONE MILITAIRE

DÉFENSE DE FILMER

OU DE PHOTOGRAPHIER

Je me suis dit que plus personne ne se souvenait de rien. Derrière le mur s’étendait un no man’s land, une zone de vide et d’oubli. Les vieux bâtiments des Tourelles n’avaient pas été détruits comme le pensionnat de la rue de Picpus, mais cela revenait au même.

Et pourtant, sous cette couche épaisse d’amnésie, on sentait bien quelque chose, de temps en temps, un écho lointain, étouffé, mais on aurait été incapable de dire quoi, précisément. C’était comme de se trouver au bord d’un champ magnétique, sans pendule pour en capter les ondes. Dans le doute et la mauvaise conscience, on avait affiché l’écriteau « Zone militaire. Défense de filmer ou de photographier ».

The boulevard was deserted that Sunday, and lost in such deep silence that I could hear the rustle of the plane trees. There is a high wall around the former Tourelles barracks which hides its buildings. I walked along this wall. There’s a sign on it, on which I read:

MILITARY ZONE

NO FILMING OR PHOTOGRAPHY

I said to myself that nobody remembers anything any more. Behind the wall stretched out a no-man’s-land, a zone of emptiness and oblivion. The old buildings of Tourelles hadn’t been destroyed like [Dora’s] boarding school in the Rue de Picpus, but it came down to the same thing.

But under this thick layer of amnesia you could still feel something now and then, a distant, stifled echo, although you couldn’t say what exactly. It was like being on the edge of a magnetic field, without a pendulum to capture its waves. In doubt and troubled conscience, they had put up the sign: “Military Zone. No Filming or Photography.”

Dora Bruder is available in French, as a paperback or e-book, or in English translation.

Events and Competitions

Be an Oxford Student for a week this summer (for free!)

January 14, 2015 simonrkemp Leave a comment

posted by Simon Kemp

Would you like to spend a week with us this summer, living in an Oxford college, learning about French language and culture, and getting a taste of what it’s like to study here as a student? All entirely FREE of charge, food and accommodation included? (We’ll even pay for your train ticket to get here.)

If you’re currently in Year 12 of a state school studying French, and have nothing better to do from the 4th to the 10th July this year, please do think about signing up for the course, or for one of the dozens of others on offer, including German, Spanish, or ‘beginner languages’ to give you a little experience of Russian, Portuguese and Italian languages and cultures. (Note that different courses run on different weeks through the summer.)

Here are the details of the French week:

This UNIQ course is a chance to immerse yourself in the literature, theatre, poetry, film and linguistics of the French language.You will spend daily sessions at the Language Centre practising and improving your existing language skills, followed by fascinating lectures and seminars, and the chance to use the world famous Taylorian and Bodleian libraries for private study.

Our aim is to give you a taste of what it is really like to read French at Oxford, and to give you a sense of the unrivalled breadth of our course. Throughout the week, you will have the opportunity to hone your language skills and consolidate your knowledge of French grammar. You will also participate in classes introducing you to an exciting array of topics, ranging from Linguistics and 17^th-century tragedy to French-language cinema and 19^th-century poetry.

You will be expected to do some preparatory reading before the course so that you can make the most of the week you spend here: we’ve chosen Annie Ernaux’s 20^th-century classic autobiographical text La place. We will post a copy of the book to all successful participants in early June. Following a lecture that will explore some of the key themes and contexts surrounding Ernaux’s book, you will have the chance to test out (and flesh out) your ideas in a seminar. On the Friday, you will even experience an Oxford-style tutorial, in which you and three other students get to discuss your close reading of a poem with a specialist.

Student Experiences

“I really enjoyed the intimacy of the Alumni Dinner. Also, I enjoyed the morning grammar classes and the 17th Century French Theatre lecture as I was not expecting to enjoy it but really loved it!”

“The mentors were really friendly and easy to relate to, and the tutors were not as scary as I had thought they would be! It was a real adventure and one I wouldn’t hesitate to do again.”

You can find details of all the courses on offer here, along with information about how to sign up. The deadline for applications is February 12th, so you don’t have long to think about it, I’m afraid. We hope to see you in July!

French life

Charlie Hebdo: France and Islam

January 9, 2015 simonrkemp 1 Comment

posted by Simon Kemp

I’m sure you’ve already seen a lot about the attack on the Charlie Hebdo office in Paris and its aftermath (ongoing as I write) from English-language media. In the French press, one article in particular struck me as giving a helpful context to the events for non-French readers. It’s from the newspaper Libération, and it gives you a very quick crash course on Islam in France over the past few years. It’s entitled ‘L’islam, névrose nationale?’ (‘Islam, our national neurosis?’), was written by Cécile Daumas and Bernadette Sauvage, and published the day after the attack. You can find the original here. Below is an extract I’ve annotated for learners of French with difficult vocabulary picked out in red and listed beneath each paragraph, plus links in green to explain famous names and other cultural references.

L’islam, névrose nationale?

CÉCILE DAUMAS ET BERNADETTE SAUVAGET

7 JANVIER 2015 À 20:26

(Photo Guillaume Binet. MYOP)

Depuis des mois, et particulièrement ces jours-ci, la crispation identitaire est palpable. Ce mercredi matin sur France Inter, les auditeurs se sont réveillés en 2022 : la France a pour président le musulman Mohammed Ben Abbes. Au micro de la matinale, face à Patrick Cohen, Michel Houellebecq. Soumission, son dernier roman, sort ce jour en librairie. Les passages les plus violents du livre ne concernent pas tant l’instauration de ce nouveau régime islamique que des attaques aussi sporadiques qu’anonymes – sont-ce des musulmans ou des identitaires ? – qui ensanglantent le pays. Dans la fiction houellebecquienne, des corps jonchent aussi le sol, la France est au bord de la guerre civile…

la crispation identitaire: hardening or growing tension around the question of (national/religious/ethnic) identity

un auditeur: a listener

la matinale: breakfast show (hosted on France Inter by Patrick Cohen)

aussi sporadiques qu’anonymes: ‘as sporadic as they are anonymous’

identitaires: hard-right nationalists associated with the identitaire movement

ensanglanter: to make bloody

joncher: to lie strewn over

L’hebdomadaire Valeurs actuelles, lui, vient tout juste de boucler sa une : «Peur sur la France – Islam, et si Houellebecq avait raison ?» avec la photo d’une femme en niqab bleu-blanc-rouge. La rentrée littéraire de janvier commence à peine et la question de l’islam est à nouveau en tête de gondole des librairies. Depuis trois mois, Eric Zemmour est sur le devant de la scène médiatique avec sa dernière et énième polémique sur le sort des 5 millions de musulmans à renvoyer chez eux. Et voici Houellebecq qui prend le relais…

L’hebdomadaire : weekly magazine or newspaper. The ‘hebdo’ of Charlie hebdo is short for hebdomadaire.

boucler sa une: ‘boucler’ is to finish off or wrap up, ‘la une’ is the front page.

La rentrée littéraire: period in which French publishing houses concentrate their releases. The main rentrée littéraire is in September, when almost as many books are published as in the other months of the year put together. January is the focus of a smaller version of the rentrée.

en tête de gondole: literally ‘as a gondola head’, which is apparently also used as a marketing term in English, although I’ve never heard it. It means ‘promoted’, like putting a product on display at the head of a supermarket aisle.

sur le devant de la scène médiatique: ‘in the media spotlight’ (literally, ‘at the front of the media stage’).

énième: umpteenth

prendre le relais: take over (from someone)

Certes, le talent – évident – du romancier n’a rien à voir avec les provocations fausses et faciles du chroniqueur, mais tous deux se font les témoins d’une France en déclin rongée par le multiculturalisme et une forme de progressisme qui irait droit dans le mur. Zemmour a vendu 400 000 exemplaires de son Suicide français, paru en octobre, Houellebecq est parti pour engranger les mêmes scores. Plus confidentiel, moins polémique, le professeur de sciences politiques Laurent Bouvet vient de sortir cette semaine l’Insécurité culturelle: la crise économique n’expliquerait pas tout du malaise français, il faut aussi prendre en compte les relations conflictuelles à la mondialisation, aux élites, à l’islam. En septembre, le géographe Christophe Guilluy interroge dans la France périphérique «le rapport à l’étranger» qui ne serait jamais une évidence…

le chroniqueur: columnist (i.e. Zemmour)

se font les témoins de: ‘claim to be bearing witness to’

rongée: from ronger, to gnaw (a rodent is un rongeur in French). Here, figuratively, gnawed or eaten away.

engranger: to bag (the image is of getting your harvest into your barn)

Plus confidentiel: can mean ‘more confidential’, but here, more like ‘for a more limited readership’.

n’expliquerait pas: can mean ‘would not explain’, but here it has the sense of ‘according to the book, the economic crisis does not explain…’. ‘Perdrait’ in the paragraph below uses the conditional for the same effect.

la mondialisation: globalization

qui ne serait jamais une évidence: ‘which, according to him, is never a straightforward one’

Intellectuels, polémistes et écrivains en font-ils trop autour de l’islam et de la figure de l’étranger ? Pourquoi cette focalisation dans le débat d’idées ? Réelle préoccupation ou obsession tournant à la névrose française ? Avant Zemmour, il y avait eu, en 2013, l’Identité malheureuse d’Alain Finkielkraut, déploration d’une France qui perdrait ses racines face à une immigration mal intégrée. Renaud Camus, lui, a forgé la théorie du «grand remplacement». Selon lui, les pouvoirs politique et médiatique nient la réalité du changement de peuple et de civilisation. La droite et son extrême surfent sur la thèse, la gauche, «angélique et multiculturelle», est accusée de fermer les yeux.

en faire trop autour de qqch: to exaggerate, make too much of something

la racine: root (literal and figurative)

nier: to deny

surfent sur la thèse: literally, ‘surf on the thesis’, the idea being that the far right are making hay or having a field day with the idea that immigration has profoundly and permanently changed the nature of French society.

angélique: ‘angelic’, but not meant as a compliment! It suggests being out of touch with the real world, and blind to its dark side.

En fait, cette production littéraire et intellectuelle est le reflet de ce qui se joue depuis une quinzaine d’années sur le terrain politique et social. A l’instar d’autres nations européennes, comme l’Allemagne, la France se trouve dans une circonstance historique exceptionnelle: l’implantation sur son sol d’une nouvelle religion. Du point de vue de l’histoire, cela n’était pas arrivé depuis la chute de l’Empire romain et l’installation du christianisme. L’islam d’Europe, de son côté, est confronté à un lourd défi, celui de vivre en situation de minoritaires. En termes politiques, ce choc culturel et religieux donne les débats sur le voile à l’école à partir de 2003, la question de l’identité nationale quelques années plus tard, l’obligation pour les musulmans de donner sans cesse des preuves de leur adhésion au «modèle français».

A l’instar de: following the example of

la chute: fall

un lourd défi: a big challenge

Jusqu’aux années 90, pourtant, la question de l’islam reste relativement dépassionnée. Bon an, mal an, la religion, dernière arrivée dans l’Hexagone, prend sa place. De grandes fédérations musulmanes voient le jour. Des mosquées sont construites sans provoquer de polémiques. La classe politique, à travers ses maires, de gauche comme de droite, a semble-t-il «acté» la nécessité de donner sa place à l’islam.

dépassionnée: calm, not heated

Bon an, mal an: literally, ‘[averaging out] the good years and the bad ones’, so perhaps ‘through the ups and downs over the years’.

l’Hexagone: mainland France (because it’s shaped like one).

voient le jour: literally, ‘see the daylight’, so perhaps ‘come into being’.

acter: put into action

Mais au fur et à mesure des crispations identitaires, les discours sur la laïcité et la place de l’islam dans la République se durcissent. «Décomplexés», comme le dit Jean-François Copé, l’ex-patron de l’UMP. Une radicalisation se situe au milieu des années 2000, après les attentats du 11 Septembre. En 2006, les caricatures de Mahomet, reprises par Charlie Hebdo comme par plusieurs autres journaux européens, marquent un débat qui se mène, cette fois, au nom de la liberté de la presse.

la laïcité: secularism, the strict separation of religion from state

se durcir: harden

décomplexé: literally, ‘rid of your complexes’, so might translate as ‘more confident’ or ‘less inhibited’

l’UMP:Union pour un Mouvement Populaire, the main French right-wing party, and the party of Sarkozy and Chirac

Dans un système politique à bout de souffle, les batailles électorales sont de plus en plus contaminées par le sujet. En 2012, avec un FN remis en scène par la présidence de Marine Le Pen, la dénonciation des communautarismes s’installe au cœur de la campagne présidentielle de Nicolas Sarkozy, puis de celle de Jean-François Copé pour la présidence de l’UMP. Le malaise identitaire et son exploitation font, en partie, office de programme politique pour une droite déboussolée, ne sachant plus comment contenir la vague frontiste. Longtemps ignorée par la gauche, cette question identitaire, et donc le rapport à l’islam, finit par s’imposer aussi dans les rangs socialistes, avec sa part de tensions et de frictions. Sujet suffisamment explosif que François Hollande s’est bien gardé d’aborder pendant sa première partie de mandat. En deux ans et demi, il n’aura prononcé aucun discours sur un islam de France. Un vide que viennent combler les essais en librairie.

à bout de souffle: literally ‘out of breath’, perhaps here ‘running out of steam’.

FN: Le Front National, extreme right-wing party, which, unlike the UK National Front, is a major political force, polling up to 18% in French presidential elections.

le communautarisme: communitarianism (here used negatively in the sense of a fragmentation of society into separate communities)

faire office de: act as, serve as

déboussolé: bewildered, having lost your bearings (literally, de-compassed)

contenir la vague frontiste: ‘hold back the wave of National Front support’.

combler un vide: fill a gap

A blog for students and teachers of Years 11 to 13, and anyone else with an interest in Modern Foreign Languages and Cultures, written by the staff and students of Oxford University. Updated every Wednesday!