LES BELLES LETTRES

Summer catalog 2013

Foreign Rights

LES BELLES LETTRES Contents History of Italian intellectuals: Prophets, philosophers and experts by Frédéric Attal

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Inventing writing: North American Indian prophetic and shamanic rituals of the 17th to 19th centuries by Pierre Déléage

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AIDS: An Anthropological Challenge by Françoise Héritier

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Realities and the imaginary associated with tortures in Ancient Greece by Monique Halm-Tisserant

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The true story of Cicero by Claude Dupont

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On Bicycling by Edward Nye

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France-Turkey: Turkey from a 16th-century French perspective by Claude Postel

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Doctors and drugs in Japanese history: Intellectual ventures between China and the West by Mieko Macé

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The Mongols by Lisandru Laban-Giulani & Olivier Laban-Mattei

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Return to Wenzhou by Olivier Jobard & Fanny Tondre

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ESSAI

History of Italian Intellectuals: Prophets, Philosophers and Experts

From the Communism of Antonio Gramsci (18911937) to the rejection of Berlusconi-ism: History of the century of Italian intellectuals

May 2013 - 772 pages

Italian intellectuals, who emerged in the early 20th century, embraced the political passions of their era. The nation, Fascism, and Communism – not to mention anti-Communism, Liberalism, Catholicism, and Socialism – were so many political affiliations which these intellectuals joined, led, or built up. Yet no history of Italian intellectuals could be limited to the ideas which they helped to formulate and develop. Intellectuals are also defined by their integration into society, the role they strive to play in that society, and their stand with regard to the ruling classes. They would rather define themselves as independent from the influence of individuals wielding political power, just as they most often choose to reaffirm the autonomous nature of the culture they represent. This work obviously relies on an extensive bibliography yet, more importantly, it is based on original archival, epistolary or literary sources. The author adopts a chronological approach, first tackling the role intellectuals played in the national resurgence of the 20th century’s first two decades, their ambiguous ties with Fascism, the reality of post-World War II Communist hegemony in their midst, the impact of liberal or socialist antiCommunism, the tenuous position of those claiming to be Catholic, the long decades of protests in which intellectuals were both actors and denigrators, sometimes on the front line, until the Republic’s crisis and the rise of Berlusconi-ism, which proved to be yet another divisive issue among Italian intellectuals.

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Frédéric Attal an École normale supérieure graduate who holds an Agrégation and a PhD in History from Institut d’études politiques in Paris, is a Senior Lecturer at École normale supérieure in Cachan. His thesis was devoted to the study of Napolitan intellectuals from 1943 to 1964. He is the author of Histoire de l’Italie de 1943 à nos jours (Armand Colin, 2004), and his current research is on post-World War II U.S. public diplomacy in Italy in the intellectual, scientific and academic arenas.

ESSAI

Inventing Writing: North American Indian Prophetic and Shamanic Rituals of the 17th to 19th Centuries

An anthropological approach to a now-extinct mode of communication, between the oral and the written

May 2013 - 248 pages

This work is both a historic study and an ambitious theoretical discussion on the discovery of an unrecognised phenomenon: the invention and use of writings among North American Indians. Between the 17th and 19th centuries, prophets and shamans formulated original inscription techniques in order to ensure that ceremonial discourses would be passed on to future generations. For the first time in this book, such writings are compared to each other based upon the most exhaustive study possible of sources which demonstrate that North American Indians invented selective writings whose notation principles were considerably different from those of the writings with which we are familiar, such as the Latin alphabet. Inventer l’écriture makes it possible to formulate an innovative theory. At the moment all writings were first invented they were attached writings: their purpose was to transcribe pre-existing rituals within the framework of institutions organising their transmission and recitation. This reversed perspective introduces a new venue for further reflection on the origin of the key writings which have appeared throughout humanity’s history in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and among the Mayas. The writing invention issue can thus be freed from evolutionist approaches which have never managed to correctly address selective writings, as well as from sociological approaches which limit themselves to linking the emergence of writing to the origin of the State. Inventer l’écriture offers readers a series of conceptual tools which can be used to answer one simple question: why have humans on several occasions produced the immense intellectual effort required to invent a new writing form?

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Anthropologist Pierre Déléage is a member of the Laboratoire d’anthropologie sociale of Collège de France.

ESSAI

AIDS: An Anthropological Challenge

What AIDS says about mankind

May 2013 - 274 pages

In 1989, Françoise Héritier, ethnologist, professor and member of Collège de France, was appointed by François Mitterrand to head the French National AIDS Council. This advisory body, which is still active, had been created to examine the “ethical and technical” issues which this new ailment caused for society. During her tenure as Chair, Françoise Héritier wrote several articles on the disease’s most salient aspects, notably on the stigmatisation of the infected person’s partner – especially in cases where the latter is a foreigner – as well as on the fluids (blood, sperm and milk) by which the HIV is transmitted, and which had already been the main thrust of her teachings on corporal anthropology. The aim of this work, a compendium of such texts, is to take stock of the debates conducted in the 1990s on an illness which unfortunately has not yet been eradicated despite significant progress in treatment options. This work also argues for an anthropological approach to the disease. Using as her point of reference the “socially revealing” nature of AIDS, Françoise Héritier invites us to adopt a new way of thinking about the human relations involved, and to draw from among other values than those which isolate people in insecurity and fear. What is needed today is for people to call upon a different set of feelings, such as solidarity and trust. This groundbreaking book by a highly respected intellectual allows readers to explore a history of the progress made in the treatment of AIDS and, at the same time, to fully grasp the ways in which the perception of this disease have changed.

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Françoise Héritier is Professor Emeritus at Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales and the author of Masculin/Féminin I et II (Odile Jacob, 1995), Deux sœurs et leur mère (Odile Jacob, 1994) and Une pensée en mouvement (Odile Jacob, 2009). As an intellectual committed to urban issues, she has just published Le sel de la vie (Odile Jacob, 2012) which, like her other works, has been very well received.

HISTOIRE

Realities and the Imaginary Associated with Tortures in Ancient Greece

There is nothing more instructive than a stroll in the garden of tortures June 2013 - 240 pages

The sheer number of terms used to designate instruments of detention, the obtaining of servile testimonies by force, the magical value attributed to blemished reputations, the transformation into art of mythical punishments according to the terms of actual penalties, and their simulation on the stage, speak volumes about how familiar Greeks were with torments and sentences. This often undisclosed awareness, experienced in their daily lives and expressed in fiction, also betrays the phantasms and emotions Greeks had when dealing with repression, which always retained an ordeal-type nature in capital executions. Never broached before in works dealing with these issues, imagery inspired this book’s content based, incidentally, on the study of realia, literary accounts, and commentary. By comparing such a wide variety of sources, the author broadened the scope of technical knowledge concerning incarceration and methods used in the public display of offenders in stocks.

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Monique Halm-Tisserant, a graduate of Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Strasbourg, holds a PhD in Sciences of Antiquity. She first taught Greek archaeology and art history at Université de Strasbourg, then at Université de Franche-Comté. A member of UMR 7044 (CNRS), her current research is primarily focused on visual arts. She has published two works to date (Cannibalisme et immortalité and Le Peintre de Cléophon), as well as numerous articles devoted to the iconography of great myths.

HISTOIRE

The true Story of Cicero

The remarkable life journey of Antiquity’s most famous novus homo June 2013 - 264 pages

Cicero was just seventeen years old when the armed conflict began between Marius and Scylla. For over half a century, this bloody civil war plagued Rome, until Augustus established a new regime. In this fearsome period of upheavals and torment, one man desperately tried to save the Republic. Although the latter was conservative and dominated by the privileged classes, he believed that it was preferable to the gamble of a military dictatorship or the illusions of a populist-oriented despotism. Active on all fronts, quashing a potentially deadly conspiracy, yet willing to make costly compromises to foil even the slightest wrong, Cicero vacillated between intransigence and indecisiveness and between loyalty and inconstancy until the final combat, which he confronted vigorously and with his customary panache. Yet this fighter had many other passions. An outstanding orator, learned philosopher and talented poet (according to Plutarch), he left behind abundant writings, most of which have been passed down to us, allowing us to follow the course of his thoughts and emotions. Thanks to his fondness for culture, his tolerance ideal, his devotion to friendship and his interest in others, Cicero was not just Rome’s last Republican – he was also its first humanist. Plutarch, Tacitus, Appian, Sallust, Cassius Dio and Cicero tell us about it in their own words.

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A student of Jacqueline de Romilly, Fernand Robert and Robert Flacelière, Claude Dupont has worked as a classical literature teacher at Lycée de Montargis, headmaster in Dreux, Palaiseau and Paris, and advisor to the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, responsible for the insertion of young people in high-risk areas. An expert on Greek authors, he translated – among other works – The Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as the Greek Tragedies.

ESSAI

On Bicycling

This amazing collection of writings by authors ranging from Alphonse Allais and Charles Dantzig to H. G. Wells and Émile Zola will delight every bicycling enthusiast. March 2013 - 204 pages

In this book spanning two centuries of literary works on bicycles. Edward Nye, Professor of French Literature at Oxford University, has compiled the most enchanting texts on the subject, starting with the first ever published – an 1818 comedy by Eugène Scribe, the renowned French playwright so admired by Stendhal. Fifty-three other writers follow, each describing the joys, sorrows, troubles and triumphs of velocipedia: Ernest Hemingway, Antoine Blondin, Emile Zola, H. G. Wells, William Saroyan, Maurice Leblanc, Alfred Jarry and Samuel Beckett, to name but a few. This work constitutes the most amazing rediscovery of a means of locomotion, a sport and an art. Fourteen of these texts are published here in French for the first time. Illustrated work.

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Edward Nye, Professor of French Literature at Oxford University, also wrote Sur quel pied danser ? - Danse et littérature, April 2003 seminar proceedings, Lincoln College, Oxford (half-title, 2005).

HISTOIRE

France-Turkey: Turkey from a 16th-Century French Perspective

From “Turkomania” to the Renaissance

June 2013 - 288 pages

In 1453, the Turks seized Constantinople. Rome did not come to the rescue of Christianity’s second biggest capital, since dogmatic quarrels had kept them estranged for centuries. After this conquest, Turkish armies swept through Europe. European leaders were unable to make thoughtful decisions. They called upon their armies, yet doubted that they would be victorious. It was postulated that Turks were a plague sent by God to punish those among his people who had turned their backs upon him: prophets announced that it was the end of times. The First Crusade was proclaimed in Rome. Charles V established himself as the bastion of Christianity. Soleiman the Magnificent contemplated his conquests. Francis I remained silent as he formed secret alliances with Constantinople and kept Rome at bay. These three sovereigns were all from the same generation: they were scarcely twenty years old. In France, the violence of Byzantine polemists and First Crusade chroniclers was being revived by the emergence of a “clerical literature” which relentlessly denounced Turks as bearers of death and messengers of Mohammed. But dissenting voices were also heard – those of a few scholars who, opposing wilful ignorance, recommended that people learn oriental languages. Other voices included those of travellers who had visited Turkey and admired its monuments, its government, and – to an even greater extent – the devoutness of its inhabitants, yet were aware of the dangers posed by its military might. In the second half of the century, when the key actors were no longer present and France was beset by the bloody discord of religious wars, some expressed a desire for a Turkish form of government, which they did not view as despotic, while others formulated meticulously detailed plans calling for putting an end to Turkish power. Through multiple writings by clerics, travellers and politicians, the author sketches a portrait of France as a place exemplifying the fruitful contradictions of the Renaissance.

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Among his works devoted to various aspects of 16th-century religious problems, Claude Postel has published, with Les Belles Lettres, a Traité des invectives au temps de la Réforme (2004) (which was praised by the French Academy) and, more recently, Si loin de Rome, chronique d’un renégat (2007), about the life of Bernardino Ochino, Vicar-General of the Capuchin Order, who was to become a key actor in Protestant Reform.

HISTOIRE

Doctors and Drugs in Japanese History: Intellectual Ventures between China and the West

The first intellectual history of doctors in Japanese society May 2013 - 336 pages

If contemporary Japanese culture seems so much like our own, it is not just the result of a Westernisation process begun in the late 19th century, but is also the outcome of an autochthonous intellectual dynamic which emerged at least three hundred years earlier, driven primarily by doctors. Their intellectual status and numbers, as well as open-mindedness and social mobility, allowed them to lead audacious debates and anticipate what their role might be in the future, despite being members of a rigid society dominated by warriors. Their keen perception fuelled the population’s growing curiosity about the external world. As Marcel Détienne points out in his Foreword, Mieko Macé combines an anthropological approach with a historian’s viewpoint by making direct use of Japanese and Chinese sources. As the first to bring us a global perspective of the intellectual history of Japanese doctors, this work opens up a vast array of topics for discussion on the nature and characteristics of a non-Western modern way of life.

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Mieko Macé is a Senior Lecturer in Latin Language and Literatures at Université de Bordeaux 3.

[NEUS] serie 24x36

Directed by Rudy Nymsgerns & Arnaud Brunet The 24x36 Collection, situated on the frontier of the leading photographic trends, allows readers to discover photographers’ personal interpretations of contemporary subjects. Each book consists of a blank space devoted to a particular artist in order to showcase his or her vision, while the full collection displays a multitude of perceptions designed to satisfy the curious observers of our world. Works bound under jacket Format : 18 x 24 cm

Forthcoming title (November 2013) • Hope (tracking the Americans of Robert Frank 50 years after)

[ N E U S ] Collection 24 x 36

The Mongols

The only photojournalism work to date on contemporary Mongolia May 2013 - 224 pages

Guided solely by chance encounters, a photojournalist and his 11-year-old son crisscrossed and photographed a country in the throes of total economic and cultural revolution: Mongolia. They relate their conversations and take snapshots of their exchanges with people composing today’s Mongolia: painters, poets, doctors, miners and nomads, and reveal the country’s many contrasts, unveiling its face’s previously hidden side. An imperfect cross-sectional view of Mongolia: two photographic approaches to a changing world.

Olivier Laban-Mattei is a French photojournalist. He spent ten years working with Agence France-Presse covering global news (wars in Iraq, Gaza, Georgia, Libya, revolution in Tunisia, insurrection in Iran, an earthquake in Haiti and a cyclone in Burma) before starting his career as a freelance documentary photographer so that he could focus on long-term photo stories such as «The Mongolian Project» (themongolianproject.com). He receives prizes for his work on a regular basis (including, in 2011 the World Press Photo prize, for the third consecutive year).

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Lisandru Laban-Giuliani was born in 2001 Corsica in 2001. An avid reader, traveller and adventure-seeker, he crossed Canada by train from east to west, hiked with a backpack through the Scottish Highlands, and trekked across the Steppes and mountains of Central Mongolia. Closely attached to his birthplace, he enjoys returning to his roots from time to time in his native Corsican village, Aiti, opposite San Petrone. He enjoys mountain hiking while attending school in Ajaccio. After winning the Corsican chess championship several times in his category, he has also participated in French national chess championship contests. At the same time he is practicing a Vietnamese martial art, Lam Son Vo Dao. Determined to enjoy every aspect of life, he has not yet decided on his future profession.

[ N E U S ] Collection 24 x 36

Return to Wenzhou

As a companion piece to the TV documentary, M. et Mme Zhang (Mr. and Mrs. Zhang] (Arte, May 2013), this is the special story of a family torn between France and China May 2013 - 192 pages

Like 60,000 other Chinese, Mr. and Mrs. Zhang live clandestinely in France. They came in the hope of becoming prosperous in the early 2000s. Meanwhile, China underwent extensive changes and even while some Chinese desperately clung to the prospect of becoming legal aliens, they opted to return to their homeland. Their story unfolds between Chinatown in Paris and Wenzhou province. Despite their disappointment, this simple and determined couple in love is not defeated. By sharing their daily lives, and experiencing their moments of introspection and will to succeed, they bring us new insight into Wenzhou’s Chinese community and the migrations which have occurred in the last few years.

Fanny Tondre. Upon completing her art history studies, she published her photo stories with the Editing Agency. As a photographer with the Réa agency, she turned her lens on longer-term magazine subjects and their closely related social lives. Acutely aware of immigration issues, she is now devoting her time as a photographer and independent filmmaker to the Asian community and the migratory routes between Asia and Europe.

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Olivier Jobard. This Sipa agency photographer has covered numerous conflicts worldwide: Croatia, Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, Colombia, and Iraq. After completing a report in Sangatta in 2000, he radically changed his photographic approach, focusing on immigration issues in all of its forms. In 2004, he published Kingsley, carnet de route d’un immigrant clandestine about the journey of a Cameroonian on his way to France.

LES BELLES LETTRES www.lesbelleslettres.com 95 boulevard Raspail - 75006 Paris - France Droits étrangers - Foreign Rights Marie-Pierre Ciric Téléphone 33 (0)1 43 54 47 57 E-mail : [email protected] Catalog translated by Carol MACOMBER [email protected] - Tel./Fax: (717) 355-2472

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