Academic literature on the topic 'Literary relations between France and the Far East'

Sino-French war of 1884–1885 on land and at sea was significant as the beginning of a new stage of active French colonial policy in the Far East. It was a continuation of the Second French-Vietnamese war of 1883–1886, more known as “Tonkin Campaign”. France wanted to occupy Tonkin (northern Vietnam) and entrench a protectorate there. Tonkin belonged to Chinese sphere of interest because of Hong (Red) river which connected China’s southern provinces with the sea as an important trade route. Armed Conflict between France and China became inevitable. Military operations of the Far East squadron under the command of Admiral Amédée Courbet (1827–1885) become an important part of the campaign: Defeat of Chinese fleet in the Battle of Fuzhou, capture of Keelung, blockade of Taiwan’s ports, occupation of the Pescadores. This article for the first time introduces in the Russian language the “letters of sea cadet Jean” — letters from a sea cadet of Courbet’s squadron who depicted different episodes of the campaign, including landing and stay at Taiwan, relations with local authorities and population, Chinese and aborigines. For the first time the letters were published in 1890/91 in French and re-published with some notes in 2005; there is no translation into any foreign language so far. Written by a young seaman under a culture shock from a completely new and surprising world these letters are valuable for the sincerity of the story, freshness of the impressions and certain literary merits.

The Norman Church has sometimes been depicted as welcoming the Capetian conquest of Normandy in 1204. Its relations with the last Angevin dukes of Normandy, Richard the Lionheart and King John, certainly showed signs of serious tension, especially the election dispute at Sées (1201–3), but there is also ample evidence of continuing co-operation between the dukes and the Norman Church. Prior to 1204, moreover, Philip Augustus of France had done very little to win over the Norman Church. It is demonstrated here that he was far less generous to the religious houses of south-east Normandy, which he had annexed in 1200, than has hitherto been believed. Most of the alms recorded in fiscal accounts for the Évrecin testify to the patronage of the local aristocracy, not the kings of England and France.

A brief friendship kindled in 1930s New York between the Trinidadian novelist and short-story writer of Portuguese Creole ancestry, Alfred Hubert Mendes (1897–1991) and the late modernist English author, Malcolm Lowry (1909–57), which forged a personal and literary camaraderie, revealing significant rapport reflected in the intersection of their lives. Certain important, mutually enabling parallels between their experiences, political affinities, and literary influences can assist us in making better sense of their relationship. Though Mendes was shaped by adventures in Britain and the United States, his writings were rooted in the concerns of everyday existence and in the cultural traditions of his native island of Trinidad. His realist short stories – and novels like Pitch Lake (1934) and Black Fauns (1935) – helped pioneer West Indian literature and attracted praise from Aldous Huxley. Lowry was inspired by visits to the Far East (1927), Germany (1928), Norway (1931), France (1932), Spain (1933–34), the United States (1934–36), and Mexico (1936–38 and 1945–47), where his masterpiece, Under the Volcano (1947), was set. These countries exerted a long-lasting impression on his literary imagination, which encompassed a kaleidoscopic range of influences from East and West, including esotericism. It was his trajectory toward the New World that was conducive to his acquaintance with Mendes in New York in 1936.

Abstract Adaptation, as both a method and a textual category, has been a perennial favorite with text mediators who call themselves translators, appearing especially prominently in intersemiotic rather than interlingual translation. The present paper examines the concepts and practices of adaptation, drawing particular attention to examples from both the West and the Far East. Just as a preference for adaptive methods in translation can be seen in certain periods of Western literary history (e.g. seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France), there were times when adaptations were hailed in China, Japan and Korea. In the course of the discussion, reference will be made to (1) the modernist adaptations undertaken by Western writers through much of the twentieth century; (2) the sequences of novelistic adaptations spawned in Korea and Japan by Chinese classical novels; and (3) the adaptations of European novels by the prodigious twentieth-century Chinese translator Lin Shu. It will be shown that there is a need for translation scholars to question the theoretical validity of the dichotomy between the two modes of “translation” and “adaptation,” as well as an urgency to reconsider the supposed “inferior” status of adaptations.

The article discusses the reasons that prompted the governments and expert of many EU countries to pay increased attention to the activities of the religious and political association of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood (BM) and a number of Shiite groups (primarily Hezbollah) within the EU in recent years. The study indicates that the causes of it are the terrorist attacks in France and Austria in 2020, which gave rise to a wave of retaliatory measures from the authorities, and also a growing influence of this Muslim organizations and groups on social and political life of the countries of the Old World. The article analyses the means, methods and mechanisms characteristic of groups associated with the structures of BM and Hezbollah in Europe, the specifics of their activities. The authority and influence of radical groups are noticeably weakening in the Middle East region. However, in the Old World they manage to fit into the current political-ideological discourse, resorting to the left, “progressist” rhetoric to hide their Islamist identity. They are exploiting the far-fetched feelings of disadvantage and vulnerability that are spreading in Muslim communities in socio-political environment. As inter-civilizational relations in Europe worsen, radical groups publicly claim the status of "defenders of humiliated Muslims", trying to legalize their radical views and strategies. Further aggravation of the confrontation between political elites in the EU and Islamic radicals seems inevitable. Islamist radicalism becomes a factor in political life in the European Union.

Publius Papinius Statius was one of the most important poets of the Flavian Age. His works (Thebais, Silvae and unfinished Achilleis) became the object of great interest of scholars. One of the issues of Statian poetry that was so far ignored by scholars was its image of the East and Easterners. Among them the Iranian world (first of all Parthian empire) is the one that deserves special interest because of the importance of relations between Rome and Parthia as well as the old literary tradition concerning Persia, Parthia etc. Although this matter is of marginal importance in Statius, there are a lot of references to Iranian themes in Thebais and Silvae. Some of them are connected with military and political relations with Rome (esp. the Armenian War in the times of Nero), while some refer to ethnographic tradition and traditional image of Achaemenid Persia. In these passages we can find great influence of Augustan poets, Horace in particular.

Words are testimonies to the kinds of historical interactions that took place between the speakers of English and many other languages spoken far beyond Britain’s continental neighbours. This article considers the process of lexical conversion from proper names (more specifically, place-names) to common names, as well as the use of descriptive adjectives or nouns denoting the geographical area from which commodities were exported present in the Durham Account Rolls (DAR). All these lexical items give important insights into the trade relations (direct or otherwise) between regions within and beyond Europe, including the Low Countries, France, the former Ottoman Empire, and the Baltic countries. The aim of this article is to offer a lexical analysis and a historical overview of the main commodities that were imported into the monastic community under the auspices of Durham Cathedral, by discussing the implications in the choice of vernacular lexical items over Medieval Latin equivalents in the multilingual environment that characterises the DAR in the broader context of late medieval England.

The Russian writer Ivan Sergeevič Turgenev (1818–83), who lived in Western Europe (Germany, England, and France) during the second half of his life, is considered the most important mediator between Russia and Europe in the nineteenth century due to his wide and intensive contacts in East and West. The paper aims to trace Turgenev’s literary and cultural contacts using the epistemological model of the net and current methods of analyzing social networks on a quantitative and qualitative level. In concrete terms, Turgenev’s postal relations from a single year (from June 1868 to May 1869) are presented and evaluated in tabular form and as GEPHI graphs. Beyond the purely quantitative network visualization and viewing, the attempt is made to provide a cultural weighting of the exchange, especially of Turgenev’s German contacts. The network-specific weighting of these contacts results in a different emphasis than usual in Turgenev research, which focuses on Turgenev’s contacts with important German writers. The qualitative analysis carried out on the basis of the visualization shows that Turgenev’s contacts with literary celebrities such as Theodor Storm, Berthold Auerbach, and Paul Heyse proved to be weak ties. In contrast, his relationship with the little-known literary figure Ludwig Pietsch deserves to be called a strong tie. Turgenev’s position and agency in the network can be described with Burt as a “broker” attitude.

The paper analyzes the interaction of local and alien peoples in Primorye at the stage of its development by Slavic settlers from the point of view of spiritual and moral foundations and values. Owing to the great temporal separation of the period under study from the present and the impossibility of the searching for informants, the novels by I.U. Basargin, which are distinguished by documentary accuracy of description, historicity and covering a large time period — from the first settlers to the end of the Civil War came to be the study`s subject matter. Information about interethnic relations and spiritual and moral values was revealed in literary works and compared with the already available scientific materials. The dynamics of spiritual and moral values is analyzed on the basis of M. Scheler's concept of Ordo Amoris, a certain moral formula of a person, in accordance with which relations between values are built in the inner world of a particular moral subject. The study shows that the contacts of the newcomer Slavic peoples, namely the Russian Old Believers, with the natives and the Chinese, took place, on the whole, peacefully, thanks to the firm adherence of the settlers to universal human values. The Ordo Amoris community had become a guarantee of good neighborliness and mutual assistance, while its violation — the promotion of personal enrichment and power — led to crimes, violation of moral principles, and the destruction of peaceful coexistence.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created significant obstacles to the implementation of national foreign policies, including the reduction of the resource base. This article analyzes the schemes and forms of government activities that can reduce the negative impact of the pandemic factor. The object of the study is the Federal Republic of Germany, which is currently at a turning point in its development: the end of A. Merkel’s «era» (autumn 2021) is accompanied by a large number of unresolved foreign policy tasks that prevent Germany from establishing itself as a world power. The article provides a detailed overview of these tasks and the ongoing efforts to solve them, presented on a problem-geographic principle. Issues related to the restart of relations between Germany and the United States under the Biden administration, the FRG’s involvement in building up the political and military potential of the EU, as well as the dynamics and nature of the FRG’s dialogue with the leading European NATO member states – Great Britain, Italy and especially France – are analyzed in the context of the ongoing pandemic crisis. Particular attention is paid to the problems associated with deepening cooperation within the framework of the German-French tandem. The paper also explores the difficulties that have appeared during the pandemic and new opportunities for expanding the political and military presence of Germany in Libya, «G5 Sahel» countries, Syria and Iraq. The consequences that a decision of the United States to carry out the «deal» with the Afghan Taliban may have for Germany are analyzed. The FRG’s attempts to strengthen its positions in the post-Soviet space and the Far East are presented in the context of deteriorating relations with the Russian Federation and China. In conclusion, an assessment of Germany’s activity in the sphere of security and defense during the first year of the pandemic is given.

Lisa Bresner (1971-2007) est une artiste polyvalente et prolifique : romancière, traductrice, sinologue, autrice de littérature pour la jeunesse, réalisatrice de courts-métrages et enseignante en histoire de la civilisation chinoise. Bien que sa vie ait été « fulgurante », elle a laissé un riche héritage de plus de trente œuvres – romans, essais, traductions, poésies et livres pour enfants – qui ont construit un pont entre la France et l’Extrême-Orient. Notre recherche explore, à travers trois axes principaux, la manière dont Lisa Bresner a intégré les cultures chinoise et japonaise dans son œuvre littéraire. Tout d’abord, nous analysons sa littérature pour la jeunesse afin de comprendre comment elle a utilisé son imagination et sa passion pour les idéogrammes chinois pour créer un univers poétique et transculturel, accessible et éducatif pour les jeunes lecteurs. Ensuite, nous nous intéressons à ses traductions et à son travail de sinologue, afin de révéler comment elle a su rendre les œuvres classiques chinoises accessibles au public francophone, tout en y apportant sa touche personnelle et créative. Enfin, nous nous penchons sur son univers romanesque, où elle aborde les thèmes de l’identité et de l’altérité à travers des personnages qui incarnent sa propre quête de soi à travers l’autre. Notre étude vise à répondre à une question centrale : comment Lisa Bresner a-t-elle, à travers ses œuvres transculturelles, fusionné ses expériences personnelles et la culture asiatique pour explorer les frontières entre soi et l’autre ? En nous appuyant sur ses œuvres publiées entre 1992 et 2008, ainsi que sur ses manuscrits et correspondances conservés à l’IMEC, nous cherchons à mieux comprendre la manière unique dont elle a contribué à rapprocher les cultures orientale et occidentale
Lisa Bresner (1971-2007) was a multi-talented and prolific artist : novelist, translator, sinologist, children’s book author, short film director, and lecturer on Chinese civilization. Though her life was brief, she left behind a rich body of over thirty works – including novels, essays, translations, poetry, and children's books – that served as a cultural bridge between France and the Far East. This research explores three main aspects of how Lisa Bresner integrated Chinese and Japanese cultures into her literary creations. First, we examine her children’s literature, focusing on how she combined her imagination and love for Chinese ideograms to craft a poetic, transcultural universe that is both accessible and educational for young readers. Next, we explore her translations and works as a sinologist, highlighting how she made classical Chinese texts accessible to French readers while infusing them with her own creative touch. Finally, we delve into her novels, where she addresses themes of identity and otherness through characters that reflect her personal journey of self-discovery, shaped by encounters with different cultures. Our study seeks to answer a key question : How did Lisa Bresner, through her transcultural works, blend her personal experiences with Asian culture to explore the boundaries between self and other ? By drawing on her published works from 1992 to 2008, as well as her manuscripts and letters archived at IMEC, we aim to shed light on the unique way in which she contributed to bridging Eastern and Western cultures

Ever since Syria won its independence from France in 1946, it has been a crucial player in Middle Eastern politics. Over the years, relations between the United States and Syria have fluctuated as Washington has tried to balance its commitment to Israel's security with its support for Arab regimes in order to protect vital and strategic interests in the Arab world. The Arab-Israeli conflict is, however. no longer the only focal point of the relationship. Now, terrorism has entered the fray. On the State Department's terrorism list since 1979, Syria became even more persona non grata as far as Washington was concerned when Damascus vocally opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. The American war in Iraq, occupation, and promotion of democracy throughout the Middle East pose a strong challenge to the Syrian regime. The new Syrian leadership, in power only since 2000, faces immense challenges—protecting Syria's regional status and surviving internal and external threats. Against this background, Syria and the United States have set themselves on a collision course over terrorism, arms proliferation, Lebanon, the Middle East peace process, and Iraq. Syria is, nevertheless, extremely important to the United States, because it can be a force for either stability or instability in an extremely volatile region. Recent events have put the spotlight on Syria's policies and actions. After the assassination of a Lebanese politician, protests in Lebanon led to the withdrawal of Syrian troops. While the withdrawal averted an immediate threat of bloodshed, the Bush administration accused Syria of being a source of instability in the Middle East, with Secretary of State Rice charging that Syria was still active in Lebanon and was supporting foreign terrorists fueling the insurgency in Iraq. The U.S.-Syrian relationship is of critical importance to the United States' efforts to promote democracy throughout the Middle East. At the same time, the United States has been pressuring Syria to clamp down on terrorism within its own borders. Rabil provides a history of the modern U.S.-Syrian relationship, putting the latest events in the context of this contemporary history, and placing the relationship in the context of Middle Eastern politics.

Abstract Chapter 2: ‘Culinary Impressionism: Ford Madox Ford’s Agrarianism and Cookery’ connects Ford’s literary Impressionism with cookery, forging an integrated culinary/literary path in his writing. Culinary Impressionism illustrates the ways in which cookery and local agriculture contain the potential to establish individual creativity and international exchange, as represented in Ford’s memoir It Was the Nightingale and the novels The Good Soldier, Parade’s End tetralogy, and his late prose works, Provence and Great Trade Route. As a technique, culinary Impressionism creates a channel between both Ford’s creative fiction and life-writing and his cooking and cookery-writing. Following Ford in his travels, this chapter also addresses the transatlantic alimentary connections between England, France, and America, and also from the Far East to the West, which he explores in Great Trade Route. It is particularly through emphasis on the mobility of food and its possibility of uniting diverse cultures that Ford develops his theories of ‘civilization’ and ‘barbarism’.

Abstract Momentous decisions about strategy and foreign relations had to be made within a few weeks of Churchill’s assumption of the national leadership. Britain’s military situation quickly became as unfavourable as could have been imagined. Germany’s swift defeat of France, close on the heels of the occupation of Denmark, Norway and the Low Countries, meant more than the loss of Britain’s only major ally; an ally moreover who had been relied on to provide the greater part of the land forces with which Germany was to be fought. It meant that the German armed forces were also far better placed for operations against the British Isles. U-boats could sail straight into the high seas from bases on the Atlantic coast of France instead of having to creep through the Straits of Dover or go the long way round between Scotland and Iceland. Bombers operating from bases in France, Belgium and Norway could reach every desirable British target and bring heavier loads of bombs with them. Warships and commerce raiders had the whole Norwegian coastline to operate from, and the French ports too if they could get there. Germany’s war-making potential was increased by control of the economies of the occupied countries (Czechoslovakia’s of course was already in the bag), and the traditional British idea of blockading a continental foe into submission was gone forever. All that was catastrophic enough, yet there was even worse to come. Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940. Its incursion into south-eastern France was of little significance, but it mattered much that British security in East Africa, Egypt and the Middle East generally was now threatened. It mattered also that the Mediterranean had suddenly changed from being a safe sea into a perilous one. One of the nightmares of the pre-war imperial security planners had become a reality: the Royal Navy had to fight in the Mediterranean, on its own, as well as in the Atlantic and everywhere else.

Географический фактор играет двоякую роль в истории Финляндии и ее взаимоотношений с внешним миром. С одной стороны, территориальное положение на окраине Европы обусловило то, что финны сравнительно поздно включились в цивилизационный процесс. С другой стороны, земли, омываемые водами дальних заливов Балтийского моря, находятся в одном из наиболее важных со стратегической точки зрения европейских регионов. Хотя к «финским территориям» издавна проявляли интерес также Англия, Германия и Франция, влияние извне связано для финнов прежде всего с соперничеством ближайших соседей. Политический вакуум, в котором финны пребывали вплоть до начала XI в., пытались заполнить с запада – Швеция и римскокатолическая церковь, с востока – Россия (Великий Новгород) и православная церковь. Первая граница между Швецией и Россией была установлена в 1323 г. Согласно Ореховскому мирному договору Швеция получила юго-западные и западные финляндские территории, Россия – Восточную Карелию. В XVIII в. Россия приступила к поэтапному возвращению финляндских земель, присоединив Финляндию по итогам войны 1808–1809 гг. В границах архиконсервативной Российской империи родилось и постепенно оформилось финляндское государство западного типа. Финляндия получила широкую политическую и экономическую автономию – правительство, четырехсословный орган народного представительства (сейм), налоговую и финансовую систему, свое гражданство, валюту и пр. Финляндию от новой метрополии изначально отделяла таможенная граница. Главой законодательной власти являлся император, управлявший Финляндией на основе коренных законов (конституции) шведского времени. Будучи частью Российского государства, Финляндия постепенно стала политической общностью, а также одним из наиболее экономически развитых регионов империи. Уступки со стороны России были связаны с необходимостью обеспечить безопасность западной границы. The geographical factor plays a twofold role in the history of Finland and its relations with the outside world. On the one hand, the territorial situation on the edge of Europe caused the Finns to join the civilizational process relatively late. On the other hand, the lands washed by the waters of the far reaches of the Baltic Sea are located in one of the most strategically important European regions. Although England, Germany and France have long been interested in the "Finnish territories", external influence for Finns is primarily connected with the hostility of their closest neighbors. It was the political vacuum in which the Finns remained until the beginning of the XI century, that Sweden and the Roman Catholic Church tried to fill from the west, Russia (Veliky Novgorod) and the Orthodox Church – from the east. The first border between Sweden and Russia was established in 1323. According to the Orekhov Peace Treaty, Sweden received the southwestern and western Finnish territories, Russia – East Karelia. In the XYIII century Russia began the gradual return of the Finnish lands, annexing Finland after the results of the war of 1808–1809. Within the borders of the arch-conservative Russian Empire, a Western-type Finnish state was born and gradually took shape. Finland received a wide political and economic autonomy – the government, the four–member body of the People's representation (Seim), the tax and financial system, its citizenship, currency, etc. Finland and the new metropolis were initially separated by the customs border. The head of the legislative power was the emperor, who ruled Finland on the basis of the fundamental laws (constitution) of the Swedish period. Being a part of the Russian state, Finland gradually became a political community, as well as one of the most economically developed regions of the empire. Russia's concessions were determined by the need to ensure the security of the western border.