The Concept of Man in Igbo Myths
Extraits
Non classé
The Concept of Man in Igbo Myths
In the vast silence of their isolation, the traditional Igbos have learnt the ways of living in harmony with nature. From their origin in distant time, they have kept a sacred perspective on the natural world. In our age, there is the need for traditional wisdoms to retain their validity and be intrinsic to our philosophic and scientific perceptions of the cosmos. We cannot do without their knowledge, their spiritual perspective, and their deep faith in the harmony of all nature. Ignoring these qualities has profound environmental implications. Global warming, environmental pollution, and the exhaustion of nature's resources are but a few of the symptoms of the nature's experiences as we continue to mistreat it in order to satisfy our own ends. This work helps us to realise that wherever we are, we are a part of nature. All the things around us are as presences, representing forces and powers of life that are not ours and yet are all part of us. Then we find them reflecting in ourselves, because we are nature, though not identical with it.
11/1999
Religion
Canonical Marriage Preparation in the Igbo Tradition in the Light of Canon 1063 of the 1983 Code of Canon Law
The Igboman who embraces Christianity wants to remain a Christian without rejecting his Igbo identity and culture. In view of this, there is an urgent need to foster and promote marriage preparation in Igboland as a way of rediscovering the Christian and traditional values of marriage as an institution. This aims at providing the ambience and opportunity for prospective couples to establish successful marriages and their stability in Igboland. In this regard, as an implementation to its renewed meaning and understanding of marriage, the Church recognizes the necessity for effective and adequate marriage preparation and pastoral care of marriage. The study attempts to give the influence of theological and canonical enrichments in the meaning and understanding of the matrimonial sacrament upon the legal provisions, guidelines and programs for marriage preparation in the Igbo dioceses of Nigeria.
12/2013
Non classé
African Image of the Ultimate Reality
The question of human existence and its ultimate meaning demand doctrinal answers. Such answers depend on man's conception of the Ruler of the Universe ; and on the answers depends man's attitude to life. This study explores and expands the Igbo answer to the question of the ultimate meaning of human existence in relation to Chukwu-God. It also seeks to open up religious springboards which will be of value to the Gospel-carriers in Igboland and to the inter-faith dialogue.
12/1984
Non classé
The Public Concept of Land Ownership
In South Korea the increase of population and the economic growth together with a shortage of arable land has led to land speculation. The government has tried to encounter this speculation with legislative acts introducing ceilings on land ownership, imposing taxes on excessive land holding and controlling real-estate transactions. These public policy measures are understood in Korea as the "Public Concept of Land Ownership". The Korean reports collected in this book explain in detail this concept and measure it by its economic efficiency as well as by its constitutionality. A part of the German reports describes how the same legal questions are dealt with under German law. Other reports examine the history of land ownership and the reprivatisation of land in East Germany after 1990.
07/1997
Histoire et Philosophiesophie
Thinking about Physics
Physical scientists are problem solvers. They are comfortable "doing" science: they find problems, solve them, and explain their solutions. Roger Newton believes that his fellow physicists might be too comfortable with their roles as solvers of problems. He argues that physicists should spend more time thinking about physics. If they did, he believes, they would become even more skilled at solving problems and "doing" science. As Newton points out in this thought-provoking book, problem solving is always influenced by the theoretical assumptions of the problem solver. Too often, though, he believes, physicists haven't subjected their assumptions to thorough scrutiny. Newton's goal is to provide a framework within which the fundamental theories of modem physics can be explored, interpreted, and understood.
"Surely physics is more than a collection of experimental results, assembled to satisfy the curiosity of appreciative experts," Newton writes. Physics, according to Newton, has moved beyond the describing and naming of curious phenomena, which is the goal of some other branches of science. Physicists have spent a great part of the twentieth century searching for explanations of experimental findings. Newton agrees that experimental facts are vital to the study of physics, but only because they lead to the development of a theory that can explain them. Facts, he argues, should undergird theory.
Newton's explanatory sweep is both broad and deep. He covers such topics as quantum mechanics, classical mechanics, field theory, thermodynamics, the role of mathematics in physics, and the concepts of probability and causality. For Newton the fundamental entity in quantum theory is the field, from which physicists can explain the particle-like and wave-like properties that are observed in experiments. He grounds his explanations in the quantum field.
Although this is not designed as a standalone textbook, it is essential reading for advanced undergraduate students, graduate students, professors, and researchers. This is a clear, concise, up-to-date book about the concepts and theories that underlie the study of contemporary physics. Readers will find that they will become better-informed physicists and, therefore, better thinkers and problem solvers, too.
01/2000
Non classé
Temporal Logic, Omniscience, Human Freedom - Perspectives in Analytic Philosophy
The work shows the usefulness and limitation of modern logic in the study of traditional metaphysical problems. As is the usual case in all criticism of analytic philosophers against traditional philosophy, word usage must be limited to what the human mind can know. The notion of timeless knowledge for example contradicts our normal mode of word usage and cannot serve as adequate in reference to knowledge be it that of man or of God. If timeless knowledge applied to divine mode of knowing then there cannot be human freedom.
09/1991
Non classé
Marriage in the Christian and Igbo Traditional Context: Towards an Inculturation
Traditional marriage and Christian marriage rites presently exist as two distinct ceremonies in some parts of Africa. Is there no way of bringing the two together to avoid any form of duplication or multiplication of rite ? More so because the Church has always implicitly recognised matrimonial institution as a cultural product. The answer to the above question is located in the whole issue of inculturation. A process that successfully flourished in the Western civilisation and consequently influenced the teaching of the Church on marriage. The answer to our question seeks to establish a marriage rite where couples will genuinely experience the happy marriage between culture and Church. A marriage rite that will fulfil both the traditional and Christian demands.
04/2003
Non classé
Henry VIII in History, Historiography and Literature
If this anthology on the literary appreciation of the life and times of Henry VIII can show how history, historiography and the history of literature are woven together as threads in a tapestry, if this book can show how varied the sources are from which historical images are fed, especially those of significant historical figures, then it will have surely fulfilled its purpose.
01/1993
Philosophie
Agencies of the Good in the Work of Iris Murdoch
In part one Iris Murdoch's work is set against its contemporary background. Her concept of Man, as seen both in her fiction and in her philosophical work, is discussed with special attention being paid to the influence of Plato, J.P. Sartre, Simone Weil, Gabriel Marcel and the linguistic philosophers. Murdoch's views on the Good, and on Love, Death and Art, her main agencies of the Good, are then dealt with in greater detail. In part two five novels, which are representative of her literary output, are examined in greater depth.
10/1991
Sciences de la terre et de la
Theoretical Astrophysics. Volume 1, Astrophysical Processes
Graduate students and researchers in astrophysics and cosmology need a solid understanding of a wide range of physical processes. This clear and authoritative textbook has been designed to help them to develop the necessary toolkit of theory. Assuming only an undergraduate background in physics and no detailed knowledge of astronomy, this book guides the reader step by step through a comprehensive collection of fundamental theoretical topics. The book is modular in design, allowing the reader to pick and chose a selection of chapters, if necessary. It can be used alone, or in conjunction with the forthcoming accompanying two volumes (covering stars and stellar systems, and galaxies and cosmology, respectively). After reviewing the basics of dynamics, electromagnetic theory, and statistical physics, the book carefully develops a solid understanding of all the key concepts such as radiative processes, spectra, fluid mechanics, plasma physics and MHD, dynamics of gravitating systems, general relativity, and nuclear physics. Each topic is developed methodically from undergraduate basic physics. Throughout, the reader's understanding is developed and tested with carefully structured problems and helpful hints. This welcome volume provides graduate students with an indispensable introduction to and reference on all the physical processes they will need to successfully tackle cutting-edge research in astrophysics and cosmology.
01/2000
Sociologie
Nationalism in Education
The comparative Reader, with authors from 6 continents and 9 countries analyses, to what extent the nation concept is still at the heart of international organizations and agreements, under which circumstances nationalism rose in specific regions and cultures at different times, and, to what extent education was influenced by or used for nationalistic doctrines and policies. Case studies as well as systematic analyses illustrate, that education can hardly change its own socioeconomic and political context. However, education and educational policy can support a prevention of and balance to nationalism in the long run, if they counteract stereotyping and scapegoating, familiarize with overlapping and competing loyalties, and, encourage human rights, international cooperation and cultural relationalism.
10/1993
Littérature française
Les inventeurs. Essai
What do Christopher Columbus, Reneke, Zénobe Gramme and Louis Pasteur have in common ? They were all inventors. Well fine, but who invented the crab's claw, the suction cups and the flight of squids or the proboscis of blood sucking insects ? Is invention intellectual fantasy, an industrial tool or a fundamental biological reaction ? How is this riddle to be solved ? Should we go through the list of inventions or inventors ? Is it a question of circumstances or motivations ? Who is in charge ? The Material or the Spirit ? In order to try to find a way of answering these questions, first a few very different inventors and their inventions will be presented. A few paradoxes emerge from this first part. Then we will devote an entire chapter to an exceptional inventor whose extraordinary work revolutionized how we now approach this topic. Finally, what can be said about all the inventions like the wings of birds or butterflies, the eyes of fish or insects, the leaves of trees or the social organization of beehives ? In these cases, man is not the inventor. There are countless marvels like these in the world around us. Can we explain them ? This will be the subject of the third part of this essay.
02/2017
Non classé
Experimental Social Dilemmas
Most of the papers on social dilemmas were presented at a conference on social dilemmas that was held at the University of Groningen in the spring of 1984. Social dilemmas are interpersonal situations that are characterized by a conflict between private and collective interest, i.e. in attempting to further their private interests, participants may end up worser off than if they had abandonned self-interest and worked for the good of the community. The chapters in this book describe efforts made by social psychologists, sociologists, and political scientists to advance our understanding of the psychological processes that influence people's behavior in social dilemmas. It is assumed that understanding of these processes can help our search for solutions.
12/1986
Non classé
Nietzsche and the End of Freedom
Nietzsche's writing is not some game of 'freeplay' and terms like 'intertextuality' are useless in discussing its influence. This study takes Nietzsche, then Kafka's Trial, Thomas Mann's Death in Venice, Heinrich Mann's Man of Straw, Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge and Musil's Törless. It argues that Nietzsche mediates and modernises the dilemmas of Romanticism and that a properly differentiated account of his literary reception can illuminate the dynamics of German culture on the eve of the Great War.
07/1993
Non classé
Read Ancient African scripts from any current African language. Volume 2
The son of Douaouf, the brilliant, scribe of the early XIIth Dynasty Xty " Khety " said this : "The man continues to subsist after reaching the haven of death and his actions are beside him in a heap. " If regression is the main cause of the alarming situation of Africa and its tails the perceptibles consequences at all levels, the solution to this problem is eminently political. It inevitably involves the constitution of a pan-African State. For men, there is no unity without memory of the past. In fact, the construction of a federal state inevitably involves the restoration of African historical consciousness. There is no national and federal identity without a common language. The unification of Africa will only be possible if it takes the measure of its linguistic unification issue. To a lesser extent but like Cheikh Anta Diop in his book titled the Cultural Unity, I was animated throughout this heuristic by the idea that only the true knowledge of the past can maintain the consciousness and the feeling of a historical continuity essential to the consolidation of a nation for the purpose of building a multinational state in line with its past. Like Cheikh Anta Diop, I build my sureness on the legitimate idea that a people who lost a significant part of their historical memory must engage in the investigation of their past in every possible way. This investigation can take the contours of a reconnection with its past through so-called old languages. But a people can not live only with by merely repeating of what others tell them about themselves. The investigation through its linguistic past allows especially a direct knowledge of oneself. In addition to the fact that this knowledge simply highlights its weaknesses, it allows also to become aware by an introspective and therefore reflective of its real abilities and strengths. It structures being and the consciousness of being to resist any form of servile and degrading ideology. This quest for the past, not founded on blind passion but objectivity, nourishes a healthy ambition for a real universalism. To know one's past is already to project one's future. To know one's past is to give oneself the capacity to be able to bring to others in a perspective of giving and receiving. To know one's past is to refuse intellectual guardianship and wait-and-seeism. To know one's past is to be reborn.
05/2020
Non classé
Read Ancient African scripts from any current African language. Volume 1
The son of Douaouf, the brilliant, scribe of the early XIIth Dynasty Xty " Khety " said this : "The man continues to subsist after reaching the haven of death and his actions are beside him in a heap. " If regression is the main cause of the alarming situation of Africa and its tails the perceptibles consequences at all levels, the solution to this problem is eminently political. It inevitably involves the constitution of a pan-African State. For men, there is no unity without memory of the past. In fact, the construction of a federal state inevitably involves the restoration of African historical consciousness. There is no national and federal identity without a common language. The unification of Africa will only be possible if it takes the measure of its linguistic unification issue. To a lesser extent but like Cheikh Anta Diop in his book titled the Cultural Unity, I was animated throughout this heuristic by the idea that only the true knowledge of the past can maintain the consciousness and the feeling of a historical continuity essential to the consolidation of a nation for the purpose of building a multinational state in line with its past. Like Cheikh Anta Diop, I build my sureness on the legitimate idea that a people who lost a significant part of their historical memory must engage in the investigation of their past in every possible way. This investigation can take the contours of a reconnection with its past through so-called old languages. But a people can not live only with by merely repeating of what others tell them about themselves. The investigation through its linguistic past allows especially a direct knowledge of oneself. In addition to the fact that this knowledge simply highlights its weaknesses, it allows also to become aware by an introspective and therefore reflective of its real abilities and strengths. It structures being and the consciousness of being to resist any form of servile and degrading ideology. This quest for the past, not founded on blind passion but objectivity, nourishes a healthy ambition for a real universalism. To know one's past is already to project one's future. To know one's past is to give oneself the capacity to be able to bring to others in a perspective of giving and receiving. To know one's past is to refuse intellectual guardianship and wait-and-seeism. To know one's past is to be reborn.
05/2020
Sciences politiques
The Structure of Political Communication in the United Kingdom, the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany
Political Communication in The United Kingdom, the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany differs in terms of what the peoples expect to take issue with, how they are prepared to talk about them, which choices they can make to solve problems and, finally, whom or which organizations they delegate to resolve them. This comparative media study of The Economist, Time and Der Spiegel attempts to extract the differences in politics of the three societies.
11/1987
Tourisme étranger
Moroccan tracks Volume 11. The sagho djebel
The Sagho djebel is the eastern extension of the Anti-Atlas, a volcanic mountain with granitic mamelons, basaltic organs, chaos of black shales, pink sandstones... at the gates of the Sahara. As far as the eye can see, large wild, arid spaces. A desolate land made for the lonely DPM. And for a thousand miles around, silence is the only companion. Absolute plenitude and the desire to take to the track. From flat expanses to rolling hills, from sharp relief to steep canyons : pure, original nature. The character is strong, rustic but the heart is soft. The colours are soft and gentle. Ochre, pink, brown, violet, the colour chart stretches in a gradation of shimmering pastels, sometimes accompanied by an overwhelming heat. Eldorado in the heart of the desert, rare are the oases ; modest green spots in the infinitely large, they are the reminders that we are on African soil. The wild charm of the Sagho is due to its exceptional geology : high cliffs and steep peaks, tabular escarpments and deep canyons in the middle of which caravans of camels and mules circulate. When you arrive on these immense plateaus, the lunar horizon is so vast that you want to go everywhere at once to see if it is really as beautiful elsewhere ! The Sagho also surprises by the richness of its lights : limpid like those of the nearby Sahara, or sometimes in half-tone, as in the neighbouring Dades valley. The Sagho is also the Morocco of the last Berber nomads, descendants of the ancient lords Aït Atta. In autumn, after leaving the snows of the High Atlas, they set up their dark wool tents on the slopes of the jebel until spring. They can neither read nor write, but they are sure of their way through the Atlas Mountains and the Moroccan desert. In the Sagho, they have built houses of unbaked stone, dug wells, planted almond trees, grown wheat, barley and various vegetables. Others built herds of goats and sheep, and caravans of camels. Most of them are now sedentary, semi-nomadic or nomadic...
08/2022
Littérature française
Sons of Fantasy
When we were children, we believed anything was possible... This book is a fantasy novel originally written for children. But, if you are a father or a mother, a teacher or a writer, if you still have some bits of fantasy in your soul... then, this novel is for you too. We all know how geniuses changed the world with their childlike Imagination, and how people use creative thinking to solve problems. This is a story about hope ; "Sons of Fantasy" shares the story of M. Alger, a father grieving for the loss of his dear wife, who left him with two beautiful kids. Norris and Socrates were adjusting to life without Mom... But things got more complicated when one of them was paralyzed because of a severe psychological trauma due to an overdose of fantasy... This family has a very interesting neighbor who lives a few feet away. He has a weird little hobby, reading books in the most unlikely places... He for example travelled to Romania and read "Dracula" by Bram Stoker in the Castelul Bran Castle, because it's said that the main character Dracula lived in it. And then all of a sudden he stopped travelling... He got a month ago a big long hat that belongs to the greatest witch that lived during the middle ages, "Moje Gayla". In fact, after being burned by the church, one of her relatives kept her belongings inside a wooden box... and in the twentieth century one of her grandchildren donated the box to "The Magic Square Museum" in London. Genius bought the hat at a public auction as an art relic to decorate one of his rooms. Could this weird neighbor be the reason of Socrates' psychological trauma ? Or maybe he is the one who will cure him ? And what has the hat to do with all this ?
08/2018
Histoire internationale
New Man, New Nation, New World
In this new interpretation of the French Revolution, Jan Baszkiewicz examines revolutionary attempts to "regenerate" man, France and the world in the face of deep-seated and persistent traditions. Using a broad array of primary sources – including pamphlets, diaries, police reports, and debate protocols – Baszkiewicz analyzes the tools French revolutionaries used to build a new society on the wreckage of the Ancien Régime : Spectacular holidays, reforms in family and marriage law, general schooling, the Republican Calendar, the "liberation" of public spaces, education through work, a new religion, terror and war. In the end, the great plans for regeneration failed, though the myths that surrounded those failures lived on well into the twentieth century.
05/2012
Monographies
Hilma af Klint. The Five Notebook 1
In 1896, Hilma af Klint and four other like-minded women artists left the Edelweiss Society and founded the "Friday Group", also known as "The Five". They met every Friday for spiritual meetings, including prayers, studies of the New Testament, meditation and séances. The medium exercised automatic writing and mediumistic drawing. Eventually they established contact with spiritual beings whom they called "The High Ones". In 1896, the five women began taking meticulous notes of the mediumistic messages conveyed by the spirits. In time, Hilma af Klint felt she had been selected for more important messages. After ten years of esoteric training with "The Five", aged 43, Hilma af Klint accepted a major assignment, the execution of The Paintings for the Temple. This commission, which engaged the artist from 1906 to 1915, changed the course of her life. In 1908, Rudolf Steiner, leader of the German Theosophical Society, held several lectures in Stockholm. He also visited af Klint's studio and saw some of the early Paintings for the Temple. In 1913, Steiner founded the Anthroposophical Society, which af Klint joined in 1920 and remained a member for the rest of her life.
01/2022
Anglais apprentissage
Tales from Longpuddle
Tony Kytes is a favourite with the girls but he's not terribly clever. If you meet an old girlfriend and she asks fora ride home in your wagon, do you say yes? And then if you meet the girl you are planning to marry, what do you do? Very soon, Tony is in a great muddle, and does not know how to escape from it. These stories are set in an English country village of the nineteenth century, but Hardy's tales of mistakes and muddles and marriages belong in any place, at any time.
07/2010
Droit
Activation Policies for the Unemployed, the Right to Work and the Duty to Work
Since the 1990s and the 2000s, Western social protection systems have experienced a turn towards activation. This turn consists of the multiplication of measures aimed at bringing those who are unemployed closer to participation in the labour market. These measures often induce a strengthening of the conditions that must be met in order to receive social benefits. It is in this well known context that the authors gathered in this book decided to take a closer look at the relationship between activation policies for the unemployed and the right and the duty to work. If activation measures are likely to increase transitions towards the labour market, we can also make the assumption that they may, particularly when they are marked with the seal of coercion, hinder or dramatically reduce the right to freely chosen work. In such circumstances, the realisation of the "right to work", which is often stated to be the aim of those who promote activation, tends in practice to be reduced to an increasing pressure being exerted on the unemployed. In this case, isn't it actually the duty to work that is particularly reinforced ? After an historical and philosophical perspective on the issue, this assumption is confronted with the developments observed in the United States and in France, and then with the guidelines laid down in international human rights instruments. What follows is a discussion of two alternatives to the dominant activation model : the basic income guarantee and the employment guarantee.
06/1987
Non classé
Thomas Mann's «Joseph und seine Brüder» and the Phallic Theology of the Old Testament
When Thomas Mann began to work on his Joseph novel, he was motivated to do so by the image of the beautiful seventeen-year-old youth and the erotic attraction this image exercised on him personally. He undertook to retell the biblical story of Joseph in order to explore the meaning of this attraction. In the phallic theology of the Old Testament - Israel's covenant with Yahweh was a sacred marriage, outwardly marked by circumcision, for the purpose of mutual sanctification and aggrandizement - Mann discovered the framework of a metaphysics of homoerotic desire. This book explores the many implications Mann found in his biblical source, including the paradoxical notion that a certain degree of suppression of the original desire is required if it is to continue to play its all-important role as a motivating force.
09/1995
Poésie
Epilepsy: the invisible pain
They say life is a long stretch of a calm river, but not for everyone ! She was for me until the day when everything rocked, the day my destiny was changed dramatically. People do not realize how life can be so sweet and so beautiful. They complain all day long for trivialities. They are not even aware that they have before their eyes the most beautiful wealth : the luck and happiness of living in good health. I was rich before. Now I am poor because my child has an incurable disease, that has currently no hope of being healed. As a parent, how can we accept that ? , How to continue living carrying the bundle of pain in my head ? , How to overcome this feeling of helplessness ? When I started speaking to my heart, I didn't know myself that this was the beginning of a new life : a rebirth as a poet. When I learnt that my 7-year-old daughter was suffering from the Dravet Syndrome, a rare genetic epileptic encephalopathy, this was like an earthquake in my life. Then, I needed to write in order to express my sorrow and my pain. Words and rhymes came naturally to my mind. This was obvious that poetry would be my survival weapon.
01/2019
Histoire et Philosophiesophie
Concepts of Mass in Contemporary Physics and Philosophy
The concept of mass is one of the most fundamental notions in physics, comparable in importance only to those of space and time. But in contrast to the latter, which are the subject of innumerable physical and philosophical studies, the concept of mass has been but rarely investigated. Here Max Jammer, a leading philosopher and historian of physics, provides a concise but comprehensive, coherent, and self-contained study of the concept of mass as it is defined, interpreted, and applied in contemporary physics and as it is critically examined in the modern philosophy of science. With its focus on theories proposed after the mid-1950s, the book is the first of its kind, covering the most recent experimental and theoretical investigations into the nature of mass and its role in modern physics, from the realm of elementary particles to the cosmology of galaxies.
The book begins with an analysis of the persistent difficulties of defining inertial mass in a noncircular manner and discusses the related question of whether mass is an observational or a theoretical concept. It then studies the notion of mass in special relativity and the delicate problem of whether the relativistic rest mass is the only legitimate notion of mass and whether it is identical with the classical (Newtonian) mass. This is followed by a critical analysis of the different derivations of the famous mass-energy relationship E = mc2 and its conflicting interpretations. Jammer then devotes a chapter to the distinction between inertial and gravitational mass and to the various versions of the so-called equivalence principle with which Newton initiated his Principia but which also became the starting point of Einstein's general relativity, which supersedes Newtonian physics. The book concludes with a presentation of recently proposed global and local dynamical theories of the origin and nature of mass.
Destined to become a much-consulted reference for philosophers and physicists, this book is also written for the nonprofessional general reader interested in the foundations of physics.
01/2000
Littérature française
Handicapped
The mere fact of existing is already a battle of every moment, but that of being born a woman is seen as the most arduous of battles, in a society that considers women not only less than men, but below men. The simple attributes devolved to human being are sometimes denied to them, under the indifferent eye of the society. Who is to blame for this general contemptuous attitude vis-à-vis the woman ? The man ? Society ? Or the woman herself ? Woman parenthood, excision, rape, sexual harassment, the prison, early marriages and widowhood are core points tackled in the seven short stories of this book where the main characters ; Micheline, Amina, Jenaëlle, Ann-Lise, Lucie, Violet and Bernadette shall each take the reader through their stories using their own words. Based on true stories, these fictions are a personal move to throw more light on the stumbling blocks faced by the woman in her struggle for optimal fulfillment. Through the life stories clearly depicted in this book, most readers can picture their own lives, the lives of a mother, a sister, a friend or a daughter. Two objectives constitute the backbone of this book ; draw attention on the way the woman is perceived by the African society and Cameroon in particular and raise awareness in the woman so that she can come to understand that the key to her destiny lies within herself and nowhere else. Hence the need to portray womanhood as society sees it : a handicap.
10/2020
Littérature française
Chance freedom. Translated by Eric Turcat & Hannah Farris
If Chance is a "straw man" and Freedom a distant ideal, then why write poetry in the first place ? Because not all straw men are hollow and because not all ideals should fade into the distance. In his third book of French poetry translated into English, Dotoli continues to shine as a beacon of hope and optimism in a world that often forgets how its prosaic whimpers may still resonate with a lyrical bang.
03/2023
Histoire et Philosophiesophie
Charles Darwin's Zoology Notes & Specimen Lists from H.M.S. Beagle
Two long sets of scientific notes were made by Charles Darwin during the voyage of the Beagle. Those transcribed here are concerned with natural history, and although in 1839 he drew on them quite extensively in writing his famous " Journal of Researches ", neither they nor his geology notes have previously been published. He was a superb observer, and recorded vividly and accurately his first impressions of the appearance and behaviour of the wide range of animals, from ants to ostriches, encountered during his travels. Often he performed little experiments on the creatures that he captured, and he was never happy until he had exhaustively explored the why and wherefore of every one of his observations. During the long periods on board ship, he carried out a thorough analysis of hitherto unrecognised features of the internal anatomy of a variety of marine invertebrates, and made elegant pencil drawings of them under his dissecting microscope. The volume also includes his lists of 1 500 specimens preserved in Spirits of Wine, and some 3 500 not in Spirits, with impeccably accurate cross references to the main notes. Although his notes were made strictly for his own use, and were often highly technical, they were well written throughout, and contain many highly readable passages. Only towards the very end of the voyage were his first doubts about the immutability of species consciously pressed, but here are to be found the first seeds of his theory of evolution, and of the important new fields of behavioural and ecological study of which he was one of the principal founders.
01/2000
Anglais apprentissage
LA VIERGE ET LE GITAN : THE VIRGIN AND THE GIPSY
When the vicar's wife went off with a young and penniless man the scandal knew no bounds. Her two little girls were only seven and nine years old respectively. And the vicar was such a good husband. True, his hair was grey. But his moustache was dark, he was handsome, and still full of furtive passion for his unrestrained and beautiful wife. Why did she go ? Why did she burst away with such an éclat of revulsion, like a touch of madness ? Nobody gave any answer. Only the pious said she was a bad woman. While some of the good women kept silent. They knew. The two little girls never knew. Wounded, they decided that it was because their mother found them negligible. The ill wind that blows nobody any good swept away the vicarage family on its blast. Then lo and behold ! the vicar, who was somewhat distinguished as an essayist and a controversialist, and whose case had aroused sympathy among the bookish men, received the living of Papplewick. The Lord had tempered the wind of misfortune with a rectorate in the north country. [...] "Lorsque la femme du pasteur s'enfuit avec un jeune homme sans le sou, le scandale ne connut pas de bornes. Ses deux fillettes n'avaient que sept et neuf ans respectivement. Et le pasteur était un si bon mari. Certes, il avait les cheveux gris, mais sa moustache était restée noire, il était bel homme et brûlait encore d'une passion furtive pour sa belle épouse immodeste. Pourquoi était-elle partie ? Pourquoi s'était-elle arrachée à lui, dans un tel éclat de dégoût, comme un grain de folie ? Personne n'apporta de réponse. Seules, les dévotes dirent que c'était une mauvaise femme. Cependant que certaines femmes de bien gardaient le silence. Elles comprenaient, elles. Les deux fillettes ne comprirent jamais. Blessées, elles jugèrent que c'était parce que leur mère les tenait pour quantité négligeable. Le vent du malheur qui est censé être bon à quelque chose balaya de son souffle les habitants de la cure. Puis, miracle, le pasteur, qui avait une certaine éminence comme essayiste et polémiste, et dont la situation avait su émouvoir certains intellectuels, fut nommé à la paroisse de Papplewick. Le Seigneur avait adouci l'ouragan du malheur par un bénéfice de recteur dans le nord du pays. " [...]
02/1993
