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The role and influence of intellectuals is one of the flashpoints in the recurring debate on the nature and dimensions of French fascism. At the forefront of this debate are a group of emerging writers, collectively known as the Young Right. Though thoroughly schooled in the reactionary nationalism of Charles Maurras' Action francaise, whose orbit they entered in the early 1930s, they were soon seduced by the mobilizing force of neighboring fascist movements and regimes. Led by two precocious literary talents, Robert Brasillach and Thierry Maulnier, the Young Right set themselves to rejuvenating French nationalism and winning a place for France in an emerging new Europe. Their project - an attempt to graft lessons from foreign sources onto a native language of French generational and cultural politics - was one of several efforts to create a distinctive French fascism.
Here, reintroduced into literary circulation, is an ignored yet rich and original page in Russian literary history--the "unnoticed generation" of Russian writers who took up residence in France after the Bolshevik coup of 1917. Leonid Livak analyzes the position of these writers in the context of French modernist literature, examining the ways in which French literary life influenced émigré artistic identities and oeuvre. The book challenges commonly accepted notions of émigré isolation from French literature and culture and is instrumental in reaching a fuller understanding of the cultural mechanisms involved in the effort by an expatriate community to carry on a creative existence.
Who were the senior generals who took France through the First World War, and why do we know so little about them? They commanded the largest force on the Western Front through both humiliating defeats and forgotten victories; they won international respect and adoration, but also led their army to infamous mutiny. Nevertheless, the French and their allies, under a French General in Chief, would eventually achieve final victory over Imperial Germany. It is extraordinary that this remarkable group of men has been so neglected in histories on the war. Previous studies are outdated and haven't tapped the wealth of primary source material in France's military archives. It is this gap in the literature and in the understanding of the conflict that this thought-provoking and original volume is designed to address. It takes a collective biographical approach to the leading French soldiers who ran the war on the Western Front.
This book traces the origins and evolution of extreme-right wing thought in France from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. It establishes the presence of an ideological tradition or organicist, exclusive nationalism initiated at the end of the nineteenth century, which adapts itself to the post-First World War and re-emerges forcibly during the Occupation. Elements of this same tradition are present in the modern discourse of the extreme right in post-war France. This helps the student of modern French politics to see movements like the Front National in their historical perspective.
“A brilliant survey of the history of warfare... the best yet produced anywhere.” — B. H. Liddell Hart “Outstanding and penetrating outline of the processes of war and the means of fighting from 1415 onward... skillfully and carefully written... [includes] one of the most comprehensive bibliographies of the history of war.” — E. B. Long, Chicago Tribune “A substantial and scholarly history of modern warfare from the age of the ‘great captains’ through the innovations of the industrial revolution, to our age of unlimited violence.” — Henry L. Roberts, Foreign Affairs “Leaves the reader astonished by its combinations of brevity, clarity, and accuracy.” — Times Liter...
The French Writers' War, 1940–1953, is a remarkably thorough account of French writers and literary institutions from the beginning of the German Occupation through France's passage of amnesty laws in the early 1950s. To understand how the Occupation affected French literary production as a whole, Gisèle Sapiro uses Pierre Bourdieu's notion of the "literary field." Sapiro surveyed the career trajectories and literary and political positions of 185 writers. She found that writers' stances in relation to the Vichy regime are best explained in terms of institutional and structural factors, rather than ideology. Examining four major French literary institutions, from the conservative French Academy to the Comité national des écrivains, a group formed in 1941 to resist the Occupation, she chronicles the institutions' histories before turning to the ways that they influenced writers' political positions. Sapiro shows how significant institutions and individuals within France's literary field exacerbated their loss of independence or found ways of resisting during the war and Occupation, as well as how they were perceived after Liberation.
A history of World War II’s Battle of Mers-el-Kebir, in which Churchill ordered the sinking of the French fleet to keep it from the Nazis. With the defeat of the French forces by the Germans, Winston Churchill was determined that the French fleet would not fall into German hands, and to that end he ordered that every French ship from Alexandria to Martinique, Portsmouth to Dakar either surrender or be seized. Only those in Algeria committed to the Vichy government refused. In a tragic and ironic battle, the British sank the French fleet at Oran, the author explores in detail the events surrounding this incident. With an introduction by Sir John Colville
This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981.