Academic literature on the topic 'Lave en coussin'

Wenceslas returned home about one in the morning. Hortense had been waiting for him since about half past nine. From half past nine to ten o’clock, she had listened to the sounds of carriages, telling herself that Wenceslas had never come home so late before...

On the whole of the next day the search was continued. In spite of his late watches, Cousin Henry rose up early, not looking at anything that was being done while the search was continued in other rooms, but still sitting, as he had...

This chapter considers the Gesamtkunstwerk, which English musicologists translate as ‘total artwork’. Richard Wagner had used the expression to characterise his operas, though he had only ever used the term in two essays, both published in 1849: ‘Art and Revolution’ and ‘The Artwork of the Future’. Moreover, the term did not originate from Wagner himself, and he did not even spell it in the conventional way. Since the late twentieth century ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’ has been applied to other artforms, particularly architecture, which like opera can unite a number of elements. (Architecture, for example, marries engineering, landscaping and interior decoration, among others.) But the term's origins are in the late eighteenth-century notion that all the arts could be unified in poetry.

Maggie had been four days at her aunt Moss’s, giving the early June sunshine quite a new brightness in the care-dimmed eyes of that affectionate woman, and making an epoch for her cousins great and small, who were learning her words and actions by...

Three days later Innstetten arrived in Berlin, fairly late, around nine. They were all at the station: Effi, her Mama, her cousin. He was warmly received, warmest of all by Effi, and a whole host of matters had already been discussed by the time the...

This final chapter opens with Toussaint Louverture in Santo Domingo in 1802, preoccupied with the possibility of a new French invasion. In February, General Leclerc invaded Cape Haitian in the north; Toussaint was captured by French troops and taken to France as prisoner. Although his demise occurred for various reasons, most problematic are the tactics he embraced during the period of 1793-1799, wherein he neglected the interests of the former enslaved people and instead allied himself with the upper class and military interests. The rallying cry of “freedom for all” for the population of the former French colony did not imply that formerly enslaved masses could enjoy autonomy or freely cultivate edible crops on their own properties. While not all rebel leaders fit into the same social category, they did have different interests than the former slaves. Trouillot reminds readers that a true revolution produces profound social changes, inverting the old social order; and thus formerly-enslaved people should have all become property owners. However, the competing revolutionary leaders (including Rigaud, Beauvais, and Toussaint) stunted this possibility, neglecting the needs of the poor majority. It was chiefly the economic aspect of independence that divided Toussaint from the masses. After taking control of the former colony, Toussaint imposed import and export taxes that benefited European countries and the United States instead of Haitians; U.S.-built warehouses popped up on the capital’s wharf, and Saint-Domingue remained economically dependent. The former slaves benefited in no way from growing the sugar, coffee or cotton that they were required to produce during Toussaint’s reign; they were punished for planting food crops. Worse still, Toussaint required that the ex-slaves “respect” the integrity of former plantations by staying and working on them, while he distributed free land to rebel officers. The idea of “freedom” thus lost its resonance amongst the masses. Although members of the State of Saint-Domingue and the ruling class gained economically, it was at the expense of the former enslaved workers. From this point, the behavior of the Haitian State was that of sitting heavily upon the new nation, since their economic and political interests were at odds with one another. A host of contradictions emerged: Dependence/ Independence, Plantations/Small Farms, Commodity/Food crops, White/Black, Mulatto/Black, Mulatto/White, Catholic/Vodou, and French/Creole. Although the Constitution of 1801 abolished slavery and supposedly “guaranteed freedom” to all, it reinforced these fundamental contradictions. The “Moyse Affair” in late 1801 illustrates Trouillot’s understanding of Toussaint’s betrayal of the Haitian people. Moyse, Toussaint’s adopted nephew, had populist political ideas that attracted the black masses. Fearing his potentially subversive ambitions, Toussaint had Moyse judged by a military commission that included Christophe, Vernet, and Pageaux. Moyse was condemned to death and executed, effectively crushing the interests of the masses. Throughout the Revolution Toussaint maintained power by crafting coalitions amongst a wide variety of social classes and competing interests. The dominance of the new military class was a social contradiction that had to be masked, and Toussaint’s actions showed a will to conceal it. Aspects of this problematic behavior and ideology have reappeared in Haiti under Dessalines, Christophe, Salomon, Estimé, Duvalier and others. Official discourse is grounded in several central notions that are easily manipulated by Haitian leaders: first, the notion of “family,” allowing the concealed dominance of one group and the privileging the organized Catholic religion; second, the idea that Haitians should “respect property”; and, the myth of nèg kapab (“capable people”) who possess an inherent right to govern and oppress the people. The political concept of “family,” common throughout Africa and countries with African descendants, was employed by Toussaint as a form of social control: throughout the revolution Toussaint refers to the new Haitian society as a family in order to advance his own “paternal” political objectives and conceal its many contradictions. The state—which his ideology came to epitomize—began to take advantage of the people; it was akin to a vèvè, a matrix holding society together, and a Gordian knot, where complex and twisted socio-economic contradictions favoring a certain class were inscribed. Although Toussaint was kidnapped by the invasion of Leclerc in 1802, this motivated the Haitian masses to stand up and fight for independence from France, which ultimately led to freedom. Thus, living up to the surname of “Louverture” that was given him, Toussaint indeed opened the barrier to independence and warrants appreciation for that. When one revisits the ideology of Toussaint Louverture, and concurrently that of the state of Saint-Domingue, one must not forget that, in spite of all its weaknesses, libèté jénéral (“freedom for all”, or “universal freedom” in today’s terms) was originally a powerful unifying factor, which merits recognition: it helped Toussaint’s troops defeat the British, crush Hédouville, etc. Toussaint was betrayed by plantation owners and French and American commissioners alike, and he always maintained some faith in France, even if the masses did not. Trouillot implies that Toussaint understood the direction in which he wanted to go, but he got lost on the way. To his credit, Toussaint’s experience demonstrated that liberty without political independence was a senseless notion, and others (such as Dessalines) were able to break with his approach and capitalize on this lesson. The book closes with Grinn Prominnin declaring that he is exhausted and that everyone must return to discuss the situation tomorrow to reach a conclusion. The scene remains peaceful, the people complacent. Trouillot suggests that, more than 170 years after the revolution, the task of bringing about real social change in Haiti—and seeing the ambitions of the Revolution fulfilled—remains starkly inert. Readers easily infer that Haiti’s stagnant socio-economic and political situation (in 1977) is due not only to the as yet unfulfilled promises of the Revolution and War for Independence, but also to the escalating damages wreaked upon the Haitian nation by the Duvalier regime and its manipulative cronyism coupled with its totalitarian indigenist ideology.

David Bradshaw considers Virginia Woolf’s relationship to her cousin Herbert Fisher, at the centre of ‘that great patriarchal machine’ of government and education. Arguing for the need for a more nuanced understanding of Fisher in Woolf studies, Bradshaw demonstrates that Woolf’s often scathing rejection of Fisher’s conservative ideology and late-Victorian Oxford intellectualism misrepresents his political and educational ideals, his strong dislike of war as well as his advocacy for a better state-funded education system. Her well-documented hostility is also accompanied by intimacy and admiration. Bradshaw therefore argues that Woolf’s complex response to Fisher has to be understood in a family context: they were connected by a shared sense of responsibility for their family heritage and he represented the world of her parents to her.