Academic literature on the topic 'Mont-Saint-Michel (Abbey : France)'

The Mont-Saint-Michel is known worldwide for its unique combination of the natural site and the Medieval abbey at the top of the rocky islet. But the Mont is also located within an estuarine complex, which is considerably silting up. For two decades, large-scale works were planned to prevent the Mont from being surrounded by the expanding salt meadows. The construction of a new dam over the Couesnon River, the digging of two new channels, and the destruction of the causeway were the main operations carried out between 2007 and 2015. The remote sensing approach is fully suitable for evaluating the real impact of the engineering project, particularly the expected large-scale hydrosedimentary effects of reestablishing the maritime landscape around the Mont. The migration of the different channels and the erosion-progradation balance of the vegetation through space and time are the main features to study. Between 2007 and 2023, the erosion of the salt meadows was significant to the south-west of the Mont but more limited to the south-east. During the same period, the sedimentation considerably increased to the north-east of the Bay, which seems to be facing the same silting-up problem. At this stage, the remote-sensing survey indicates mixed results for the engineering project.

ABSTRACTOne of the best-known monastic settlements of western Europe, the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel occupies the summit of a prodigiously steep island site off the coast of Normandy in northern France. The church was built between 1023 and c. 1080–85. The monastic buildings, to the north of the church, were arranged vertically as much as horizontally, reflecting the constraints of the site. They appear to have comprised three adjacent and interconnecting buildings, two of three storeys, the other of two. However, two of these three ranges were overbuilt in the early thirteenth century by an ambitious development which became known as the Merveille (c. 1212–28). This article seeks to identify the buildings that the Merveille replaced and thus the entire complex as it existed in the twelfth century. This inevitably involves a certain amount of speculation and perhaps for this reason the complex has hitherto been largely ignored, important though it is for an understanding of the abbey’s early history. The article also discusses other building projects relevant to the monks, such as the cemetery, the twelfth-century Hôtellerie and the thirteenth-century infirmary and mortuary chapel, and analyses the genesis of the Merveille. Among the findings or propositions are that the monks’ cemetery was housed in what may once have been a ducal palace; that the abbey’s cloister occupied the same position as it does today but was at a lower, mezzanine level and was smaller than the present cloister; that the chapter house and infirmary were probably adjacent to the west walk of the cloister; that the original provision for kitchen and cellar and for sleeping space was inadequate; and that the Merveille, which was the work of Abbot Raoul des Îles, was not entirely new-build as sometimes thought, but a transformation and redevelopment of buildings that already existed.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the vegetative and bestiary poetics of Guy de Maupassant's late psychological novel "Our Heart" (1890), which lacks the proper attention of literary scholars both in France and abroad (scientific reflection is focused on short stories and novels of the heyday of Maupassant's realism). Therefore, its poetic study and introduction into the modern literary context is an actual scientific task. The purpose of the article is to define the semantics and symbolism of plant and bestiary imagery in the artistic structure of G. de Maupassant's novel "Our Heart" and to establish its functions in the realization of natural/artificial opposition, that is conceptual for the novel. The research was carried out in the framework of the structural-semiotic method of analysis of the artistic text. The analysis of the novel from the point of view of the artistic functions of floral and zoomorphic imagery proved the special place of these tools in deepening the psychological picture and expressive-emotional expressiveness of the images of the protagonists: André Mariolle and Madame de Burne. The range of these tropes is from vegetal and zoomorphic comparisons and metaphors to elaborate zoo- and dendroanthropomorphic images (Michelle de Burne is first a ‘bird of paradise’, a ‘wild bird’, then a ‘hawk of prey’ and, allusively, an ‘ostrich’, and also an old tired ‘horse’, a ‘nag’; Mariolle – is a ‘trapped wounded animal’, a ‘thrush in a cage’, a ‘small fish caught in a net’). The plant analogue of the heroine is a man-made flower garden, which gradually withers and decays, as her love for Mariolle fades away. Michelle's image is accompanied by numerous floral details that acquire a metaphorical meaning (these are cultural flowers of selected varieties – roses, orchids, carnations, geraniums, lilies of the valley, chrysanthemums, lilies etc.). In contrast to the “artificial” Michelle, the image of the “natural” Elizabeth is associated with wild forest plants – violets, gorse etc. The protagonist is correlated with ramified dendrosymbolism (chestnut, beech, oak, linden etc.) and the image of the forest as a secret liminal space. The symbolism of the wild forest is opposed in the novel by the symbolism of an orderly garden (as one of the options for embodying the natural/artificial opposition). Vegetal and zoomorphic images not only accompany the characteristics of the characters, but are also closely intertwined, passing one into the other (the anthropomorphic image of fused trees turns into the image of a battle between a predatory beast and its victim, plant juices become living blood). Subjective signs of the main character's “artificiality” are the images of stone flowers and stone animals decorating the central spatial locus of the novel – Abbey Mont Saint Michel. So, florisms, dendrisms and animalistic images in the novel perform a characteristic function, convey the dynamics of the feelings of the protagonists, acquiring a metaphorical meaning, and fill the landscape with symbolic details.