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Tag Archives: Balzac

Rastignac Posted by on Jul 25, 2016

In French culture, intellectualism runs deep. It’s not uncommon to have feuds by contemporary philosophers or scholars followed by the media and even become front page news. Recently, I was reading about a feud between two French scholars engaged in a public feud. They threw insults at each other through opinion pieces printed in newspapers…

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Google Puts the “€” in French “€-Books” Posted by on Jun 12, 2012

Not too long ago, several French literati organizations seemed to heroically wage an “uphill crusade” against the Internet search Goliath Google, accusing it of outright book piracy. Today, the paramount motivation of these organizations appears to be more mercantile than virtuously academic. Everything else, of course, “n’est que littérature” (“nothing but literature”). Internet search giant Google…

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French Books to Read in the Summer Posted by on Jun 24, 2011

C’est l’été, enfin! (It’s the Summer, finally!) Many friends of mine have been telling me as of late how they’re excited to seize the opportunity of the sudden extra free time in their hands to catch up with la lecture de loisir (leisure reading)—As opposed  to the force-fed textbook “reading assignments” of the school year- and they especially asked…

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Monsieur Balzac Asks: How Well Can You Do French Conjugaison? Posted by on Jun 9, 2011

 Imagine one second that your French teacher asks you by surprise: “Passez au tableau” (“Come to the blackboard”) to write the full conjugaison of the verb “faire” (“to do”)—“Que faire?” (“What to do“?) Whatever you “do”, ne panique pas(don’t panic)!   As you will see in the tables listed below, it’s far from being a “UNE…

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Summer Reads Summary (en français, svp!) Posted by on May 27, 2010

C’est l’été, et les vacances sont enfin arrivées (It’s the Summer, and the holidays have finally arrived.) Quel bonheur ! Je remercie aussi Jennie de ses nombreux compliments (I thank her for her many compliments), et je souhaite lui dire ceci: J’aime sincèrement beaucoup tes contributions, elles sont variées (they are varied), très souvent amusantes (very often amusing), et particuliérement informatives…

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Sarrasine! Posted by on Apr 14, 2010

Félicitations, Bill Penn! Congratulations to our commentateur for guessing that l’écrivain I hinted at last week was Honoré de Balzac. Ce soir (this evening), we’ll discuss une petite nouvelle (a novella) by Balzac, qui s’appelle (which is called) Sarrasine. Links to the texte intégrale (full text ) in French and English can be found at…

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