Tuesday, December 15, 2009

le patromoine numerique = the continuing saga

Sarkozy has just announced that the French state will contribute over $1.1 billion towards the digitization of France's cultural heritage, in its ongoing attempt to keep control over this heritage while also bringing it to the multitudes through new technologies and taking into account financial realities. For the NY Times article on the subject, see:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/world/europe/15france.html

Wednesday, December 9, 2009

MANIOC - digital library of Caribbean materials

MANIOC has recently been launched. This is a digital library focusing on the Caribbean, Amazon, and the Guianas which aims to preserve the cultural history of this region. It contains primary and secondary texts, audio and video files of conferences and interviews, and images which document the history, culture, politics, and economics of this area. There is also a catalog of scholarly journals, magazines, and newspapers about the region held in research libraries in Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana, and a link to the digital version of Etudes caribéennes

While the content is currently limited, I hope that it will grow. In the future, materials in MANIOC will also be accessible through Gallica. This is a resource to know and follow about for those of you working on the francophone Caribbean.

http://www.manioc.org/

Another one

Following on the heels of the last post, yesterday I was amused to see that we had just received Valery Giscard-d'Estaing's new novel:

Giscard d'Estaing, Valéry. La princesse et le président: roman. Paris: Fallois, 2009.

The subject, a romance between the President of France and a British princess. Hopefully it won't win the Bad Sex prize. From the passage on the back cover, it looked a bit too demure for that. Find out for yourself, it should be in the stacks soon.

Commentaire and plot synopsis in Le Figaro...

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

New Prize for Les Bienveillantes

After winning the Prix Goncourt in 2006, Jonathan Littell's book has just been awarded the 17th annual "Bad Sex in Fiction Award" from the UK's Literary Review.

For more on this prize, and the passage that convinced the judges, see:
http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/badsex.html

Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Recently acquired rare and antiquarian books

In the past few months, among the rare and simply antiquarian books that Stanford has acquired you can find:

Ageorges, Joseph. Voyages sur la terre et dans la lune. [Paris]: Bloud & Gay, 1942.
A utopian novel.

Analecta Juris Pontifici: Recueil de Dissertations sur Differents Sujects de Droit Canonique, de Liturgie, de Theologie et d'Histoire. Vols. 1-12, 14-22 (1855-1883). Paris: Victor Palme, etc., 21 vols.

Des Roches, Catherine Fredonnoit, dame, 1542-1587. La puce de Mme Desroches. Paris, D. Jouaust, 1872.

Eseqvie fatte in Venetia dalla natione fiorentina al serenissimo D. Cosimo II qvarto gran dvca di Toscana il di 25 di maggio 1621. In Venetia : Appresso il Ciotti, 1621.
Beautiful engravings, and a postface by Giorgio Strozzi.

Gatti de Gamond, Zoé, and Victor Adam. Fièvres de l'ame. Paris: Delahaye, 1844. VIII-343 pp., 21 lithographies hors texte par Victor Adam, Ed. Frère, etc.
Charlotte Gatti (1806-1854), an early Belgian feminist, was a follower of Fourier and authored Fourier et son système.

La via femminile. Imprint: Roma : Via Femminile, 1968-1976.
Italian feminist journal

Maistre, J. de. Considérations sur la France. Londres, 1797. Woodcut royal arms on title, woodcut headpiece and some small woodcut tailpieces. (4), iv, 246 pp. 8vo.
Earliest edition held in the US!

Türr, István, 1825-1908. L'opera di Stefano Türr nel risorgimento italiano (1849-1870) Descritta dalla figlia ... Firenze, Tipografia fascista [1928]
brought to you by...
Sarah Sussman, curator of French and Italian Collections