Tuesday, April 27, 2010

SFIFF

The 53rd San Francisco International Film Festival opened last Thursday with a French film, Micmacs, the latest film by director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and there are many more films on the program with French and Italian pedigrees. The festival is a great opportunity to see new films, many that may never be released here in the US.

Here are links to the lists of the festival's French and Italian films.

The SFIFF runs through May 6, with screenings at the Castro Theatre, Sundance Kabuki Cinemas, and the Clay in SF, and the PFA in Berkeley.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

English/French and French/English literary translation

An interesting study comparing the French and American publishing environment for translations between the two languages, with a focus on literary translations, has just been published online on the website of Le MOTif, an organization focused on books and writing in the Ile-de-France. Entitled "Les échanges littéraires entre Paris et New York à l’ère de la globalisation", the lead author is sociologist Gisèle Sapiro, who did much of the research as a Fulbright visiting scholar at NYU and Columbia in 2009.

It has some useful statistics and information on the most active publishing houses on both sides of the Atlantic, with a special mention - on the US side of the story - for activities in California. The most active US publisher of literary translations from French, however, is the University of Nebraska Press, with their "French Voices" program.

http://www.lemotif.fr/fichier/motif_fichier/142/fichier_fichier_etude.paris.new.york.paris.pdf

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Recently acquired rare and antiquarian books


Here are some recent special purchases of note - 

BERQUIN, Arnaud. Romances. Paris: Ruault, 1776.  8vo, [2], XXVI, 73 pp. With 6 engraved plates by N. Delaunay jeune, E. de Ghendt and N. Ponce after C. P. Marillier  as well as 12 pages of music.

[DIDEROT, Denis]. Le fils naturel, ou les epreuves de la vertu. Comedie en cinq actes. Amsterdam (i.e. Paris): no printer, 1757.  8vo, IX, [1], 11-299, [1] p.
First edition of Diderot's first dramatic work.

[MIRABEAU, Victor Riqueti de]. L'Ami Des Hommes, Ou Traité De La Population. Avignon: No printer, 1756.  12mo, 3 volumes. 431, [1]: 578, [2]: 577, [1] pp. With etched frontispiece by Fressard after Meltay.  
First edition, to complement the revised second edition already owned by Stanford.

GUARINI, Giovanni Battista. Rime. Venice: B. Ciotti, 1598. 4to, [4], 137, [3] leaves. With fine engraved title-page (Johnson, Italian Engraved Title-pages, p. 22, no. 40). Large woodcut initials and numerous large woodcut tail-pieces. Some faint, mostly marginal, dampstains on some leaves. 

From dealer’s description: “First edition of the famous and popular poems of Giovanni Battista Guarini (1538-1612) who served Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara, as a diplomat and courtier from 1567 and replace Torquato Tasso as court poet in 1579. This is a collection of his shorter works which is handsomely printed with numerous large woodcut initials, head and tail pieces which often dominate the page. A very handsomely printed and decorated book, which served as a source for composers including Marenzio, Giaches de Wert, Monteverdi and Filippo de Monte.”

LUTI, Giovanni Battista Filippo.  Vita della Venerabile Serva di Dio Margarita Bichi. Nobile vedova sanese, e del terz’ordine de’ Minori Conventuali di San Francesco... Siena, Stamperia del Pubblico, 1699. 
From the dealer’s description: “First edition of a remarkable late-Renaissance work of political hagiography.  On the eve of the momentous 1526 siege to Siena laid by Florence and the Florentine pope, the Popolari party, who had supplanted and exiled the Noveschi in the government of Siena, rely on the vision and leadership of the noble lady Margherita Bichi, a gentile widow whose ascetic and devotional holiness are said to grant her a dialogue with the Virgin Mary.”

 [METASTASIO, Pietro (?)].  Il Conclave dell'Anno 1774, Dramma per Musica da recitarsi nel Teatro delle dame nel Carnevale del 1775 dedicato alle medisime dame. [Rome]: [ca. 1775]. 4to, [41] pp. 4 blank leaves. Manuscript in a small neat hand in brown ink.
From the dealer’s description: “A bitter satire on the prolonged proceedings to elect Pope Clement XIV. It was printed clandestinely by Molini in Florence and was immediately suppressed. An edition was published in Rome in 1775.”

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

French records in WorldCat

OCLC, the organization which manages the giant bibliographic database WorldCat, has announced the addition of millions of records from French library catalogs. These records come from the BnF, SUDOC (the French university library system) and the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon. This will simplify searches for rare French and other foreign language materials not easily found in North American libraries.

From the press release:

"PARIS, 7 April 2010—There are now more than 16.3 million French records in WorldCat, following completion of batchloading projects from the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), Système Universitaire de documentation (Sudoc) and the Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon (BM Lyon).
In 2009, the BnF and ABES, the agency that manages the Sudoc database for French universities, signed an agreement with OCLC to load their records and holdings information into WorldCat. OCLC then processed more than 8.8 million records for BnF and over 7.9 million records for ABES. The Bibliothèque municipale de Lyon, the second largest public library in France, contributed more than 1.3 million records to WorldCat.
With these projects complete, there are now more than 16.3 million French-language records in WorldCat. Just as the total number of WorldCat records has grown substantially in recent years to 175 million, the percentage of French-language records has also increased from 6.2 percent in 2007 to 9.6 percent in 2010."


Here's the full press release.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

New Acquisitions, arrivals from March 2010

Some recent arrivals making their way to the library shelves...

French
Aubert, François d'. Colbert: la vertu usurpée. Paris: Perrin, 2010. 488p. €23.00.
Besson, Eric. Pour la nation. Paris: Grasset, 2009.
Bouzar, Dounia, and Lylia Bouzar. La république ou la burqa: les services publics face à l'islam manipulé. Paris: Albin Michel, 2010.
Brown, Frederick. For the Soul of France: Culture Wars in the Age of Dreyfus. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.
Catonné, Jean-Marie. Romain Gary: de Wilno à la rue du bac. Arles: Actes sud, 2009.
Ecris-moi si tu m'aimes encore: une correspondance amoureuse au XVIIIe siècle. Montrouge: Bayard, 2010.
Jorland, Gérard. Une société à soigner: hygiène et salubrité publiques en France au XIXe siècle. Paris: Gallimard, 2010.
Khadra, Yasmina. L'Olympe des infortunes. Paris: Julliard, 2010.
Laub, Thomas Johnston. After the Fall: German Policy in Occupied France, 1940-1944. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Ouardi, Hela, ed. L'androgyne en littérature. Dijon: Editions universitaires de Dijon, 2009. 
Verjus, Anne. Le bon mari: une histoire politique des hommes et des femmes à l'époque révolutionnaire. Paris: Fayard, 2010.
Vircondelet, Alain. Albert Camus, fils d'Alger. Paris: A. Fayard, 2010.
Zaretsky, Robert. Albert Camus, Elements of a Life. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010.

Italian
Anselmi, Gian Mario, and Gino Ruozzi. Animali della letteratura italiana. Roma: Carocci, 2009.
Avellini, Luisa, Lara Michelacci, and Battista Guarini. Battista Guarini e la retorica dell'altrove politico: un genere fra epistola, relazione diplomatica e resoconto di viaggio. Bologna: I libri di Emil, 2009.
Canella, Maria, and Sergio Giuntini. Sport e fascismo. Milano, Italy: FrancoAngeli, 2009.
Ceccatty, René de. Alberto Moravia. Paris: Flammarion, 2010.
Di Gesù, Matteo. I paralleli: narratori contemporanei e classici italiani a confronto. Palermo: Edizioni di passaggio, 2009.
Domenico, da Gravina. Chronicon de rebus in Apulia gestis. Matera: G. Barile, 2008.
Fukushima, Osamu. An Etymological Dictionary for Reading Dante's La Vita Nuova. Firenze: F. Cesati, 2009.
Gauthier, Sophie, Marie-Victoire Nantet, Marie-Domitille Porcheron, and Anne Rivière. Sur les traces de Camille et Paul Claudel: archives et presse : actes du colloque du 23 Octobre 2007, Amiens, Université Jules Verne. [Besançon]: Poussiere d'or, 2009.
Gros, Colette. Images de la femme dans l'historiographie florentine du XIVe siècle. Aix-en-Provence: PUP. Publications de l'université de Provence, 2009.
Guicciardini, Francesco. Ricordi. Edizione diplomatica e critica della redazione C a cura di Giovanni Palumbo. Bologna: Commissione per i testi di lingua, 2009.
Licari, Giuseppe. L'onore e il rispetto: uno studio antropologico sulla mafia in Sicilia. Padova: CLEUP, 2009.
Liguori, Guido, and Pasquale Voza. Dizionario gramsciano: 1926-1937. Roma: Carocci, 2009.
Pivato, Stefano, Loretta Veri, and Natalia Cangi. In bicicletta: memorie dell'Italia a due ruote. Bologna: Il mulino, 2009.
Rosselli, Amelia, Monica Venturini, and Silvia De March. È vostra la vita che ho perso: conversazioni e interviste, 1964-1995. Firenze: Le lettere, 2010.
Scalessa, Gabriele. Cola di Rienzo: dalla storio al mito. Roma: Il Cubo, 2009.
Schiesari, Juliana. Beasts and Beauties: Animals, Gender and Domestication in the Italian Renaissance. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010.
Scotti, Vincenzo. L'Italia corta: le miniere del Mediterraneo. Roma: Datanews, 2010.
Willson, Perry R. Women in Twentieth-Century Italy. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
brought to you by...
Sarah Sussman, curator of French and Italian Collections