Jean Balsamo Books

The works of the French essayist reflect his views of morality, society, and customs in the late sixteenth century

Carmen, a Spanish story? Not in the spirit of Mérimée, who ironically sidesteps the Castilian Hispanicism of the romantics and reveals the fringes of the peninsula: in Andalusia, between Seville and Gibraltar, the mad love of a rootless Basque for a Bohemian girl, without homeland or ties. A passion for extremes: José, a brigand, and Carmen, an actress with multiple faces. A passion for freedom, which conceals a deeper longing revealed in this critical edition. The strange fascination the narrator, an overlooked character in Bizet's opera, feels for Carmen: a French scholar captivated by the enchantments of this woman who speaks a fiery and brutal language he cannot understand. Is Carmen the embodiment of literature, magical and fatal? Perhaps it is this other love story, this corrida of words hidden at the heart of the text, that gives the tale of Carmen's life and death its true universality.

"Les études consacrées à Montaigne ont connu au XIXe siècle une "ère Payen" et au XXe siècle une "ère Villey". Depuis le début des années 1990, elles connaissent une "ère Desan", tant les travaux, les activités collectives et les initiatives éditoriales de Philippe Desan, à l'Université de Chicago et autour des Montaigne Studies, ont contribué à leur développement transdisciplinaire et à leur diffusion internationale. Les quarante-neuf contributions réunies dans ce volume, dues à des chercheurs de tous les continents, lui rendent hommage et contribuent, en suivant sa leçon, à la connaissance d'un Montaigne global."--Page 4 of cover.