Showing papers in "Modern Language Review in 1977"

A History of the French Language

Abstract: Preface Preface to the second edition Abbreviations and phonetic symbols From Vulgar Latin to the recognition of the new vernacular The language of the earliest French texts Old French: language or dialect? Middle French developments Progress and prestige in the sixteenth century Codification and standardisation: Classical and Neo-Classical French From the Revolution to the present day The defence of French Appendix: the distribution of the French language in the world today Suggestions for further reading Index

The Title as a Literary Genre

Abstract: It is a terrifying moment in Through the Looking-Glass when Alice enters 'the wood where things have no names'. Anyone who passes through that obscure forest, 'very cool and shady' as it may be, loses his sense of identity and finds himself in a semiotic chaos where nothing is signified because all signifiers have disappeared. Adam and Eve first made themselves at home in an alien universe by devising names, without which their descendants would be lost in interstellar anonymity a state of mind which we can also glimpse in Samuel Beckett's novel, L'Innommable. Yet it may be said of Alice that her passage through the wood was, in effect, a momentarily happy return to the aboriginal garden. That interval of namelessness which might well be described in their own terms by the logicians brought her close to her fellow-traveller, the affectionate faun, who would dash away just as soon as they reached a spot where they could identify one another. Sunlight brings them back to the familiar sphere where all creatures are denominated and where consequently roles are indicated. We complete the episode by wondering how we could live without the faculty of designation: how we could manage to handle anything, especially things fabricated from words, without verbal handles. Considering the importance that this problem holds for literature, one is surprised that it has attracted so little attention from criticism. 'Were it inquired of an ingenious writer which page of his had occasioned him most perplexity, he would often point to the title-page.' Where would one be finding such a remark, if not among the antiquarian pages (taking up no more than five) of Isaac D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature? Among the major critics only Lessing seems to have shown much interest, pausing now and then to raise the question with regard to plays he was reviewing in the Hamburgische Dramaturgie. He responded eloquently there to a question raised by an earlier reviewer of Voltaire's Nanine: 'Was ist das fur ein Titel?' 'What does it mean'? answered Lessing. 'No more and no less than a title should. A title should not be a bill of fare.' Besides, Nanine whoever she washad been qualified bya broadly descriptive subtitle, LePrejugi vaincu. And whyshould not plays, like people, be allowed to bear more than a single name? Lessing's view was revived and elaborated not very long ago in the Noten zur Literatur of T. W. Adorno, who conceived the title as a 'microcosm of the work', and interpreted the Voltairean example as a typical if paradoxical combination of particularity and generality. We were bound to address ourselves sooner or later to the subject of titology, in our ever-increasing concern fordetailed and systematic analysis of literary texts from a formal viewpoint and for a more rigorous conception of the psychological relations between writer and reader. Roland Barthes has recently devoted far more time and space and effort to scrutinizing a rather lurid little tale of Balzac's than the author could have devoted to writing it in the first place. Logically enough, the scrutiny begins with the beginning rubric. 'The title opens up a question: Sarrasine, que'est-ce