Kirjahaku

During the week of 21-28 May 1871, between 20, 000 and 30, 000 Parisians were killed in the repression of the Paris Commune; a ten-week revolution that followed the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War. As evidenced by the brutal reaction against it, and its relative absence from the French historical memory, the Commune has been surrounded by controversy since its advent.David A. Shafer examines the emergence of the Commune out of a political culture influenced by both the traditions bequeathed to the nineteenth century by the French Revolution and contemporary events, circumstances and ideas. This essential guide provides readers with a survey of the Commune's foundations and its narrative history, as well as an assessment of the evolution of its historiography and topics which have rendered the Commune vital to an understanding of the concept of revolution.

During the week of 21-28 May 1871, between 20, 000 and 30, 000 Parisians were killed in the repression of the Paris Commune; a ten-week revolution that followed the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian War. As evidenced by the brutal reaction against it, and its relative absence from the French historical memory, the Commune has been surrounded by controversy since its advent.David A. Shafer examines the emergence of the Commune out of a political culture influenced by both the traditions bequeathed to the nineteenth century by the French Revolution and contemporary events, circumstances and ideas. This essential guide provides readers with a survey of the Commune's foundations and its narrative history, as well as an assessment of the evolution of its historiography and topics which have rendered the Commune vital to an understanding of the concept of revolution.

Poet. Actor. Matinee idol. Playwright. Theatre theoretician. Artist. Orientalist. Surrealist. Asylum inmate. Drug addict. Electroshock patient. Antonin Artaud. This biography, exploring the life of one of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic personalities and idiosyncratic thinkers, reveals the artist’s navigation through the ?rst half of the century in the company of many of France’s most in?uential cultural ?gures. However, Artaud’s own existential journey was a lonely and largely isolated one, an existential ellipsis.Despite being born into the material comfort of a bourgeois family from Marseille, Artaud uncompromisingly rejected such values and norms. Forsaking the renown he had garnered as a stage and ?lm actor, theatre director and published author of The Theatre and its Double and many other writings, Artaud relentlessly challenged contemporary assumptions about the superiority of the West, the function of speech, the purpose of culture and an individual’s agency over his/her body. In his mind, if not his deeds, he incarnated France’s revolutionary tradition. Though con?icted by his inability to align his thoughts with his words, disoriented by his incessant demand for narcotics and debilitated by increasing paranoia, Artaud channelled his intense alienation into an assault on social and cultural conventions through theatre, poetry, essays and art.Preserving the profundity of Artaud’s words without trivializing his complexity, and situating them within his frenetic life, this book is a compelling and fresh interpretation of Artaud and his continuing cultural reverberations.