Kate E. Tunstall

Pseudonyms, Ghosts, and Vampires in the Republic of Letters: Adrien

Abstract This essay explores the first work in French devoted to pseudonyms, entitled Auteurs déguisez, written by the late seventeenth-century scholar and librarian, Adrien Baillet, and published in Paris in 1690. Unlike Latin works on pseudonyms of the period, Baillet does not simply unmask authors who have written under assumed names; instead he offers a history of the practices, civil and ecclesiastical, of naming and re-naming, as well as a reflection on and a limited justification for the motives and practices of self- naming and self-renaming. Not averse to writing under an assumed name himself, Baillet, a.k.a. ‘A.B.’, nonetheless exhibits serious unease about ‘disguised authors’, and that unease is registered in a series of very striking demonological metaphors which are the subject of this essay.

You're Either Anonymous or You're Not!: Variations on Anonymity in Modern and Early Modern Culture

My title is taken from an episode of the US sitcom, Curb Your Enthusiasm. The claim is made by the main character, Larry David (played by the real Larry David), and although it sounds reasonable enough, it is, in fact, as the entire episode reveals, perilously simplistic. Larry utters the fateful words at a gala evening at a research center in L.A., to which he has made a substantial !nancial donation. On arriving, accompanied by his wife Cheryl (not her real name), Larry is delighted to see the wall blazoned with the words: “Wing Donated by Larry David.” His delight is short-lived. As he proudly casts his eyes round the room to see who else is admiring the inscription, his eyes alight on the opposite wall. It says: “Wing Donated by Anonymous.”

« Ne nous engageons point dans les querelles » : Un projet de guerre perpétuelle ?

RésuméCet article aborde la querelle comme un élément de la stratégie d’un philosophe vis-à-vis de la postérité. On pourrait évidemment penser à des querelleurs invétérés comme Pascal, Voltaire ou Rousseau, mais il sera question ici du cas plus complexe de Diderot et du dernier ouvrage publié de son vivant, l’Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron et sur les moeurs et les écrits de Sénèque pour servir à l’introduction de la lecture de ce philosophe (1782). L’article démontre que celui-ci constitue un cas de « texte-querelle », c’est-à-dire un texte qui met en scène la querelle menée à son propre sujet et qui ainsi la fait redémarrer; il analyse la posture qu’adopte le philosophe-querelleur, surtout dans l’énoncé paradoxal « ne nous engageons point dans les querelles », dont il examine les qualités performatives.AbstractThis article considers the extent to which a quarrel might be a strategic activity for a writer or philosopher making a bid for posterity. Inveterate quarrellers like Voltaire or Rousseau come to mind, but the case to be examined here is the far less straightforward case of Diderot and in particular the stance of ‘accidental quarreller’ that he fabricates in his Essai sur les règnes de Claude et de Néron et sur les moeurs et les écrits de Sénèque pour servir à l’introduction de la lecture de ce philosophe (1782), the last work he published in his lifetime. The article argues that the Essai constitutes what might be called a « quarrel-text », that is to say a text that stages the quarrel of which it is itself the object and, in so doing, reignites it; it analyses the stance adopted by the philosopher-quarreller as it is revealed in the paradoxical utterance « ne nous engageons point dans les querelles », the performative qualities of which are explored in detail.RiassuntoQuest’articolo considera la polemica come un elemento della strategia di un filosofo nei confronti della posterità. Si potrebbe naturalmente pensare a dei polemisti inveterati come Pascal, Voltaire o Rousseau, ma qui sarà esaminato il caso più complesso di Diderot e della sua ultima opera pubblicata, il Saggio sui regni di Claudio e Nerone e sui costumi e scritti di Seneca per servire di introduzione alla lettura di questo filosofo (1782). L’articolo dimostra che esso costituisce un caso di « testo-diatriba », cioè un testo che mette in scena la controversia di cui é l’oggetto e che la rilancia. L’articolo analizza la posizione adottata dal filosofo-litigatore, sopratutto nell’esigenza paradossale di « non innescare una lite », della quale la dimenzione performativa sarà analizzata..

Review Essay : Courbet, advertising and femininity

Address for correspondence: Worcester College, Oxford OX1 2HB. Anyone who has walked past a pharmacy window in Paris in recent months is unlikely to have missed an advertisement for an anti-cellulite cream, in which two women’s bodies are juxtaposed [Fig. 1]. Both are undressed and seen from behind: on the left, a nineteenth-century painting, on the right, a modern photograph. The woman on the left is taken from Gustave Courbet’s Les Baigneuses (1853). She is strikingly corpulent. Although a white cloth covers the top half of her thighs, her vast, dimpled backside is in full view, and her flesh sits in rolls on her waist, while her skin is a white-ish pink with hints of green. Her right arm is stretched out to the right as if to gesture to a potential observer that she does not wish to be seen; it is a gesture of shame. The woman on the right in the photograph presents a stark contrast: she is slim and her skin is smooth and uniform in colour; she has removed her white cloth, holding it casually by her side, and makes no gesture of shame. The advertisement is a kind of ’before and after’ image: the woman on the left is a woman who has not used the cream, and the woman on the right, one who has. According to a pharmacist on the rue du Temple, the advertisement has provoked outrage with women demanding that it be removed from the window display. The cream is also his bestseller. This essay will explore this outrage and its apparent contradictions. The outrage has a number of possible sources. Let me say first what I do not think it is caused by: it is not provoked by the use of ’high art’ to sell a product indeed the image is probably not well-known enough to be recognized, nor is the outrage produced by the use of women’s bodies to sell