The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought Book

Unrivaled in its scope and depth, The Columbia History of Twentieth-Century French Thought assesses the intellectual figures, movements, and publications that helped shape and define fields as diverse as history and historiography, psychoanalysis, film, literary theory, cognitive and life sciences, literary criticism, philosophy, and economics. More than two hundred entries by leading intellectuals discuss developments in French thought on such subjects as pacifism, fashion, gastronomy, technology, and urbanism. Contributors include prominent French thinkers, many of whom have played an integral role in the development of French thought, and American, British, and Canadian scholars who have been vital in the dissemination of French ideas.

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Both researchers and browsers will delight in this authoritative compendium of articles on France's intellectual century. Editor Kritzman (French & comparative literature, Dartmouth Coll.) oversees more than 150 scholars representing universities and other institutions in the United States, France, and Britain. Among them are Julia Kristeva, who is also represented by an article, of course; the current director of Le Monde; the recently deceased philosopher Paul Ricoeur; and others whom students of literature, the arts, and philosophy will find familiar. There are 200-plus accessible and engaging articles on French intellectual movements, themes, thinkers, and the media (e.g., specific journals or period technology) through which ideas were disseminated between the time of the Dreyfus affair (1894) and France's adoption of the Euro (1999). "French" here is interpreted broadly enough to include such figures as Camus, Cixous, and Fanon, while international concerns like cinema and women's history are presented with a specifically French focus. For the most part, articles range in length from three to five pages and include appropriate cross references; each is limited to a bibliography of three seminal works, in many cases by the author of the given article. Bottom Line The fine editing preserves the individual writing styles while allowing for an even reading experience-a feat that is reminiscent of the early 20th-century Encyclopaedia Britannica with its expertly authored articles on intellectual themes. For all public and academic collections.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley P.L., CA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.