The Salt Smugglers

The Salt Smugglers PDF Author: Gerard de Nerval
Publisher: Archipelago
ISBN: 0981987397
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
First published as a feuilleton in a left-wing newspaper in 1850, The Salt Smugglers provides a political satire of the waning days of France’s short-lived Second Republic. With nods to Diderot and Sterne, this shaggy-dog story deals less with contraband salt smugglers than with the subversive power of fiction to transgress legal and esthetic boundaries. By writing what he claimed was a purely documentary account of his picaresque adventures in search of an elusive book recording the true history of a certain seventeenth-century swashbuckler, Nerval sought to deride the press censors of the day who forbade the serial publication of novels in newspapers – and in the process he provocatively deconstructed existing distinctions between fact and fiction. Never before translated into English and still unavailable as a separately published volume in French, The Salt Smugglers is a pre-postmodern gem of experimental prose. Richard Sieburth’s vibrant translation and illuminating afterword remind us why Gérard de Nerval’s blend of sly irony and acerbic social criticism proved so inspiring to authors as various as Baudelaire, Proust, and Leiris.

The Salt Smugglers

The Salt Smugglers PDF Author: Gerard de Nerval
Publisher: Archipelago
ISBN: 0981987397
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 153

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Book Description
First published as a feuilleton in a left-wing newspaper in 1850, The Salt Smugglers provides a political satire of the waning days of France’s short-lived Second Republic. With nods to Diderot and Sterne, this shaggy-dog story deals less with contraband salt smugglers than with the subversive power of fiction to transgress legal and esthetic boundaries. By writing what he claimed was a purely documentary account of his picaresque adventures in search of an elusive book recording the true history of a certain seventeenth-century swashbuckler, Nerval sought to deride the press censors of the day who forbade the serial publication of novels in newspapers – and in the process he provocatively deconstructed existing distinctions between fact and fiction. Never before translated into English and still unavailable as a separately published volume in French, The Salt Smugglers is a pre-postmodern gem of experimental prose. Richard Sieburth’s vibrant translation and illuminating afterword remind us why Gérard de Nerval’s blend of sly irony and acerbic social criticism proved so inspiring to authors as various as Baudelaire, Proust, and Leiris.

Cardiganshire Salt Smugglers, etc. (Reprinted from "Archaeologia Cambrensis.").

Cardiganshire Salt Smugglers, etc. (Reprinted from Author: Arthur Stanley DAVIES
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


Salt Water

Salt Water PDF Author: Josep Pla
Publisher: Archipelago
ISBN: 1939810728
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 466

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Book Description
Peter Bush, winner of the Ramon Llull Prize for Literary Translation, brings to English this most prolific and influential of Catalan writers. Dripping with a panache that can turn in a comic instant to the most conciliatory humility, Josep Pla's foray into the land and sea most familiar to him will plunge readers head-first into its mysterious (and often tasty!) depths. Here are adventures and shipwrecks, raspy storytellers and the fishy meals that sustain them. After describing the process of beating an octopus with branches to soften up its flesh, Pla writes, "These are dishes that must be seen as a last resort." Pla inflects the mundane with the hidden rhythms of power sculpting culture, so that a hot supper is never just food--it embodies economic precarity and environmental erosion along with its own peculiar flavor. A lifetime of reporting on current events gave Pla the necessary skills to describe the world in all its gritty, funny, invigorating detail.

Officialdom Unmasked

Officialdom Unmasked PDF Author: T.L. Yang
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9622095437
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 647

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Book Description
It has been said that the downfall of the Qing dynasty was due not so much to the 1911 Revolution as to the pervasive corruption and weakness within the Qing administration. The regime was rotting from within, and it did not take much to topple the three-hundred-year-old dynasty. Officialdom Unmasked (官場現形記) was written by Li Boyuan in the early years of the twentieth century as the dynasty crumbled. Bizarre though they may seem, the stories told in the novel are based on true stories. From senior ministers to junior clerks, few were immune from taking bribes, stealing, philandering, dereliction of duty, or other wrongdoings. Here the writer portrays an official class who placed their selfish interests above that of the state, and who were so devoid of any moral rectitude that one could but wonder how a once mighty empire had fallen into so complete a decline. Unlike most satires, often written with a degree of humour which evoke a chuckle here and there, this work came from a broken heart; it brings only tears, not smiles.

Wretched Rebels

Wretched Rebels PDF Author: Lucien Bianco
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 1684174961
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
"This book, a condensed translation of the prize-winning Jacqueries et révolution dans la Chine du XXe siècle, focuses on “spontaneous” rural unrest, uninfluenced by revolutionary intellectuals. Yet it raises issues inspired by the perennial concerns of revolutionary leaders, such as peasant “class consciousness” and China’s modernization. The author shows that the predominant forms of protest were directed not against the landowning class but against agents of the state. Foremost among them, resistance to taxation had little to do with class struggle. By contrast, protest by poor agricultural laborers and heavily indebted households was extremely rare. Other forms of social protest were reactions less to social exploitation than to oppression by local powerholders. Peasant resistance to the late Qing “new policy” reforms did indeed impede China’s modernization. Decades later, peasant efforts to evade conscription, while motivated by abuses and inequities, weakened the anti-Japanese resistance. The concluding chapter stresses persistent features of rural protest. It suggests that twentieth-century Chinese peasants were less different from seventeenth- or eighteenth-century French peasants than might be imagined and points to continuities between pre- and post-1949 rural protest."

The Economist

The Economist PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Commerce
Languages : en
Pages : 1736

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Book Description


Popular Religion and Shamanism

Popular Religion and Shamanism PDF Author: Xisha MA
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047428013
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
Popular Religion and Shamanism addresses two areas of religion within Chinese society; the lay teachings that Chinese scholars term folk or “popular” religion, and shamanism. Each area represents a distinct tradition of scholarship, and the book is therefore split into two parts. Part I: Popular Religion discusses the evolution of organized lay movements over an arc of ten centuries. Its eight chapters focus on three key points: the arrival and integration of new ideas before the Song dynasty, the coalescence of an intellectual and scriptural tradition during the Ming, and the efflorescence of new organizations during the late Qing. Part II: Shamanism reflects the revived interest of scholars in traditional beliefs and culture that reemerged with the “open” policy in China that occurred in the 1970s. Two of the essays included in this section address shamanism in northeast China where the traditions played an important role in the cultures of the Manchu, Mongol, Sibe, Daur, Oroqen, Evenki, and Hezhen. The other essay discusses divination rites in a local culture of southwest China. Both sections of Popular Religion and Shamanism will introduce Western readers to the ideas of Chinese scholars, not just their data.

The Far Eastern Review, Engineering, Finance, Commerce

The Far Eastern Review, Engineering, Finance, Commerce PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : East Asia
Languages : en
Pages : 702

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The Far-Eastern Review

The Far-Eastern Review PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : East Asia
Languages : en
Pages : 694

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The White Lotus War

The White Lotus War PDF Author: Yingcong Dai
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295745460
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 665

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Book Description
A CHOICE OUTSTANDING ACADEMIC TITLE The White Lotus War (1796–1804) in central China marked the end of the Qing dynasty’s golden age and the fatal weakening of the imperial system itself. What started as a local rebellion grew into a serious political crisis, as the central government was no longer able to operate its military machine. Yingcong Dai’s comprehensive investigation reveals that the White Lotus rebels would have remained a relatively minor threat, if not for the Qing’s ill-managed response. Dai shows that the officials in charge of the suppression campaign were half-hearted about the fight and took advantage of the campaign to pursue personal gains. She challenges assumptions that the Qing relied upon local militias to exterminate the rebels, showing instead that the hiring of civilians became a pretext for misappropriation of war funds, resulting in the devastatingly high cost of the war. The mishandled demilitarization of the militiamen prolonged the hostilities when many of the dismissed troops turned into rebels themselves. The war’s long-term impact presaged the beginning of the disintegration of the Qing in the mid-nineteenth century and eruptions of the Taiping Rebellion and other uprisings. The White Lotus War will interest students and scholars of late imperial and modern Chinese history, as well as history buffs interested in the warfare of the early modern world.