Words, terms and expressions used in italics #3:
rentrée litéraire (p299); 'learners' (apprenants) (p299); 'culture of mediocrity' ('nullité') (p300); Lionel Jospin's gauche plurielle government (p301); 'mal napoléonien' (p301); peuple de gauche (p301); nationalist retreat ('repli identitaire') (p303): idées fixes (p310); educational laïcité (p311); rayonnement — a characteristically untranslatable term which combines the sense of an expansive impact with a notion of benevolent radiance ... (p314); revolution and rupture (p317); the French mission civilisatrice (p318).Noted in passing #3:
- Patrick Besson ... article entitled 'Is French literature Dead?' Such observations chimed in with the widespread view in the anglophone world that contemporary French literature had lost its way. (p296)
- in the United States more novels are translated from French than from any other language (p296)
- a 'French model' of a large public sector
- Left and Right ... reaffirmed the traditional 'French model'
- a characteristic Gallic move from the particular to the universal (p300)
- 'postmodern nihilism' (p301)
- something really became significant only when it happened in France (p302)
- whatever occurred in France had universal significance (p302)
- Bernard-Henri Lévy also contributed to his own necrology (p304)
- Jacques Julliard's Le Malheur français (p304)
- ... the 'schizophrenic' expectations of the French — their love of equality on the one hand, and their passion for privileges on the other (p304)
- ... the demise of grand narratives (p305)
- Sarkozy's creation of a Ministry of National Identity (p305)
- the writings of 'cultural' intellectuals (p306)
- Éric Zemmour's Mélancolie française (2010) (p306)
- Lorànt Deutsch ... Métronome (2009), an exploration of the history of Paris through its Métro stations (p307
- Alain Finkelkraut's L'Identité malheureuse (p309)
- the closing of the French mind (p310).
