A comparison of African grammars written in French, and bilingual Franco-African or Franco-Caribbean dictionaries, allows us to discern a common myth concerning “family” ties between French and African Languages.Missionaries consider two means of conversion: by the introduction of the God-Word to his children, which predetermines the foreign society to be encountered; the other demands an ethno- graphic study (to discover the meaning of language) in oral societies (African, Caribbean) to whom an alphabetical language is superimposed (with Latin characters). This effort (...) of transcription presupposes the harmonious compatibility of all oral languages with French. Thus the missionaries breathe the Word and transcendence into the colonies in order to recover in “Word incarnate”, instrument and symbol for the conversion process. (The theologian would speak here of the “verticality of transcendence”.) But the missionary enterprise meets with the resistances of written language and of foreign societies endowed with complex structures and syntaxes. Thus, the so-called “verticality” crumbles along with missionary hopes, resulting in a trite approximate translation which could be characterized as “horizontal”. (shrink)

This informative and thought-provocating book gives an intimate portrait of two major 18th-century French philosophers famous for their influence over modern aesthetics. Their personal reflexions on art, beauty and inventive genius are vividly presented in the context of Parisian artistic institutions during the reigns of Louis XIV, XV and XVI. The book offers a refreshing perspective into the pre-Revolutionary movement of the Enlightenment promoted by Diderot and the pre-Romantic sensibility modelled by Rousseau. This look back into the 18th century is (...) very suggestive in regards to the current philosophies of art and may raise new answers to old questions. (shrink)