L'encyclopédi@ Sciences et technologies

Cet ouvrage, destiné avant tout aux candidats au CAPES et à l'agrégation d'anglais fait le point le plus récent sur l'état de la critique en offrant aux lecteurs de The Good Soldier une grande variété de pistes que chacun pourra suivre avec profit. La préface de l'auteur du Perroquet de Flaubert, Julian Barnes et l'introduction du biographe de Ford Madox Ford, Max Saunders apportent une nouvelle preuve de l'actualité étonnante de ce phare du modernisme.

Just what sort of book is Flaubert's Parrot, anyway? A literary biography of 19th-century French novelist, radical, and intellectual impresario Gustave Flaubert? A meditation on the uses and misuses of language? A novel of obsession, denial, irritation, and underhanded connivery? A thriller complete with disguises, sleuthing, mysterious meetings, and unknowing targets? An extended essay on the nature of fiction itself? On the surface, at first, Julian Barnes's book is the tale of an elderly English doctor's search for some intriguing details of Flaubert's life. Geoffrey Braithwaite seems to be involved in an attempt to establish whether a particularly fine, lovely, and ancient stuffed parrot is in fact one originally "borrowed by G. Flaubert from the Museum of Rouen and placed on his worktable during the writing of Un coeur simple, where it is called Loulou, the parrot of Felicité, the principal character of the tale." What begins as a droll and intriguing excursion into the minutiae of Flaubert's life and intellect, along with an attempt to solve the small puzzle of the parrot--or rather parrots, for there are two competing for the title of Gustave's avian confrere--soon devolves into something obscure and worrisome, the exploration of an arcane Braithwaite obsession that is perhaps even pathological. The first hint we have that all is not as it seems comes almost halfway into the book, when after a humorously cantankerous account of the inadequacies of literary critics, Braithwaite closes a chapter by saying, "Now do you understand why I hate critics? I could try and describe to you the expression in my eyes at this moment; but they are far too discoloured with rage." And from that point, things just get more and more curious, until they end in the most unexpected bang. One passage perhaps best describes the overall effect of this extraordinary story: "You can define a net in one of two ways, depending on your point of view. Normally, you would say that it is a meshed instrument designed to catch fish. But you could, with no great injury to logic, reverse the image and define the net as a jocular lexicographer once did: he called it a collection of holes tied together with string." Julian Barnes demonstrates that it is possible to catch quite an interesting fish no matter how you define the net. --Andrew Himes

Des champs de bataille de la Somme aux vignobles bordelais en passant par le Paris des Surréalistes, quand les Anglais traversent la Manche pour parcourir la France, cela donne des situations tantôt cocasses, tantôt touchantes, mais toujours surprenantes.

My name is Tony Webster. As l'm getting older l'm remembering my youth in the 1960s.I had a girlfriend named Veronica and my best friend was Adrian. Or was he really?Envie de lire en anglais?Dorénavant, c'est possible grâce à Harrap's.Découvrez un roman de Julian Barnes en VO et en version intégrale, avec des traductions en marge pour vous aider à bien comprendre le texte. Plaisir garanti!Avec Harrap's, Yes you can!