Madame de Lafayette
When, in 2007, the French President scorned the idea that budding public servants should be required to read La Princesse de Cleves, the ensuing protests, whatever their purely political dimension, were a reminder of this work's iconic status. Naturally enough, perhaps, this spotlight left in the shade the other works attributed to Mme de Lafayette. There was also scant reference to the messy question of attribution. With no manuscript in existence the present attribution of La Princesse de Cleves was made ‘definitively’ only a century after its publication in 1678: for example, the 1764 reprint of the 1704 Paris edition cites La Rochefoucauld, Mme de Lafayette, and Segrais as co-authors. Does this matter? True, we would still watch Hamlet if it were performed by the Royal Bacon Company. However, in the case of Mme de Lafayette, biographical details are still often used to shore up critical hypotheses. At the outset, therefore, one issue deserves attention: what does ‘Mme de Lafayette’ now imply?
Facets of a Princess: Multiple Readings of Madame de la Fayette's "La Princesse de Cleves"
Facets of a Princess is a novel approach to Madame de La Fayette's La Princesse de Cleves. Unlike previous critical studies, Facets does not limit its focus to a single critical approach, but instead examines the novel from political, historical, extreme feminist, and religious perspectives. This multifaceted scope provides the reader with a new understanding and appreciation of the seventeenth-century work and should encourage further scholarly investigation into the life and works of Madame de La Fayette.
Benign approaches for the synthesis of bis-imine Schiff bases
Pure bis-imine Schiff bases are readily accessible in high yield, typically >95%, when aliphatic diamine/aldehyde condensation reactions are carried out under solvent-free conditions or in poly(propyleneglycol) (PPG) as a recyclable reaction medium, with negligible waste.