Coucoumellisms

 Born on May 31, 1819, in West Hills, Long Island, New York, Walt Whitman is a controversial figure in American Poetry, considered by some to be “America’s Poet” and by others a self-centred windbag. Contrary to poets like T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound, Walt Whitman does not look for meta-narratives to find meaning in the world. Instead, he finds meaning in what is in front of him. All the mundane things we see and do give just as much meaning to life as the mystical epiphanies we experience. The physical is just as important as the spiritual. Walt Whitman challenges the polarization of both Gnostic religious ideas in a society still influenced by puritanism and the idea of democracy as uniformity of thought and expression within the context of a young republic.  Whitman was born towards the end of the Industrial Revolution, only 36 years after the end of the American Revolution. At 13, he learned to set type in a printer’s officer. At 16, he was spending summers along the coast of...

(From an essay I wrote for a translation class - posting it here for anyone who might be interested in knowing more about the challenges that translators face. I really enjoy translation myself - it's like a challenging word-game.)           A number of challenges face translators such as false friends, structural differences, missing terms, ambiguity, words that have several meanings and so on. One of the biggest stumbling blocks for French-to-English translators are Gallicisms. The Oxford Canadian Dictionary defines “Gallicism” as “A French word or usage, esp. one used in another language.” English-speaking people living in Quebec and surrounded by French often end up using Gallicisms. To run down to the “dep” instead of the corner store is one example. Another example is the use of French structure in an English phrase, or to literally translate a French expression instead of using the English expression already in use. “You’re in the moon” is one instan...

Many Canadians cannot imagine such a thing today, but in the Great Lakes region, from the late 17 th century to the early 19 th century, neither Indigenous peoples nor Europeans were populous enough for either to impose their ideas on the other. Instead, they met and negotiated on a “middle ground.” By 1815 however, this was already changing. [1] (Cecil Chabot, “Renewing on Middle Ground”) When the British North America Act was passed in 1867, it created a conflict of interest. It effectively made the Government of Canada both responsible for “Indians and lands reserved for Indians” and for negotiating treaties and settlements with said Indians and purchasing land from them. (Bob Joseph, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act , p.7) These two factors led to the loss of the Nation-to-Nation relationship and the start of a paternalistic relationship between the Canadian government and Indigenous peoples. Increasingly repressive and assimilatory policies on the part of the gov...

Présentée pour la première fois en 1677, Phèdre de Jean Racine est un bel exemple du genre tragique de la deuxième moitié du XVIIe siècle. Dans cette pièce on peut voir les courants intellectuels, littéraires et politiques du temps. Le classicisme influe l’action de Phèdre à travers le contexte politique et intellectuel de l’époque, les courants littéraires, les genres préférés et les formes de texte exigées. L’œuvre reflète la pensée du jour, s’insert dans les courants littéraires, est un des meilleurs exemples du genre tragique préféré à cette période et respecte parfaitement les formes et les règles classiques. CONTEXTE HISTORIQUE La deuxième moitié du XVIIe siècle voit apparaître beaucoup d’œuvres théoriques en France, comme le Discours de la méthode de René Descartes en 1637. C’est l’âge de la raison. On veut remplacer le désordre baroque par l’ordre classique qui est l’illustration de cette raison. « Ce que l’on conçoit bien s’énonce clairement, et les mots pour le di...

Without a doubt, Covid-19 can be a dangerous disease for a small percentage of the population, affecting certain people in various ways, including breathlessness, chronic fatigue and brain fog. [1] Fear of the disease has brought on many new protocols and restrictions. But just how fearful should we be? In 1961, Stanley Milgram conducted experiments in destructive obedience, to test how far individuals would go before disobeying authority. Further experiments were conducted by Thomas Blass who, in 1999 wrote “The Milgram Paradigm After 35 Years: Some Things We Now Know About Obedience to Authority.” According to Milgram and Blass, obedience is deeply ingrained. Most individuals will obey when certain elements are present: when orders come from a figure of authority, when any suffering is perceived to be minimal and for the greater good and when peer pressure to comply is present. 2020 has been like one big Milgram experiment. People have generally conformed to restrictions and lockdow...