Millet-Robinet, Maison Rustique des Dames, Tom Jaine translator,review (original) (raw)

The Sower by Jean-Françoise Millet: class tension in 19th Century Paris

Millet did share Baudelaire’s belief in both the need and appeal of depicting and canonizing the tumultuous present. He had been educated with the Bible and Virgil, and had read widely from Friedrich Grimm to Charlotte Bronte; upon his arrival in Paris, he educated himself with Vasari Le Vite dei Pittori and the masters at the Louvre. He could have easily produced Classical and mythological images, in respect to the tradition; but while his art was never free from citations and mythological associations (Pollock defines his art as capable of ranging from Fragonard’s pastoralism to “the darkest moments of Spanish art”), the figures that inhabit it are no Aeneas or Christ. He wrote to Sensier, “One must be able to make use of the trivial to express the sublime, there is the real force”. Indeed he populated his paintings with nameless figures, and became by choice a painter of peasants, as his obituary defined him.

A Limousin-French dictionary as a source on the history of cooking : Potatoes in the Tulle area (Corrèze, France) in the early 19th century

Food and Language. Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery 2009, Totnes, Prospect Books

Les mots d'une langue, lorsqu'ils sont attestés pour une période donnée, peuvent constituer une source historique. On en verra un exemple dans le domaine culinaire avec un dictionnaire limousin-français, publié à Tulle (Corrèze, France) en 1823. Il témoigne, à travers certains termes et expressions, des débuts de la pomme de terre dans la cuisine de cette région. Elle est encore largement utilisée comme complément des céréales les années de mauvaises récoltes. Mais d'autres façons de l'apprêter existent également, qui constituent la première étape de sa véritable « entrée en cuisine ». Néanmoins, au début du XIXe siècle, elle est encore loin d'occuper la place importante qui sera la sienne au XXe siècle.