Philippe Ariès is the author of Centuries of Childhood. His most recent book is Un Historien du Dimanche, a memoir written with Michel Winock. His review was translated by John Sturrock.
This is not an easy book to read, even though it is written clearly and at times elegantly; its authors have swathed and encumbered their interpretations in so many reservations and second thoughts that it takes some attentive detective-work to discover their meaning. One is reminded of the famous lines in which Horace celebrated the daring of the first navigator:
In his novels, the late Gwyn Thomas used to refer to those who frequented the pubs and cafés of small Welsh towns as ‘the voters’. It would certainly be the way to describe the...
In 1909 there appeared a small book by Montgomery Carmichael modestly entitled Francia’s Masterpiece and dedicated to reconstructing the content, purpose and original setting of a single...
What is more important: is it the project of understanding why sexual desire is, or has become, a problem for us like no other, fraught with particular anxiety and special perplexity; or is it...
This book is a history of the collective consciousness of the ‘Latin West’ (with this country and New England included by association or out of courtesy) during the last thousand...
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