The Devil’s Daughters and a question of translation between Occitan and Anglo-Norman French: ‘De las .vii. filhas del diable’ (British Library Add. MS 17920).

The evidence for vernacular-to-vernacular translation is hard to demonstrate in medieval Romance languages. This article analyses a hypothesis published a century ago that there is an identifiable Anglo-Norman source for an Occitan prose text. Both texts spring from a Latin exemplum in which the seven capital vices are personified as the Devil's daughters, married off to seven social categories (the clergy, knights, peasants, etc.). Although the hypothesis is disproved, it remains that the dialogue between Anglo-Norman French and Occitan has been overlooked, and deserves further exploration.

The Vida of Queen Fredegund in Tote Listoire de France: vernacular translation and genre in thirteenth-century French and Occitan literature

This article examines the role that translation may have played in the development of medieval vernacular literature. It analyses an extract of an early 13th-c. translation into a hybrid French-Occitan vernacular of an 8th-c. historical text, the 'Liber Historiae Francorum'. The translation coincides with the adoption of narrative prose both in Old French and in Occitan literature, which reflects a growing interest in historical writings. The second half of the article compares the anecdote with the narrative structures and content of one of the troubadour 'vidas' and 'razos' - biographical texts in prose that emerged in the same period and regions as this translation. The article concludes by suggesting that the new vernacular genre shares narrative features with the early medieval Latin text that are preserved in its translation.

La monarquia francesa y los financieros en el Antiguo Régimen. El ejemplo de los traitants durante la Guerra de los Nueve Años, 1689-1697 = The French Monarchy and the financiers during the Old Regime. The case of the traitants during the Nine Years War, 1689-1697

This article explores the relationship between the Crown, the French society and the king's financiers. It starts with a brief review of the discourses on the financiers and a survey of the work done by historians. Further to a description of the various groups of financiers, it analyses the nature of the contracts passed between the king and the traitants to pay for the Nine Years War, as well as the latter’s activities and profits. The article argues that the government supervised effectively the traitants and that, given the constraints of the Old Regime, these financiers provided essential services, but too costly to be sustainable.

A comparative study of the characteristics of French Fries produced by deep fat frying and air frying

Air frying is being projected as an alternative to deep fat frying for producing snacks such as French Fries. In air frying, the raw potato sections are essentially heated in hot air containing fine oil droplets, which dehydrates the potato and attempts to impart the characteristics of traditionally produced French fries, but with a substantially lower level of fat absorbed in the product. The aim of this research is to compare: 1) the process dynamics of air frying with conventional deep fat frying under otherwise similar operating conditions, and 2) the products formed by the two processes in terms of color, texture, microstructure, calorimetric properties and sensory characteristics Although, air frying produced products with a substantially lower fat content but with similar moisture contents and color characteristics, it required much longer processing times, typically 21 minutes in relation to 9 minutes in the case of deep fat frying. The slower evolution of temperature also resulted in lower rates of moisture loss and color development reactions. DSC studies revealed that the extent of starch gelatinization was also lower in the case of air fried product. In addition, the two types of frying also resulted in products having significantly different texture and sensory characteristics.

Looking back, moving forward: drama, disability and social justice

The aim of this chapter is to briefly outline how disability has been represented in theatre, what access disabled people have had to drama and theatre in the past, and what might be achieved in the pursuit of social justice with young people in relation to awareness of and provision for disability. It will focus in particular on how disability has been addressed in drama education and what assumptions have been made regarding drama and disability in education. In considering such issues one might perceive manifestations of what Freebody and Finneran (2013) recognise as an overlapping and ‘somewhat artificially created dichotomy between drama for social justice and drama about social justice.’ This chapter will examine some examples of how drama has been used to give students in mainstream schools insights into disability, and the philosophy that underpins the drama curriculum of one special school where the focus is on drama as social justice: the argument being that in some cases simply doing drama is, in effect, a manifestation of social justice. Finally, some of the progress made in recent years regarding access and engagement will be addressed through specific reference to the authors’ on-going work into ‘performing social research’ (Shah, 2013) and how theatres are increasingly attempting to give more access to disabled young people and their families by offering ‘relaxed performances.’

Individual differences in early language learning: a study of English learners of French

The present longitudinal study examines the interaction of learner variables (gender, motivation, self-efficacy and first language literacy) and their influence on second language learning outcomes. The study follows English learners of French from Year 5 in primary school (aged 9-10) to the first year in secondary school (Year 7 aged 11-12). Language outcomes were measured by two oral production tasks; a sentence repetition task and a photo description task both of which were administered at three time points. Longitudinal data on learner attitudes and motivation were collected via questionnaires. Teacher assessment data for general first language literacy attainment were also provided. The results show a great deal of variation in learner attitudes and outcomes and that there is a complex relationship between first language literacy, self-efficacy, gender and attainment. For example, in general, girls held more positive attitudes to boys and were more successful. However, the inclusion of first language ability, which explained 30-40% of variation, shows that gender differences in attitudes and outcomes are likely mediated by first language literacy and prior learning experience.

Contrastive analysis of keywords in discourses: intégration and integration in French and German discourses about migration

This article suggests a theoretical and methodological framework for a systematic contrastive discourse analysis across languages and discourse communities through keywords, constituting a lexical approach to discourse analysis which is considered to be particularly fruitful for comparative analysis. We use a corpus assisted methodology, presuming meaning to be constituted, revealed and constrained by collocation environment. We compare the use of the keyword intégration and Integration in French and German public discourses about migration on the basis of newspaper corpora built from two French and German newspapers from 1998 to 2011. We look at the frequency of these keywords over the given time span, group collocates into thematic categories and discuss indicators of discursive salience by comparing the development of collocation profiles over time in both corpora as well as the occurrence of neologisms and compounds based on intégration/Integration.