Allelic variations in the vitamin D receptor gene, insulin secretion and parents' heights are independently associated with height in obese children and adolescents

Polymorphisms in the VDR gene were reported to be associated with variations in intrauterine and postnatal growth and with adult height, but also with other traits that are strongly correlated such as the BMI, insulin sensitivity, insulin secretion and hyperglycemia. Here, we assessed the impact of VDR polymorphisms on body height and its interactions with obesity- and glucose tolerance-related traits in obese children and adolescents. We studied 173 prepubertal (Tanner's stage 1) and 146 pubertal (Tanner's stages 2-5) obese children who were referred for a weight-loss program. Three single nucleotide polymorphisms were genotyped: rs1544410 (BsmI), rs7975232 (ApaI) and rs731236 (TaqI). BsmI and TaqI genotypes were significantly associated with height in pubertal children, but the associations did not reach statistical significance in prepubertal children. In stepwise regression analyses, the lean body mass, insulin secretion, BsmI or TaqI genotypes and the father's and the mother's height were independently and positively associated with height in pubertal children. These covariables accounted for 46% of the trait variance. The height of homozygous carriers of the minor allele of BsmI was 0.65 z-scores (4 cm) higher than the height of homozygous carriers of the major allele (P=.0006). Haplotype analyses confirmed the associations of the minor alleles of BsmI and TaqI with increased height. In conclusion, VDR genotypes were significantly associated with height in pubertal obese children. The associations were independent from the effects of confounding traits, such as the body fat mass, insulin secretion, insulin sensitivity and glucose tolerance. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Traces de terre, traces d'encre... La rappresentazione dello spazio nella letteratura caraibica. (Francofona e Anglofona)

This study concerns the representation of space in Caribbean literature, both francophone and Anglophone and, in particular, but not only, in the martinican literature, in the works of the authors born in the island. The analysis focus on the second half of the last century, a period in which the martinican production of novels and romances increased considerably, and where the representation and the rule of space had a relevant place. So, the thesis explores the literary modalities of this representation. The work is constituted of 5 chapters and the critical and methodological approaches are both of an analytical and comparative type. The first chapter “The caribbean space: geography, history and society” presents the geographic context, through an analysis of the historical and political major events occurred in the Caribbean archipelago, in particular of the French Antilles, from the first colonization until the départementalisation. The first paragraph “The colonized space: historical-political excursus” the explores the history of the European colonization that marked forever the theatre of the relationship between Europe, Africa and the New World. This social situation take a long and complex process of “Re-appropriation and renegotiation of the space”, (second paragraph) always the space of the Other, that interest both the Antillean society and the writers’ universe. So, a series of questions take place in the third paragraph “Landscape and identity”: what is the function of space in the process of identity construction? What are the literary forms and representations of space in the Caribbean context? Could the writing be a tool of cultural identity definition, both individual and collective? The second chapter “The literary representation of the Antillean space” is a methodological analysis of the notions of literary space and descriptive gender. The first paragraph “The literary space of and in the novel” is an excursus of the theory of such critics like Blanchot, Bachelard, Genette and Greimas, and in particular the recent innovation of the 20th century; the second one “Space of the Antilles, space of the writing” is an attempt to apply this theory to the Antillean literary space. Finally the last paragraph “Signs on the page: the symbolic places of the antillean novel landscape” presents an inventory of the most recurrent antillean places (mornes, ravines, traces, cachots, En-ville,…), symbols of the history and the past, described in literary works, but according to new modalities of representation. The third chapter, the core of the thesis, “Re-drawing the map of the French Antilles” focused the study of space representation on francophone literature, in particular on a selected works of four martinican writers, like Roland Brival, Édouard Glissant, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant. Through this section, a spatial evolution comes out step by step, from the first to the second paragraph, whose titles are linked together “The novel space evolution: from the forest of the morne… to the jungle of the ville”. The virgin and uncontaminated space of the Antilles, prior to the colonisation, where the Indios lived in harmony with the nature, find a representation in both works of Brival (Le sang du roucou, Le dernier des Aloukous) and of Glissant (Le Quatrième siècle, Ormerod). The arrival of the European colonizer brings a violent and sudden metamorphosis of the originary space and landscape, together with the traditions and culture of the Caraïbes population. These radical changes are visible in the works of Chamoiseau (Chronique des sept misères, Texaco, L’esclave vieil homme et le molosse, Livret des villes du deuxième monde, Un dimanche au cachot) and Confiant (Le Nègre et l’Amiral, Eau de Café, Ravines du devant-jour, Nègre marron) that explore the urban space of the creole En-ville. The fourth chapter represents the “2nd step: the Anglophone novel space” in the exploration of literary representation of space, through an analytical study of the works of three Anglophone writers, the 19th century Lafcadio Hearn (A Midsummer Trip To the West Indies, Two Years in the French West Indies, Youma) and the contemporary authors Derek Walcott (Omeros, Map of the New World, What the Twilight says) and Edward Kamau Brathwaite (The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy). The Anglophone voice of the Caribbean archipelago brings a very interesting contribution to the critical idea of a spatial evolution in the literary representation of space, started with francophone production: “The spatial evolution goes on: from the Martiniques Sketches of Hearn… to the modern bards of Caribbean archipelago” is the new linked title of the two paragraphs. The fifth chapter “Extended look, space shared: the Caribbean archipelago” is a comparative analysis of the results achieved in the prior sections, through a dialogue between all the texts in the first paragraph “Francophone and Anglophone representation of space compared: differences and analogies”. The last paragraph instead is an attempt of re-negotiate the conventional notions of space and place, from a geographical and physical meaning, to the new concept of “commonplace”, not synonym of prejudice, but “common place” of sharing and dialogue. The question sets in the last paragraph “The “commonplaces” of the physical and mental map of the Caribbean archipelago: toward a non-place?” contains the critical idea of the entire thesis.

Pour une nouvelle poétique de l'extase : Abdelwahab Meddeb et l'héritage des poètes arabes et persans de l'Antiquité et du Moyen Ãge. Comparaisons et pistes de lecture intertextuelles.

Ce travail a pour objectif d’analyser la production narrative et poétique de l’écrivain tunisien Abdelwahab Meddeb, en comparaison avec les ouvrages du Moyen Age arabe et persan. L’auteur reprend en effet, par le biais de pratiques intertextuelles, les ouvrages des philosophes et des écrivains orientaux qui plus ont marqué le monde musulman, en arrivant à en faire une synthèse originale. Cette perspective multiculturelle ouvre la voie à une instance narrative polyphonique, où les textes se confondent et se mélangent. En un premier moment, l’étude porte sur les théories intertextuelles et leur application chez Meddeb ; dans la deuxième partie, l’analyse se concentre sur les correspondances internes à l’œuvre meddebienne, pour laisser la place, dans la dernière partie, aux aspects intertextuels que le texte francophone entretient avec les autres auteurs.

"Mi bèl pawòl, mi!" Rappresentazione delle lingue e della parola nella narrativa di Patrick Chamoiseau e Raphael Confiant (1986-1994)

From 1986 to 1994, Patrick Chamoiseau and Raphaël Confiant published a series of fictional and non-fictional writings focusing on language issues. Interest in these themes can certainly in part be explained by the "surconscience linguistique" that Lise Gauvin attributes to Francophone authors: a linguistic over-awareness which, in the case of these two Martiniquais writers, may be attributed to their Creole-French diglossia. Although we might believe that the idea of Gauvin is right, it doesn't seem enough to explain why the linguistic theme plays such a central role in Chamoiseau's and Confiant's works. Deeply influenced by Glissant's theories on Creole popular culture and Antillean literature (Le discours antillais), they conceived a "Créolité" poetics based on a primarly identity-based and geopolitical discourse. Declaring the need to build an authentically Creole literary discourse, one that finally expresses the Martiniquais reality, Chamoiseau and Confiant (as well as Bernabé, third and last author of Éloge de la créolité) found the «foundations of [their] being» in orality and its poetics in the Creole language. This belief was maily translated into their works in two ways: by representing the (diglossic) relationships occurring between their first languages (Creole and French) and by representing the Creole parole (orality) and its function. An analysis of our authors' literary and theoretical writings will enable us to show how two works that develop around the same themes and thesis have in fact produced very divergent results, which were perhaps already perceivable in the main ambiguities of their common manifestos.

La richesse de la litterature camerounaise à travers ses langues

Le point de départ de ce mémoire a été tout d’abord de vouloir faire connaitre la littérature camerounaise qui malgré son essor, est encore assez méconnue et ensuite d’analyser les caractéristiques, les mutations et les différentes étapes de l’évolution du roman francophone au fil des années. Pour ce faire, nous avons tout d’abord illustré la situation historique, ethnique et linguistique du Cameroun. Ensuite, nous avons fait état de l’éclosion de la littérature camerounaise, le long éveil de la littérature camerounaise anglophone, analysé les deux générations de romanciers camerounais pour enfin conclure le mémoire avec l’étude de deux romans: Ville Cruelle d’Eza Boto et Le Fils d’Agatha Moudio de Francis Bebey. Nous nous focaliserons surtout sur l’analyse des thématiques les plus importantes de ces récits pour voir comment ces thématiques sont traitées dans les deux romans et découvrir les principales mutations qui sont survenues lors du passage d’une génération à l’autre.

Les expressions figees dans "et si on dansait" d' Erik Orsenna, problematiques traductives

Depuis mon arrivée en Italie j’ai été frappée par les grandes différences qui existent entre les expressions figées et idiomatiques dans les deux langues que sont le français et l’Italien. Etant d’expression francophone, et inscrite à la faculté de langue et de traduction, il m’a été donné de constater que j’avais de grandes difficultés à traduire les expressions figées d’une langue à une autre. Et plus encore il était très difficile de leur trouver des définitions et expressions équivalentes. Fort de ce constat, je me suis intéressée à la possibilité d’analyse des expressions figées du français à l’Italien à travers l’ouvrage de Gaston Gross paru aux éditions OPHRYS, 1996, sous le titre : Les expressions figées en français. Noms composés et autres locutions. Cet ouvrage constitue une avancée importante dans les études et les recherches sur la médiation linguistique et rejoint donc notre domaine de compétence. A travers cette analyse il s’agira de se poser la question fondamentale : Qu’est-ce qu’une expression figée ? Quelles sont ses représentations et ses évolutions dans cet ouvrage et comment s’effectuent son passage et ses transformations d’une langue à une autre ? Pour être plus précis, dans notre cas, comment pouvons-nous établir le passage des expressions figés du français à l’Italien dans cet ouvrage de Gaston Gross ? En répondant à ces questions, nous partons sur la base de l’hypothèse que les expressions figées constituent une richesse dans une langue et sont difficilement traductibles dans une autre langue sans en perdre la richesse et la teneur, lors de ce processus. Notre travail consistera donc à vérifier cette hypothèse.

`Faudrait-il le dire à vous, âEtranger?': enjeux intertextuels dans Vingt Ans de Nguyên Duc Giang

By reworking the thread of colonial initiation commonly found in French novels about Indochina, Nguyên Duc Giang's francophone novel Vingt ans (1940) draws upon novelistic and colonial intertexts to reflect upon the novel's role both in educating metropolitan readers and as a possible foundation for Franco-Vietnamese relations. Francophone and francophile, the young Vietnamese represented by this novel's Vietnamese narrator seem to exist outside of the colonial context; at the same time, a 'foreign' reader, presumably French, haunts the story through a dialogical, and unstable, relationship with the narrator. The latter provides the reader with familiar landmarks and immediately reshuffles them, thus transgressing the relationship that links him to the reader. In this way, the narrator reveals his ambiguity towards the reader and his/her culture, calling French hegemony into question.

The Power of Tragedy: An Eighteenth-Century Debate on Theater and its Relevance to Literature Pedagogy Today

This article brings to light a debate on tragic fiction in eighteenth-century France, and more specifically, on whether or not tragedy has the power to transform individuals intellectually and emotionally. Through analysis of abbé Dubos’s Reflexions critiques sur la poésie et sur la peinture and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles, I contend that Dubos’s overwhelmingly positive conception of fiction—and especially his contention that we learn through the emotions when we engage with tragic fiction—can serve as an admirable pedagogical model for today’s fiction-focused foreign language classrooms.

'Initiators of Discursive Practices': Authorship, attribution, and intent in the debates between philosophes and anti-philosophes

This article focuses on the “social side” of pseudonymity—on how writers and readers compete to influence the critical destiny of a pseudonymous work. By analyzing pseudonymity and attribution in both the specific context of Voltaire’s 1760 staging of the play, Le café ou l’écossaise, and in larger debates in the emerging fields of anonymity, pseudonymity, and attribution studies, I hope to show how literary scholars at present can address the individuality of each pseudonymous case while not letting go of trans-historical, general problems of anonymous strategies. Voltaire’s use of multiple pseudonyms before and after releasing L’Ecossaise, a comédie sérieuse in which Voltaire attacks his enemy Elie-Cathérine Fréron, supports his philosophe friends at a crucial moment in history, and exemplifies his emerging taste for serious comedy and British drama calls into question traditional takes on pseudonymity, anonymity, and attribution by refusing to fit into the binary arguments of anonymous vs. attributed and authorial intent vs. the reader’s control.