Orientation Center Newsletter, Vol. 28, no. 2, November-December 2008

The Orientation Center newsletter is produced three times a year, and includes articles written by students, staff, and former students. It also contains news about what is happening to other students who have been in the Center.

After Satan: Essays in Honour of Neil Forsyth

This volume is the result of a collective desire to pay homage to Neil Forsyth, whose work has significantly contributed to scholarship on Satan. This volume is "after" Satan in more ways than one, tracing the afterlife of both the satanic figure in literature and of Neil Forsyth's contribution to the field, particularly in his major books The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth (Princeton University Press, 1987, revised 1990) and The Satanic Epic (Princeton University Press, 2003). The essays in this volume draw on Forsyth's work as a focus for their analyses of literary encounters with evil or with the Devil himself, reflecting the richness and variety of contemporary approaches to the age-old question of how to represent evil. All the contributors acknowledge Neil Forsyth's influence in the study of both the Satan-figure and Milton's Paradise Lost. But beyond simply paying homage to Neil Forsyth, the articles collected here trace the lineage of the Satan figure through literary history, showing how evil can function as a necessary other against which a community may define itself. They chart the demonised other through biblical history and medieval chronicle, Shakespeare and Milton, to nineteenth-century fiction and the contemporary novel. Many of the contributors find that literary evil is mediated through the lens of the Satan of Paradise Lost, and their articles address the notion, raised by Neil Forsyth in The Satanic Epic, that the literary Devil-figures under consideration are particularly interested in linguistic ambivalence and the twisted texture of literary works themselves. The multiple responses to evil and the continuous reinvention of the devil figure through the centuries all reaffirm the textual presence of the Devil, his changing forms necessarily inscribed in the shifting history of western literary culture. These essays are a tribute to the work of Neil Forsyth, whose scholarship has illuminated and guided the study of the Devil in English and other literatures.

Articles convenus entre le Roi et le prince-évêque, l'église et l'état de Liège, pour l'exécution du traité du 24 mai 1772 et en conformité de l'article séparé relatif à l'art 1er dudit traité. [Ratification du 11 décembre.]

[Acte royal. 1773-12-11. Versailles]

Vulgariser les sciences sans l'appui des savants. Jean Lanteires et le Journal de Lausanne (1786-1792)

Popularizing science without the support of scholars. Jean Lanteires and the Journal de Lausanne (1786-1792). - Founded in 1786 by Jean Lanteires, the Journal de Lausanne is a widespread, weekly journal with the express aim of disseminating scientific knowledge among the lower and middle classes. Its articles are easily comprehensible and cover a wide range of topics from literature to agriculture, from natural sciences to charity. Considerable space is given to reader's questions and comments. The journal can be situated somewhere between an almanac and a scientific journal. Lanteires' attempt to solicit contributions from scholars of medicine and natural sciences received a dismissive response. Of the few articles written by specialists, the majority deal with agriculture and charity. Lanteires' difficult relationship with the scholarly community is reflected in the journal's content. This makes the Journal de Lausanne a privileged observatory for studying the social context of the vulgarization process in late-eighteenth-century Switzerland and Europe.