Summaries
Pierre Giuliani - Mundane Entertainment and spiritual aptitude: Notes on Madame de Sévigné
Probably is it apt to state that Madame de Sévigné's name is associated with entertainment. Throughout her correspondence, the Marquise does not deprive herself of celebrating worldly pleasures that she enjoys as a spectator. However, the letter writer does not always shows up as distracted from herself and her salvation which she really takes to heart. Certainly Madame de Sévigné does not live this twin postulate - mundane entertainment and spiritual aptitude - as a shearing stress, but, as a sincere Christian lady of the classic century, she reminds us nevertheless that, with the grace of God, the question of the meaning of life bears up against worldly seductions.
Jacques Arênes - Contemporary faces of entertainment and ego creation
The diversion of entertainment takes on a special value in our culture which is less able to organize collective tools enabling one to address human weakness. Entertainment becomes then a task where ego research is expressed. In our cultural society entertainment no longer consists in a painful escape or the refusal of a constituting negativity, but rather an anxious probe into one's ego, a quest of a meaning to be created. The Freudian model of entertainment, in particular in theatre, is that of a mirror where the neurotic patient would read his neurosis again, and would attempt to grasp it. Some contemporary characters of entertainment correspond to addictions where the subject chains himself to the mirror supposed to reflect him. Thus, the decoys of virtuality set the stage where the production of one's ego verges on loss of this ego. The creator paradigm of play, in the interpretation suggested by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott, would enable the design of a type of entertainment escaping alienation of compulsion.
Pierre-Marie Beaude - Entertainment in Bible repeats
Here the author deals with the way in which the Bible has supplied material for entertainment in western world history. It is obvious that entertainment must not be first sought in learned readings or ex cathedra predication of the Bible. Many literature and folklore specialists have drawn attention to the fact that entertainment is a way of life and even sometimes a way of survival in a constraining system. Thus was the case in the Middle Ages, where cleric culture was asserting itself on the people as a monolithic concept, made of a theological school, conveyed through the Latin language from which the people were excluded. Today, the literature which refers itself to the Bible is more than a mere entertainment. It works as counteractive to the power that contemporary clerics would be tempted to claim by appropriating an alleged unique interpretation of the sacred text.
Philippe Abadie - The book of Esther as a place of masked misrepresentation
Keeping closely to the narrative texture of the book of Esther (in particular to the recurrence of banquets), the author brings to light the coded language of the relation of events which, through a play of multiple masks and enigmas, puts forward the hidden meaning of the Pourim feast. Foremost, this is not a carnival but the disclosure of a presence hidden through history: God who saves victims.
Michel Le Guern - Pascal and entertainment
When Pascal composes his analysis of entertainment, he does not choose to take the position of a moralist but rather to take an anthropological attitude. He does not condemn entertainment. He looks upon it, describes it in its various features, in most diverse situations. He looks upon it as a necessity of human condition, compelled to looking for an evanescent respite through hubbub. This research which is guided by memories of man's lost grandeur can not succeed. This is a consequence of the distress inherent to our human condition. In the Christian religion, this is explained through the original sin dogma. Thus considering entertainment and its necessity constitute a step towards reaching truth.
Éric Mangin - Prophetic writing and the vision of man in the works of Hildegarde de Bingen
The visions of Hildegarde de Bingen are very elaborate literary compositions, written in a historical context of crises and discord menacing Christian identity. In other words, the difficulties within the Church, in society and with the Empire, are at the root of the prophetic writing, and enable us to understand it. More precisely, the image used in the vision has for function to direct the spirit toward an ideal which invites man to re-read the present of a humanity which is ever in construction... a mirror of a sort in which each person can contemplate an identity which always escapes us.
Jean-Noël Guinot - Exégèse et théologie patristiques - Actualité du questionnement des Pères
Pierre Gire - Existence et faillibilité
Ariane Merceron-Vicat - Marie Noël ou l'impensable divertissement