Category Archives: Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France

Books received – Simon, Macciocchi, Spinney, Kristeva, Leray, Mallory

Posted on May 9, 2026 by stuartelden

John K. Simon, Modern French Criticism; Maria-Antoinetta Macciocchi, Les femmes et leurs maîtres; Laura Spinney, Proto; Julia Kristeva, Dostoyevsky in the Face of Death; a special issue on Jean Leray; Ryan L. Allen, Adventures in the Archaic and J.P. Mallory, … Continue reading →

Posted in Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault | Leave a comment

Lucien Gerschel bibliography (and other research resources)

Posted on May 5, 2026 by stuartelden

I’ve written about Lucien Gerschel in two posts in my ‘Sunday Histories‘ series – Lucien Gerschel, Georges Dumézil, William Shakespeare and the history of Coriolanus and The Tragic Death of Lucien Gerschel and his Posthumous Text on the Finnish Sampo. He was a student … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Lucien Gerschel, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | Leave a comment

The Tragic Death of Lucien Gerschel and his Posthumous Text on the Finnish Sampo

Posted on April 26, 2026 by stuartelden

In a previous piece in this series, I discussed Georges Dumézil’s student and colleague Lucien Gerschel and their discussions of the Roman general Coriolanus. Gerschel had attended lectures by Dumézil at the École Pratique des Hautes Études shortly before the Second World War. … Continue reading →

Posted in Georges Dumézil, Lucien Gerschel, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories | 2 Comments

Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France update 32 – trying to improve a draft

Posted on April 20, 2026 by stuartelden

As I said in the last update, I went to the EUI in Florence at the beginning of February with a nearly complete draft of my manuscript on Indo-European Thought in Twentieth-Century France, and had the plan to leave at the … Continue reading →

Posted in Étienne Wolff, Emile Benveniste, Fernand Braudel, Georges Dumézil, Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Maurice Blanchot, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Sunday Histories, Travel, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Julia Kristeva’s portrait of Émile Benveniste in The Samurai

Posted on April 19, 2026 by stuartelden

Julia Kristeva’s first novel The Samurai was published in 1990. It’s not the greatest novel, but it’s well known that the book is a thinly disguised autobiography, with the central character Olga Morena modelled on herself. Many of the famous names of … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Julia Kristeva, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Georges Redard and the Linguistic Atlas of Iranian Speakers

Posted on April 12, 2026 by stuartelden

After Émile Benveniste suffered a major stroke in late 1969, his former student and friend Georges Redard planned to publish some of Benveniste’s incomplete projects. Redard was by this time teaching at the University of Bern in Switzerland. One volume … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

Maurice Blanchot’s Politics and His War-Time Reviews of Georges Dumézil

Posted on April 5, 2026 by stuartelden

The philosopher, literary theorist and novelist Maurice Blanchot’s politics have come under periodic scrutiny. Leslie Hill describes the source of the controversy:  As early as 1931 and 1932, while starting out with the Journal des débats, Blanchot was writing political articles … Continue reading →

Posted in Albert Camus, Georges Bataille, Georges Dumézil, Jean-Paul Sartre, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Maurice Blanchot, Sunday Histories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments

Walter Bruno Henning, Franz Altheim and the Politics of Reviews

Posted on March 8, 2026 by stuartelden

In 1949, the German born and naturalised British scholar Walter Bruno Henning wrote to the Iranian politician and diplomat Hassan Taqizadeh. In his letter, he shared his view of Franz Altheim’s Weltgeschichte Asiens im griechischen Zeitalter [World History of Asia in the Greek Era], … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Roger Caillois, Sunday Histories | 4 Comments

Indo-European Thought research resources updated – Benveniste, Saussure, Dumézil

Posted on February 25, 2026 by stuartelden

I’ve updated the list of English translations of Émile Benveniste’s work on this site to include a couple of articles. I’ve not shared many research resources from my Indo-European thought project, but there is a list of Ferdinand de Saussure’s notes … Continue reading →

Posted in Emile Benveniste, Ferdinand de Saussure, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Michel Foucault, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

The French contributors to Herman Hirt’s 1936 Festschrift – Linguistics, Nationalism and Nazism

Posted on February 22, 2026 by stuartelden

In their important piece examining the stakes of the 1930s debate about Caucasian linguistics between Georges Dumézil and Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Stefanos Geroulanos and Jamie Philips indicate that Dumézil was one of the contributors to a 1936 Festschrift for the … Continue reading →

Posted in Antoine Meillet, Emile Benveniste, Georges Dumézil, Mapping Indo-European Thought in Twentieth Century France, Stefanos Geroulanos, Sunday Histories | 2 Comments