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Robert Louis Stevenson.--The democratic and aristocratic in literature.--Phases of fiction.--Björnson, Daudet, James: a study in the literary time-spirit.--Ideals in American literature.--Renaissance pictures in Browning's poetry.--Old English poetry.--Washington Irving's services to American history.--A battle laureate [Henry Howard Brownell]--The renaissance in English.--American English.--Literature for children. ; Mode of access: Internet.

International audience A Life's Work, Cusk's first memoir, in which she recounts her experience of motherhood, remains Cusk's most controversial work. She tries to grasp the feeling of estrangement she experienced when she gave birth and the way bonding with her daughters was a slow process rather than an instantaneous event. What critics have tended to focus on is what I would call the thematic reading of this text – the sociological and cultural debate that it opens up about the representation of what motherhood is –, these discourses which Cusk attacks. However, they have failed to address the literary implication of Cusk's appropriation of memoir writing, which, because it is defined by something which is impossible – at attempt at capturing the reality of an experience which is idealised, imaged and partly beyond words – gives way to creative solutions that undermine preconceived ideas about both the feelings motherhood should engender and the form any account of that experience should take. Written from a Lacanian perspective, this article addresses the scandalous nature of a creative memoir on motherhood.

In eighteenth-century France, scientific progress and its spreading met a growing interest among public, an enthusiasm that was to be reflected in literature. Fictional works including scientific knowledge in their narrative made their appearance, paving the ground for a genre promised to a growing success in the following centuries—science fiction. The article presents three eighteenth-century French literary works, each one centered on a different domain of science: Voltaire's Micromégas (1752), Charles-François Tiphaigne's Amilec, or the Seeds of Mankind (Amilec, ou la graine d'hommes, 1753) and François-Félix Nogaret's The Mirror of Current Events, or Beauty to the Highest Bidder (Le miroir des événements actuels, ou la belle au plus offrant, 1790). The first one, an iconic Enlightenment work that promotes critical thinking, relies on discoveries made in astronomy and optics. Tiphaigne de la Roche is far from sharing the fame of Voltaire, but his odd Amilec is noteworthy as it is possibly the very first science-fiction work in which biology is central. Written in the unique atmosphere of the French revolution, Nogaret's work The Mirror of Current Events depicts androids-like interacting with humans. Our purpose is to show that these works were a precursor (proto science fiction) of the science fiction genre in literature, to describe how and what science or technology was depicted in them, and how they influenced the view of Man (humans) in eighteenth-century France.

Global Voices interviewed Andrei Kurkov, one of Ukraine's most prolific and translated authors, who writes his novels in Russian and his non-fiction in Ukrainian.