The year 1998 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Yale French Studies. Taking this occasion to look back on the evolution of the journal and, by extension, on the field of French studies over the past half-century, the Editorial Board of YFS is producing a two-volume commemorative anthology. The selected articles reflect scholars and themes that either represent or run counter to the main trends of a vibrant scholarly tradition during an intellectually exciting period.

The prefaces to this first volume of the anthology and the introductions to each decade add a retrospective glance at the role that Yale French Studies has played over the years.

Contents

Peter Brooks and Charles A. Porter: Introduction to the Anthology; Georges May "The fact that I happened to have witnessed . . ."

I. 1948–1959 Charles Porter Introduction; Jacques Guicharnaud Those Years: Existentialism 1943-1945; Georges May Jean Giraudoux: Academism and Idiosyncrasies; Henri Peyre Romantic Poetry and Rhetoric

II. 1960–1969 Françoise Jaouen Introduction; Jeremy Mitchel Swinburne—The Disappointed Protagonist; Kurt Weinberg Nietzsche’s Paradox of Tragedy; Michael Holquist What Is a Boojum? Nonsense and Modernism

III. 1970–1979 Ora Avni Introduction; Jacques Derrida The Purveyor of Truth; Roger Dragonetti "Le nenuphar blanc": A Poetic Dream with Two Unknowns; Jacques Ehrmann The Tragic/Utopian Meaning of History