What is This Thing Called France?

Author: COLIN NETTELBECK
Explorations No 40 (Jun 2006): 3-17
https://doi.org/10.62586/XENJ9460

In his valedictory lecture delivered on his retirement in 2005 from the A.R. Chisholm Chair of French at the University of Melbourne, Colin Nettelbeck reflects on various aspects of French culture, history and geography and how they have determined France’s destiny and characterised concepts of freedom and individual liberty in French society.

Keywords: General de Gaulle, Alexis Léger, Saint-John Perse, the European Union, freedom, cultural autonomy, secularism, islam and muslims, anti-semitism, Algerian war, post-colonialism, film culture, ‘otherness’


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