The Library of French Thought

Cell phone use is strictly prohibited and conversations are expected to be brief and conducted in whispers.  The collection is accessible by a card catalog located in the front of the library (under the giant rooster).  In the next year, we hope to move the whole collection to an online catalog.

Campus Resources

Claude Potts
Librarian for Romance Languages
Research and Collections
218 Doe Library
(510) 642-6052
cpotts@library.berkeley.edu

French Collections in the UC Berkeley Libraries 

Recent Acquisitions

The World republic of letters
Pascale Casanova ; translated by M.B. DeBevoise.
PN703

Dictionnaire des lettres françaises : XX
éd. réalisée sous la dir. de Martine Bercot, ... et d'André Guyaux,
REF PQ41

Politique de la littérature
Jacques Rancière.
PN51

Le destin des images
Jacques Rancière.
B105.I47

Le philosophe et ses pauvres
Jacques Rancière
HX533

La théorie des nuages
Stéphane Audeguy.
PQ2701.U34

Histoire de la langue française
Mireille Huchon.
PC2075

Fils unique
Stéphane Audeguy.
PQ2701.U34

Les mouches
Jean-Paul Sartre ; edited by F.C. St. Aubyn and Robert G. Marshall.
PQ2637 Sa82 H8

L'étrange visiteur
André de Richaud
PQ2635.I24

Regressive fictions: Graffigny, Rousseau, Bernardin
Robin Howells.
PQ648

Marianne in chains: everyday life in the French heartland under the German occupation
Robert Gildea
D802.F8

Algeria & France, 1800-2000 : identity, memory, nostalgia
edited by Patricia M. E. Lorcin.
DT294

Queer French: globalization, language, and sexual citizenship in France
Denis M. Provencher.
HQ76.3 F8

La littérature potentielle: créations, re-créations, récréations
Oulipo.
PQ1141

Le nouveau Petit Robert de la langue française 2008 : dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française
texte remanié et amplifié sous la direction de Josette Rey-Debove et Alain Rey.
REF PC2625

Les vagabondes : poésies américaines
par Frans C. Amelinckx et May Rush Gwin Waggoner.
PQ2450.T595

Paroles d'honneur : écrits de Créoles de coleur néo-orleanais, 1837-1872
édition critique par Chris Michaelides.
PQ3937.L8

La récolte douce des larmes : Edwidge Danticat
traduit de l'américain par Jacques Chabert.
PS3554.A5815

L'odeur du café
Dany Laferrière.
PQ3919.2.L163

Passages
Émile Ollivier.
PQ3919.2.O44

Louise Labé : une créature de papier
Mireille Huchon.
PQ1628.L2

Le goût des jeunes filles
Dany Laferrière.
PQ3919.2.G163

Mère-solitude : Émile Ollivier.
PQ3919.2.O44

Les mille et une nuits : contes arabes /traduction d'Antoine Galland
présentation par Jean-Paul Sermain et Aboubakr Chraïbi ; dossier par Jean Paul Sermain.
PJ7722 v. 1-4

L'Espèce humaine
Robert Antelme.
D805.G3

La femme sans sepulture
Assia Djebar.
PQ3989.2.D57 F

Le cercle des représailles
Kateb Yacine ; préface d'Edouard Glissant.
PQ2685 Ya25 C

La douleur
Marguerite Duras.
PQ2607 Du82 Do

Le village de l'Allemand, ou, Le journal des frères Schiller
Boualem Sansal.
PQ3989.2.S2455

The fall of Paris : the siege and the Commune 1870-71
Alistair Horne.
DC311

To lose a battle : France 1940
Alistair Horne.
D761

Surviving your academic job hunt : advice for humanities PhDs
Kathryn Hume.
LB2331.72

Consuming autobiographies : reading and writing the self in post-war France
Claire Boyle.
PQ145.6.S32

La pratique du theátre
Abbed'Aubignac ; edite par Helène Baby.
PQ1711 A8 2001

Americans in Paris : an anecdotal street guide
Brian N. Morton.
DC708 M85

Romans et récits de la Loire
Maurice Genevoix ;préface de Sylvie Genevoix ; introduction de Daniel Oster.
PQ 2613 .E55

Francophone writing in transition : Algeria 1900-1945
Peter Dunwoodie.
PQ3988.5.A5

Assia Djebar : out of Algeria
Jane Hiddleston.
PQ3989.2.D57

Mémoires d'outre-tombe
 François de Chateaubriand. établie présentée et annotée par Jean-Claude Berchet.
DC255 C4 A25

Métafictions (1670-1730) : la réflexivité dans la littérature d'imagination
Jean-Paul Sermain.
PQ645

Jean de Lafontaine, le défi [DVD]

Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia; Institution de la religion chrétienne
 [Jean Calvin] Précédée d’une introduction et accompagne de notes par MM. Baum, Cuntiz et Reuss Professeurs au seminaire protestant de Strasbourg.
REF BX9420

The sentimental education of the novel
Margaret Cohen.
PQ653

Nouvelles pièces noires
Jean Annouilh
PQ2601.N67

The Best Butter
 Jean Dutourd
PZ3.D952

Les jeux sont faits
 Jean-Paul Sartre
PQ2637.A82

Literature and nation in the sixteenth century : inventing Renaissance France
Timothy Hampton
PQ239 H26 2001

Maximes et réflexions diverses
La Rochefoucauld ; chronologie, introduction, établissement du texte, notes ... par Jacques Truchet
PQ1815 A7 T7 1977

Modern French theatre; from Giraudoux to Genet
 by Jacques Guicharnaud in collaboration with June Guicharnaud.
PQ556 G85

La préface de Cromwell : introduction, texte et notes
[édit par] Maurice Souriau.
PQ2285 C89 1897

Les voix du silence
André Malraux.
N70

Les boucs
 Driss Chraïbi.
PQ3989 C5 B

L'écart
V. Y. Mudimbe.
PQ3989.2.M77

De la violence en Algérie : les lois du chaos
Abderrahmane Moussaoui.
DT295.6

Through the reading glass : women, books, and sex in the French Enlightenment
Suellen Diaconoff.
PQ265

Myth and modernity
[edited by] Dan Edelstein and Bettina R. Lerner.
PQ145.1.M9

The late Derrida
edited by W.J.T. Mitchell and Arnold I. Davidson.
B2430.D484

Georges Bataille
Stuart Kendall.
B2430.B339

Styles of Enlightenment : taste, politics and authorship in eighteenth-century France
Elena Russo.
PQ261

Jean Genet : performance and politics
edited by Clare Finburgh, Carl Lavery and Maria Shevtsova.
PQ2613.E53

Le Nil, Egypte et Nubie
Maxime Du Camp
DT54

Les amours d'Astrée et de Céladon [DVD]

Coming Soon

Dictionnaire culturel en langue française (4 vols.)
Rey

Revolutionary acts
Susan Maslan

Langage et pouvoir symbolique
Pierre Bourdieu

Le flâneur et les flâneuses. Les femmes et la ville à l'époque romantique
Catherine Nesci

S/Z Roland Barthes

Dictionnaire critique de theologie
 Lacoste

Questions of travel postmodern discourses of displacement
Caren Kaplan

The novel : Vol. 1, history, geography, and culture
Franco Moretti

The novel : v.2 : forms and themes
Franco Moretti

Mimesis : the representation of reality in western literature
 by Erich Auerbach

The location of culture (Routledge classics)
Homi Bhabna

In theory : Nations, classes, literatures
Ahmad Aijaz

The content of the form : narrative discourse and historical representation
 Hayden White

The book of memory : a study of memory in medieval culture

Souvenirs littéraires. Flaubert, Fromentin, Gautier, Musset, Nerval, Sand
Maxime Du Camp

Kamouraska
Anne Hébert

Qui se souvient de la mer
Mohammed Dib

Rêves sous le linceul. Nouvelles
 Jean-Luc Raharimanana

Le monde tel qu'il est
Salvat Etchart

Les taches d'encre
Bessora

53
Bessora

Jean Racine.
Georges Forestier.

L'Absolu littéraire
Lacoue-Labarthe

The Limits of Performance in the French Romantic Theatre
Susan McCready

George Sand critique (1833-1876)

In other library news, the entire Walpole collection has now been cataloged.  The Walpole collection's main strengths are in Linguistics and Medieval Literature.  The only part of the collection to to be entered into the online catalog is the reference section.

The Collection

The collection contains close to 8,000 volumes, approximately 150 journal titles, magazines, maps, slides, and other ephemera.  Subjects such as linguistics, criticism, theatre and philosophy are well represented.  Our vast literature holdings cover the entire history of French writing from the earliest chansons to the New Novel.  New items are being added to the collection on a monthly basis.  There are many delights waiting to be uncovered in the stacks, please feel free to come in and browse at your leisure

Brief History

The Library of French Thought is intertwined with the history of both France and the Bay Area.  After the Battle of Marne during World War I, the French Government worried that the jewels of French thought might be crushed under the wheels of the advancing war machine.  In order to safeguard their intellectual treasure, the government sent 2,500 volumes, “The solid qualities and enlivening graces of French scholarship”* , to San Francisco, the site of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition.  Out of harm’s way, the books were displayed in the Salle de la Pensée Française in the French Pavilion.  Unfortunately, the end of the exposition did not coincide with the end of the war and it was still not safe for the books to return to France.  At that time a California group called “The Friends of France” was sending volunteers to drive ambulances and serve as medics on the Western Front.  The French Government contacted them and together they decided that by endowing the books to UC Berkeley, they would help to facilitate friendship and understanding between the two countries.  Indeed, the President of the Friends of France, Mr. W.B. Bourn, stated that when the youth of California come to know the books they would learn three things from the French: “How to fight, how to love, and how to die.”**   The library was inaugurated on September 6, 1918 (Lafayette Day) in a ribbon cutting ceremony attended by the Bay Area elite and French dignitaries.