Feces, urine, flatus, phlegm, vomitus - unlike ourselves, our most educated forebears did not disdain these functions, and, further, they employed scatological references in all manner of works. This collection of essays was provoked by what its editors considered to be a curious lacuna: the relative academic neglect of the copious and ubiquitous scatological rhetoric of Early Modern Europe, here broadly defined as the representation of the process and product of elimination of the body's waste products. The contributors to this volume examine the many forms and functions of scatology as literary and artistic trope, and reconsider this last taboo in the context of Early Modern European expression. They address unflinchingly both the objective reality of the scatological as part and parcel of material culture - inescapably a much larger part, a much heavier parcel then than now - and the subjective experience of that reality among contemporaries.

Feces, urine, flatus, phlegm, vomitus - unlike ourselves, our most educated forebears did not disdain these functions, and, further, they employed scatological references in all manner of works. This collection of essays was provoked by what its editors considered to be a curious lacuna: the relative academic neglect of the copious and ubiquitous scatological rhetoric of Early Modern Europe, here broadly defined as the representation of the process and product of elimination of the body's waste products. The contributors to this volume examine the many forms and functions of scatology as literary and artistic trope, and reconsider this last taboo in the context of Early Modern European expression. They address unflinchingly both the objective reality of the scatological as part and parcel of material culture - inescapably a much larger part, a much heavier parcel then than now - and the subjective experience of that reality among contemporaries.

Americans have studied French for centuries. Some of them become teachers. Others become professors, teaching and writing about the language and its attendant literatures and cultures. Some become translators. Thousands of French majors graduate from- American colleges and universities each year, but most of them will not become teachers, translators or academics. How many will find fulfilling ways to use their fluency in French, as professionals? How many will find those hidden geographies where French is a daily feature of the landscape? How may will simply give up, letting their French rust away into their personal past? Ritt Deitz, who directs the University of Wisconsin-Madison Professional French Masters Program, has assembled writers who tackle these questions and others, Post-Francophiles who represent that large and diverse community of adult Americans committed to using French in ways that deepen both their careers and their lives as a whole. They are well past simply loving the language. Their stories suggest that, behind the shimmering pathway to sophistication that French long seemed to represent, there lies a set of useful professional tools.