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The French art of living well : finding joie de vivre in the everyday world / Cathy Yandell.

by Yandell, Cathy.

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St. Martin's Press, 2023.

Yandell, Cathy -- Travels.

College teachers -- Biography.

Americans -- France -- Biography.

France -- Social life and customs -- 21st century.

France -- In popular culture.

9781250777980 (hc.)

Alternate title:

Finding joie de vivre in the everyday world

viii, 214 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.

Includes index.

"In this enjoyable travelogue, Yandell (Carpe Corpus), a French professor at Carleton College, reflects on finding la joie de vivre (the joy of living) in France. Recounting episodes from her time in the country, first as a college student studying abroad and later as the director of a study abroad program, she shares what she’s learned from French people about delighting in everyday life. “Celebrations and gastronomy are inseparable in France,” she posits, telling how she was surprised by the elaborate series of dinner courses at the first French wedding she attended, where she realized that the “real point is to spend hours” conversing with others. She surveys the French passion for soccer while recalling watching the 2018 World Cup championship game at a Paris bar and credits the country’s win with uniting people in celebration. Elsewhere, the author serves up broad overviews of French intellectualism via the country’s literary canon and of the linguistic differences between English and French, which she suggests betray the latter’s slower pace (“In English, we ‘spend’ and ‘invest’ time,” but “in French, one simply ‘passes,’ ‘devotes,’ or ‘consecrates’” it). Yandell’s personal accounts offer fun glimpses into French life, and her commentary on national character and culture is well observed. Francophiles, take note."--Publishers Weekly.

Cathy Yandell is a professor at Carleton College, teaching courses in French Renaissance literature and culture, contemporary cultural and political issues in France, and the French language. Having published articles on writers from Louise Labé to Montaigne, she has also authored, edited, and co-edited several books including Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in Early Modern France, Vieillir à la Renaissance, and Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France. In 2019, she was knighted by the French government into the Order of Academic Palms. When not buried in books, she loves dance, yoga, and flying trapeze. The French Art of Living Well is her first book for a general audience.

Travel writing.

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