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This paper explores what happens in writings exposing a loneliness due to loss, loss of a loved one or loss of the transcendent. While analyzing writings of mourning, where consolation does not arrive, where acedia is present and ecstasy absent, this paper studies the power of literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of the word « heart » is intuitive and symbolic leading beyond the physical sense of the word. While the denotation of « heart » refers to something inside a human being, the connotations indicate the center of the body and the starting point of self?expression. The dimension which is concerned with the polysemy of the term « heart » is a subject of study for linguistics and philosophy as well. It is therefore primarily the functional, symbolic and sociocultural meanings of the heart which enable us to create idioms. We have addressed the polysemy which can be observed when studying verses of the Koran and the Bible; thus we are able to scrutinize the Arabic and the French language and investigate the role of religion in the formulation of our relationship with language as regard to how we speak, describe, and read. This paper attempts to build bridges between the Koran and the Bible through the use of the semantic fields of the word « heart ». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Shakespeare is thought to be a monumental playwright and poet whose verbal genius largely makes up for a few troubling passages, or for a few « problematic plays » (as they are still conveniently called) which give a bit of tang or perhaps only very little undermine a fundamentally orthodox political, religious and philosophical message. This paper does not claim to deny this. Rather, it lays emphasis on Shakespeare's dark - yet undeniable - side. Claiming that Macbeth is evil but somehow admirable is not enough. One may perhaps put forward the idea that Macbeth is desperately wading, though unsuccessfully, towards some kind of Nietzschean realm beyond Good and Evil. One may perhaps, however briefly, suggest that with this character Shakespeare broaches the ontological question, that he senses a univocal and undifferentiated dimension of Being, but from a negative point of view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the author comments on Montaigne's essay, « On Solitude » and parallels it with Cioran's works, especially with two of them : « La lettre d'un solitaire » (Solitude et destin) and « La solitude-schisme du coeur », published in A Short History of Decay. This comparison shows that there are obvious differences between these two authors, as for one of them solitude is linked to morals and for the other one (Cioran) solitude expresses a profound metaphisical anguish. Both authors have in common not only the condition of loneliness, but also a preoccupation « to be himself ». [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cioran's discontinuous, fragmental writing has a philosophical, as well as an affective and literary value, which makes any attempt of classification uneasy. While exploring the general idea of literature outside traditional theories of mimesis and representation, this paper argues that Cioran's work is neither philosophical nor confessional but is instead a way of staging and dramatizing (and not representing) the author's thoughts and affects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]