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Landscapes are socially produced and reproduced spaces. This is easily recognizable for large-scale urban groups with built environments that dominate living places. But it also pertains to all types of societies and cultures, even small-scale hunter–gatherers, once the ontological beliefs structuring landscape perception and use are acknowledged. The foragers of south–central and southern California and the Great Basin illustrate this fact. They maintained a widely shared ontological perspective supported by a fundamental cognitive postulate. This is that supernatural power, the principle causative agent in the universe, was differentially distributed among individuals and places. The distribution of power, revealed by certain geomorphological features and natural events, structured their perceptions of landscape. These perceptions were expressed in ritual and symbolism, including petroglyphs and pictographs as durable manifestations of ceremonies on the landscape. The ontological relationship between power and landscape explains a longstanding question in hunter–gatherer archaeology: Why were rock writing sites created at specific locations? It also explains another equally significant but rarely considered and related problem: Why do some localities have massive quantities of rock writings that dwarf most other sites? The landscape symbolism of and the placement of sites by Native Californian and Great Basin tribes is explained by reference to their shared ontological beliefs, illustrating how they structured their ritual practices and archaeological record.

Nonostante l’epopea carolingia sia al centro del repertorio tradizionale delle marionette di Liegi, rimane un campo di ricerca poco esplorato. Questo saggio tratta due poemi epici, Les quatre fils Aymon e Huon de Bordeaux, per esaminare la transizione dal testo narrativo a quello drammatico e la sua trasposizione sul palcoscenico regionale delle marionette. Seguendo le storie dai romanzi commentati alle opere teatrali moderne, la prima parte mostra come si è progressivamente sviluppata la drammatizzazione del testo in prosa. La seconda parte esamina il processo di creazione della mise-en-scene della storia dei paladini di Francia dal punto di vista dell’identificazione regionale, particolarmente concentrandosi sul ruolo di Tchantchès, il personaggio tipico del teatro delle marionette di Liegi. Although Carolingian epics are at the heart of the traditional Liège puppet repertoire, they remain a little explored field of research. This essay focuses on two epics, Les quatre fils Aymon and Huon de Bordeaux, which serve as case studies to examine the transition from narrative to dramatic text and its transposition for the regional puppet stage. Following the stories from the,annotated novels to the modern plays, the first part shows how the dramatisation of the prose text gradually developed. The second part examines the creation process of staging the story of the paladins of France from the point of view of regional identification, focusing on the role of Tchantchès, the typical character of the Liège puppet theatre.

A sacred site that draws pilgrims from distant regions is a distinctive resource for studying religion. Research into a site’s relevance to pilgrims and how it came to be founded contributes to a better understanding of religious activity. To address these issues, a thorough historical analysis of a sacred site’s records is essential. Such an analysis endeavors to distinguish the historical facts of a sacred site from its narratives and further discusses the significance of each. With such intent, this study focuses on the Rujing Stupa, a sacred site of significant importance to transnational pilgrimages that has yet to receive sufficient scholarly attention. The stupa, which is located at the Jingci Monastery in Hangzhou, China, is believed to hold the relics of Tiantong Rujing 天童如浄 (1163–1228), a Song Dynasty monk. Although the modern stele inscription at this location indicates that the stupa was founded in the 13th century, shortly after the monk’s death, this paper examines the historical reinventions within the inscription and traces the influence of Japanese narratives on such a reinvention. This study demonstrates that the Rujing Stupa was established by, and for, the Japanese Sōtō Buddhists. The Chinese monk’s connection to the Sōtō pilgrims lies in Rujing’s role as the master who instructed Dōgen 道元 (1200–1253), the founder of the Sōtō tradition, making his stupa a sacred site for the Sōtō community. Concerns of commemoration and reifying doctrinal authenticity motivated two generations of Japanese pilgrims to construct the Rujing stupa in the late 19th and 20th centuries, respectively. On the other hand, Rujing’s significance and the presence of the Sōtō tradition were scarcely acknowledged in China until the early modern period. Only in the late 20th century did Chinese Buddhists begin to appreciate this stupa. Examining the site’s historical reinventions and identifying the factors that shape its narrative, this case study offers insights into the investigation of sacred sites and suggests a concern for narrative in the examination of a site’s history and significance.

Le 30 janvier 1887, avenue Victor Hugo à Paris, le général Chen Jitong, attaché militaire de la légation chinoise en France, refuse la main que lui tend l’étameur Ferdinand Laporte, qui l’injurie alors. Le procès qui s’ensuit pour injures publiques met au jour, derrière cette affaire anecdotique, un mauvais tour alors répandu à Paris, résumé par le chroniqueur judiciaire qui, sous le pseudonyme d’Argus, rend compte de l’affaire dans les colonnes du Figaro : « Il paraît que c’est une espèce de sport, parmi les loustics des faubourgs extérieurs, d’accoster les Chinois dans la rue et de leur tendre la main en les tutoyant avec une aimable familiarité. » Faire l’histoire de cette plaisanterie devenue incompréhensible impose d’entremêler trois histoires de mains. Celle, déjà, des imaginaires qui se greffent à partir du xviii e siècle sur le décalage des gestes de politesse chinois et occidentaux et constituent les salutations chinoises en antipodes mêmes de la poignée de main occidentale et égalitariste. Celle, ensuite, de l’attention continuelle que doivent prêter à leurs mains, dans la Chine du xix e siècle, diplomates et missionnaires pour les plier aux règles des bienséances chinoises et éviter le type de faux pas que recherche, précisément, Ferdinand Laporte. Celle, enfin, de la progressive familiarisation avec la structure des interactions sino-occidentales de franges entières de la population chinoise qui, tel Chen Jitong, apprennent entre autres, au fil du xix e siècle, à maîtriser la poignée de main. Ces trois histoires entremêlées jettent un éclairage original sur le statut à conférer aux interactions ordinaires dans l’histoire des relations sino-occidentales, et sur les différentes temporalités qui viennent se nouer dans une banale poignée de main.

Le livre publié par Philippe Artières en 2020 sous le titre Un séminariste assassin. L’Affaire Bladier, 1905 retrace et analyse avec une rare acuité un meurtre atroce commis dans le Cantal l’année de la séparation des Églises et de l’État : le 1 er septembre 1905, au village de Raulhac Jean-Marie Bladier, dix-sept ans, élève du petit séminaire de Saint-Flour, tue à coup de couteau Jean Raulnay, treize ans, lui coupe la tête qu’il élève vers le ciel ; puis il se livre aux gendarmes. Il est examiné à Lyon par le docteur Alexandre Lacassagne qui lui fait rédiger son autobiographie et reconnaît son irresponsabilité pénale. À l’occasion d’une relecture, on entend ici revenir sur quatre thèmes majeurs de l’analyse historique du cas Bladier : l’histoire rurale ; l’histoire de l’éducation ; l’histoire du sacrement de confession ; et la symbolique de la céphalophorie.