OLD JAILHOUSE ROCK

Quite literally jailhouse rock, viewed through the double-door entrance of Honfleur's former prison,  which dates to 1734. Le Vieux Honfleur, a charming and much visited port village, converted the prison into an ethnography and popular arts museum in 1896.

It's not legible in the photo, but a small note attached to the iron gate asks people not to shake it.

Vocabulary
une prison:  a prison
la geôle:  the gaol; the jail
un geôlier:  a jail-keeper
le rock du bagne:  jailhouse rock

©2012 P.B.Lecron

NEW WINDOW, OLD THEME

"La fenêtre, en province, remplace le théâtre et les promenades." -- Gustave Flaubert


The window, in the provinces, replaces the theatre and promenades. From Flaubert's  Madame Bovary, written from 1851 through 1856.


At right, a tidy new window to look out of an old Normandy house in Honfleur, a charming  port town about 90 km from Rouen, birthplace of the French novelist.


Flaubert also said that anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough...








©2012 P.B. Lecron

SOUS ENTENDU

Une litote:  an ironical understatement in which a thought is disguised in such a way that one must guess its meaning, thus giving it more significance than if it were simply and straightforwardly expressed; e.g., an affirmative that is expressed by the negative of its contrary. If the rhetorical device were applied to the plastic arts, then it would neatly fit into the suitcases carried by the fantasmagorique figures of French sculpture Bruno Catalano. Van Gogh, in part, is represented here on a sidewalk in the Normandie port town of Honfleur.

Vocabulary
une litote:  a litotes
un sous entendu:  an understatement
fantasmagorique:  phantasmagoric

©2012 P.B. Lecron