Oxford Journals

Information for Authors

NOTES FOR THE AUTHORS OF ARTICLES

French Studies is published for the Society for French Studies by Oxford University Press. In the sixty years since its first publication, the journal has been a leading forum for the publication of ground-breaking work and for critical debate. Some twenty articles are published each year, as well as more than 200 reviews. These notes are provided for the guidance of contributors. A separate note of guidance is provided for reviewers.

Editorial policy
Copy
Abstract
Running heads
Spelling
Capitalization
Abbreviations
Gender
Numbers and dates
Quotations and references
Illustrations
Language Editing
Proofs and offprints
Copyright

EDITORIAL POLICY

Articles for publication and books for review should be submitted to the General Editor at the following address:

French Studies
Taylor Institution
St Giles'
Oxford OX1 3NA
UK

Articles are sought in all areas of the subject, including language and linguistics (historical and contemporary), all periods and aspects of French and francophone literature, thought and the history of ideas, cultural studies (with a historical or a contemporary focus), film, and critical theory. The journal aims in particular to publish articles which, in addition to making a contribution to a specialized area of knowledge, will be likely to have a notable impact on wider critical debate. The journal is open to interdisciplinary or other submissions which explore innovative critical approaches. Articles are published in English and in French.

Articles submitted for publication will be assessed according to the originality and importance of the contribution which they make, and their appeal to the interests of a wide international readership. In reaching a decision to accept an article for publication, the Editors will consult with independent expert readers. Such a decision will normally be reached within a period of four months. The Editors will also satisfy themselves that any work published in the journal does not contain any defamatory, unlawful or otherwise objectionable material, nor material which is inaccurate or misleading. Owing to the high cost of postage, articles which are not accepted cannot be returned.

These notes provide information and guidance on style which authors are requested to follow in preparing their copy for printing. Style conventions in the journal follow those of the MHRA Style Book (see sections 1 -10 and 14 in particular). Copy not so styled will be returned to authors for amendment. Authors are requested to ensure that typescript is clear, correct and definitive; authors' changes may not as a rule be made at proof stage.
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COPY

Authors are requested initially to submit four copies of their article. Copy should be typewritten or printed from a disk, and must be clearly legible with ample margins. Each paragraph (except the opening paragraph) should be indented and the practice of leaving a blank line between paragraphs should not be followed. Articles should not as a rule exceed 6000 words in length including notes. Notes should be printed at the end of the article (not as footnotes).

Copy accepted for publication will be typeset from disk; Word files are preferred. Revisions may be required of articles that are accepted and, when returning definitive copy, authors will be required to complete a submission form giving details of the operating system and software used.

In preparing copy on diskette, the following points should be borne in mind:

text should be typed double-spaced throughout (including quotations and notes) using an unjustified right-hand margin;
hyphenation should not be used, except for compound words;
where possible, Times New Roman should be used for text, and Symbol for special characters;
new paragraphs should be indented using the tab key once;
only one space should follow a full point;
word-processing features may be used for italic founts and for subscript and superscript, as appropriate.

Contributors are requested to indicate the word-length of their article and the total number of words contained in the notes.
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ABSTRACT

With each article, an abstract of approximately 200 words written in the language of the article should be submitted. The abstract should clearly state the main texts or other materials discussed in the article and should summarize its main arguments, conclusions or claims.
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RUNNING HEADS

Authors are requested to specify a suitably abbreviated version of the title of their article for use as a running head; where a text is the main focus of discussion, running heads should take the following form:

Racine's Britannicus

Nerval's Les Filles du feu

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SPELLING

For preferred forms of spelling in English and of abbreviations, see The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors (Oxford University Press, 2005). For verbs ending in -ize or -ise, the -ize form should be used (but analyse and its derivatives have s, not z). The spelling of quotations should always follow that of the work or the edition cited. Note, however, that in quotations from early printed sources the letters i and j, u and v, the ampersand (&) and other abbreviations should as a rule be normalized to modern usage (such changes may be mentioned in a note on the first occasion where a source of this sort is cited).

The possessive of proper nouns ending in -s or, in French, in -s, -x, or -z, should take the following form:

Descartes's optics, Marivaux's novels, Cixous's plays, Ross's translations

Note, however, that with names in Greek and Latin the possessive is indicated without the addition of an -s:

Odysseus' return, Catullus' metre

For place names and proper nouns, French forms (e.g. François I^er, Henri IV, Lyon, Reims) should be used as appropriate. Current English forms should otherwise be used (e.g. Virgil, Thomas Aquinas, St John of the Cross). Where words and phrases in French or in a foreign language are used, they should be given in italics (e.g. œuvre, écriture féminine, film noir, roman-fleuve, Nachträglichkeit, verstehen, verismo). Words which have passed into English usage should not be italicized (e.g. persona, milieu). In cases of doubt, reference should be made to The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors.
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CAPITALIZATION

Capital letters should be used sparingly; when in doubt, use lower case. Capitals are used for historical events and periods (e.g. the Middle Ages, the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, the July Monarchy), for parts of books (e.g. Chapter 1, Part iv), and for literary, cultural or philosophical movements (e.g. Naturalism, Surrealism). With the exception of à, accents should be retained on capital letters in French (e.g. L'Éducation sentimentale, L'Âge d'homme). Care should be taken to use initial capitals with nouns in German (e.g. Angst, Aufhebung). For the use of capitals with titles, see Quotations and references below.

ABBREVIATIONS

Care should be taken to ensure that the use of abbreviations does not result in confusion or opacity. Where a given work or edition is frequently cited in an article, an abbreviation may be used to refer to its title (e.g. MB, for Madame Bovary, O.c., for Œuvres complètes). The use of such abbreviations should be mentioned in the first note where the work or edition in question is cited. In the text of articles, abbreviations should be avoided, as in the following examples:

La Cousine Bette was first published in Le Constitutionnel, beginning in October 1846.

The word is not attested in Old French.

On page 29, the same example is used.

In running prose, the use of abbreviations such as e.g. and i.e. should be avoided. Standard abbreviations should otherwise be used (p. 191, pp. 23-27. ll. 1241-53, 2 vols). The full point is omitted in capitalized abbreviations for standard works of reference or for journals and other publications (e.g. FEW, FS, TLS), or for countries, institutions and organizations (e.g. UK, USA, BNF, CNRS).
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GENDER

Authors may wish to avoid the use of gender-specific language. The preferred forms are 'he/she', 'his/her', 'him/her'. The use of he should not be qualified, however, where the material under discussion is clearly gender-specific (e.g. where reference is made, for historical reasons, exclusively to men).
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NUMBERS AND DATES

For dates, the following form should be used: 26 September 1859. In approximations, circa should be abbreviated to c. (e.g. c. 1762).

Numbers up to one hundred should be written in words. Figures should be used for chapter, volume or page numbers, and for years. Page references to numbers falling within the same hundred should take the following form:

14-18, 53-54, 201-06

Numbers up to four digits are given without a comma (e.g. line 1672). In all multiple page references, the range given should be specific (references in the form 22f. or 44ff. should not be given).
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QUOTATIONS AND REFERENCES

Authors are urged to exercise restraint in the use of quotations. All quotations from works in French should be given in the original and published translations of works written in French should not be used. Quotations in languages other than English or French should generally be given in translation, though reference may, of course, be made to original sources. Where the argument requires that a text written in a language other than English or French be quoted in the original, a translation should be provided in a note. For classical authors, texts published in the Loeb Classical Library should generally be used, except in cases where a different standard translation exists. Where no published translation is available, one should be provided by the author. In articles written in English, all quotation marks should be normalized to English usage.

Short quotations (up to about forty words in length) should be run on from the main text and given in single quotation marks. For a quotation within a quotation, double quotation marks should be used:

'"Nous sommes la terre", répondent-ils'.

An initial capital letter may be reduced to lower case without the use of brackets to indicate such an amendment:

Descartes begins by making the claim that 'le bons sens est la chose du monde la mieux partagée'.

Note that the full point is placed outside the closing quotation mark; an exclamation or a question mark should, however, be retained as part of a quotation:

The poem closes by addressing the reader directly: '- Hypocrite lecteur, - mon semblable, - mon frère!'.

Where a page reference is given, the final full point should follow the closing parenthesis:

The reference to translation is explicit: 'le devoir et la tâche d'un écrivain sont ceux d'un traducteur' (iv, 469).

The full point should precede the closing quotation mark only where the passage quoted represents a complete sentence introduced by a colon:

The environment of the court tends to be portrayed ambivalently: 'L'ambition et la galanterie étaient l'âme de cette cour, et occupaient également les hommes et les femmes.'

Omissions within quotations should be indicated by means of ellipsis (that is, three points within brackets):

S'il arrive que l'on songe à l'amour comme moyen d'cmp;eacute;happer à la mort [...] c'est peut-être parce qu'obscurément nous sentons que c'est le seul moyen dont nous disposions d'en faire un tant soit peu l'expérience.

Ellipses should not be placed at the beginning or the end of quoted passages.

Longer quotations (that is, more than about forty words of prose, or more than one complete prose paragraph, or more than two lines of verse) should be broken off from the main text and presented without quotation marks. A longer quotation should close with a full point and any page reference should be placed after the full point:

Revenons, c'est une nécessité de ce livre, sur ce fatal champ de bataille.
Le 18 juin 1815, c'était pleine lune. Cette clarté favorisa la poursuite féroce de Blücher, dénonça les traces des fuyards, livra cette masse désastreuse à la cavalerie prussienne acharnée, et aida au massacre. Il y a parfois dans les catastrophes de ces tragiques complaisances de la nuit. (i, 427)

In referring to and quoting from published works, recent standard authoritative editions should be used, where these exist. In the case of contemporary works, the original edition (or a substantially revised edition, where one exists) should be used. References should be given according to the author-title system and will generally be given in notes. The author-date (or Harvard) system is not used in the journal and complete lists of sources used should therefore not be given. Major critical or secondary works should be cited in standard editions (e.g. all references to Freud in English translation should be to the Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, tr. and ed. by James Strachey et al., 24 vols (London, Hogarth, 1953-74)).

Notes should be kept to a minimum. They should not be used to cite sources which are not directly relevant to the argument. Pages references to a text which is the main focus of discussion may be provided in parentheses in the body of the article, provided that this practice is explained in the first note citing the text in question. A note reference number should as a rule be placed at the end of the sentence (after the full point), except where it falls within parentheses and the note refers only to the parenthesis.

Where an author wishes to acknowledge assistance received or to provide information on the original context in which an article may have been produced, a single brief note at the end of the article may be used for this purpose.

The following references illustrate the style conventions followed in the journal (note that the full name of an author should be given only where this information is not contained in the body of the article, and that full bibliographical information should be given only on first mention in the notes of the work in question):

Charles Baudelaire, Œuvres complètes, ed. by Claude Pichois, 2 vols (Paris, Gallimard, 1975-76), i, 1311.
Alfred de Vigny, Œuvres complètes, i, Poésie - Théâtre, ed. by François Germain and André Jarry (Paris, Gallimard, 1986), p. 434.
Claudia Brodsky Lacour, Lines of Thought: Discourse, Architectonics, and the Origin of Modern Philosophy (Durham, NC - London, Duke University Press, 1996), p. 111.
Erec R. Koch, Pascal and Rhetoric: Figural and Persuasive Language in the Scientific Treatises, the 'Provinciales', and the 'Pensées' (Charlottesville, Rookwood Press, 1997), ch. 4.
Leo Bersani, The Death of Stéephane Mallarmé (Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 14.
Christiane Marchello-Nizia, L'Évolution du français: ordre des mots, démonstratifs, accent tonique (Paris, Armand Colin, 1995), pp. 200-08.
Bernard Vouilloux, Un art de la figure: Francis Ponge dans l'atelier du peintre (Villeneuve d'Ascq, Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 1998), p. 212.
Werner Helmich, Der moderne französische Aphorismus. Innovation und Gattungsreflexion (Tübingen, Niemeyer, 1991), p. iv.
Paola Salerni, La scena di una scrittura: Villiers de l'Isle-Adam fra teatro e romanzo (Fasano, Schena, 1997), ch.3.
Jean Starobinski, 'La littérature: le texte et l'interprète', in Faire de l'histoire, iii, Nouvelles approches, ed. by Jacques Le Goff and Pierre Nora (Paris, Gallimard, 1974), pp. 225-44 (p. 226).
Jane Gallop, 'French Theory and the Seduction of Feminism', Paragraph, 8 (1986), 19-24.
Marc Fumaroli, 'Rhétorique d'école et rhétorique adulte: remarques sur la réception européenne du traité Du sublime au XVI^e et au XVII^e siècle', Revue d'histoire littéraire de la France, 86 (1986), 33-51 (p. 45).
Cynthia Skenazi, 'Eutopie et utopie dans Le Temple de Cupido de Marot', French Studies, xlix (1995), 17-28.

The title and subtitle should be separated by a colon, except with titles in German, where a full point is used (see example (viii)). For titles of books and of articles or essays in English, the initial word and the principal words in the title are capitalized (see examples (iii), (iv) and (xi)). Titles within the title of a book should be given in single quotations marks (see example (iv)). The place of publication should be given where practicable in English (e.g. Geneva, not Genéve). The place of publication may be omitted where it is indicated by the publisher's name (see example (v)). The names of American states should be included only where necessary to eliminate ambiguity (see example (iii)); these abbreviations should be given according to the two-letter postal abbreviations which are to be found in the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. For titles of books in French, the first word is capitalized (see example (vii)). If the first word is

If the first word is the definite article, the first noun following the article (and any adjectives between the article and the noun) should also be capitalized (see example (vi)); the subtitle should be given entirely in lower case. Only the first word in the title of essays and articles in French should be capitalized (see examples (x), (xii) and (xiii)). Titles of series in which a work appears are not given and information concerning editors of works should be normalized to the abbreviation 'ed. by' (see examples (i), (ii) and (x)). Where use is made only of one volume of a multi-volume edition or work, the reference should be styled accordingly (see examples (ii) and (x)). For titles in German, all nouns should be capitalized (see example (viii); in Italian and Spanish, only the first word is normally capitalized (see example (ix)).