That WINNIE ILLE PU one is a facing-page, French/Latin dual-language book. How bizarre! I have also got Winnie L'Ourson on its own, complete with all the illustrations.. it also has a " Contradiction" !
It is a remarkable, funny and very clever book.
Widnes, however is a complete dump [ Un terrain vague ]
It contains 12 chapters, each written by a different author, and each author has a totally different set of things to say about it. Here's some of the titles ...and their authors....
HARVEY C. WINDOW
The Hierarchy of Heroism in Winnie-the-Pooh.
MURPHY A. SWEAT
Winnie and the Cultural Stream.
WOODBINE MEADOWLARK
A la recherche du Pooh Perdu (aha! A bit of French)
SIMON LACEROUS
Another Book to Cross Off Your List
BUT ..the thing is, I got half way through it without realising it was all a rollicking parody of actual writers .... Simon Lacerous, for example, is actually F.R Leavis.
Well, I was only 14.
And oddly, about 6 years later at University, I spent an hour or so with FRL in which he rambled on about what a terrible person W.H. Auden was. This was because only me and Laurence Coupe turned up to his " seminar." Experience is cheap at any price.
So what's that got to do with French ?
Well .... being jumped-up literary experts, they all like to bung bits of French in their writings, to make them look intellectual/international. And they have done exactly that. !
So ...here's some juicy [ juteux ] examples ...
[1] As for illustrating these principles, we have an embarras de richesses, for literally everything in the book depends on them.
[2] The true order is of course distorted here by Rabbit's ambition and Pooh's modesty ... traits that receive their merited rewards only in the
denouément of the plot.
[3] The trahison des clercs is the correct name for this sort of thing.
(You'll see what "that sort of thing" was when you get to page 23 of The Pooh Perplex)
[4] The faint jarring of vraisemblance that reaches us in bears building nests swells portentiously into the buffo*, as the ascent, the surmounting of a tree renders itself in terms of climbing stairs.
[5] Sinclair Lewis, Wright Morris, and Evan S. Connell, Jr., all working together, could never nauseate us half so successfully as does the picture of Kanga waving goodbye to Roo and Tigger as they take their water-cress and extract-of-malt sandwiches off for a sexless déjeuner sur 'l'herbe.
[6] There is, perhaps, another light in which Milne's appallingly cheerful representation of laissez-faire life should be regarded.
[7] Milne turns out to be a revolutionary malgré lui , an inspired simpleton.
[8] Is this not the very essence of the modern man, aching with existential
nausée and losing himself more deeply in despair as his longing for certainty waxes ?
( And your job ,dear readers, is to find lots more of them .....
................... it is fascinating. )
.. and here's Des mots étranges