Armstrong (all founder-members of the PCRN), and there is an extra-Leeds contribution from Lucy Mazdon (Southampton). In their Introduction, Holmes and Looseley provide a useful outline of how the popular is best approached 'as an unstable discursive construct within which there is nevertheless a loose coherence' (p. 3). The editors explain further that their aim is 'to redeploy humanities perspectives' in order to bridge 'extremes of textualism and sociologism, by combining textual study of

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... ious kinds with the study of historical, national, sociopolitical or discursive contexts, as appropriate' (p. 8). This Introduction is very helpful in its insightful rehearsing of debates over high-, middle-, and lowbrow perspectives on culture, and leads well into the six chapters that follow. In the first of his two individual contributions Looseley provides a typically elegant and thought-provoking discussion of France's changing political definitions of culture since the nineteenth century, also blending considerations of theory with the more 'policy' dimensions of culture. In his second chapter he presents an analysis of authenticity and appropriation in French popular music, thereby focusing on the first of the contemporary popular forms explored in the volume. Holmes then considers 'mimetic prejudice' in the popular novel, arguing, in conclusion, for histories of French literature to take better notice of the fiction read by the masses as well as by the elite. Platten's interesting discussion of why popular films are popular complements the subsequent analysis by Lucy Mazdon of how French television negotiates the 'national popular'. The volume concludes with a fascinating chapter by Nigel Armstrong on the ways in which language and social and linguistic change in France, and the phenomenon of social convergence in general, help us to understand the relationship between popular culture and popular/standard language. All in all, this volume is an excellent addition to our thinking about the ways in which popular culture in France has been conceptualized and materialized. As we have come to realize, French popular cultural forms and the debates around them are particularly fruitful as a case study of more general theoretical aspects of the notion of popular culture itself. As popular culture in the forms analysed here -and all of its other materializations -slowly gains traction in British modern languages teaching and research, this volume will be required reading for researchers and students alike.