People are so divided about La Princesse de Clèves' they're ready to devour each other.' So reported Mme de Lafayette, to whom his landmark of French fiction is traditionally attributed, when it first appeared in 1678. Over three centuries the initial divisions have widened into large areas of critical disagreement. Questions of interpretation in La Princesse de Clèves' outlines the main areas of controversy and confronts the radically divergent critical responses that have been made with the witness of the text itself. Without seeking to advance easy solutions, it suggests plausible readings and possible approaches in the light of the evidence provided by language and ideas more uncertain and ambiguous than might at first appear. Offering as it does a wide-ranging review of recent critical opinion and providing the most comprehensive and up-to-date bibliographical tool at present available, this important new work is an invaluable tool for all readers and students of this famous novel.

People are so divided about La Princesse de Clèves' they're ready to devour each other.' So reported Mme de Lafayette, to whom his landmark of French fiction is traditionally attributed, when it first appeared in 1678. Over three centuries the initial divisions have widened into large areas of critical disagreement. Questions of interpretation in La Princesse de Clèves' outlines the main areas of controversy and confronts the radically divergent critical responses that have been made with the witness of the text itself. Without seeking to advance easy solutions, it suggests plausible readings and possible approaches in the light of the evidence provided by language and ideas more uncertain and ambiguous than might at first appear. Offering as it does a wide-ranging review of recent critical opinion and providing the most comprehensive and up-to-date bibliographical tool at present available, this important new work is an invaluable tool for all readers and students of this famous novel.

This volume, prompted by the publication in 1999 of Moya Longstaffe's remarkable study, Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature: Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel, further investigates and analyses the multiple appearances of Passion and Heroism in literature. It pursues the exploration of these themes in a variety of cultures (English, French, German, Spanish), genres, and critical approaches. In addition, the chronological span represented is extremely wide. Contributions range from La Fontaine, Molière and Voltaire to Rimbaud and Camus; from Baudelaire to Beckett; from Wagner to Goytisolo. This very diversity gives necessary context, providing scope for reflection and analysis. Although passion seems timeless, can heroism have any real meaning - apart from an individual and existential one - in our postmodern age? Has a notion at the centre of European culture for so many centuries really disappeared from our intellectual and cultural universe? This volume will be of interest to all students of literature, whatever their critical or linguistic allegiance, since it focuses on the varying manifestations of two vital ingredients of all societies and cultures.

From the overwhelmingly Christian culture of the Middle Ages and pre-Enlightenment France to the wide diversity prevalent in (post)modern times, including the rise of Islam within French borders, a radical shift has permeated French society, a shift that is reflected in the work of the writers chosen for this book. Moreover, the sensitivity of women writers to the individual side of spiritual life, in contrast to the practices of organized religion, also emerges as a major trend, with women often being seen as a voice for social and religious change, or for a more meaningful, personal faith.

Mirrors are mesmerizing. The rhetorical figure that represents a mirror is called a chiasmus, a pattern derived from the Greek letter X (Chi). This pattern applies to sentences such as “one does not live to eat; one eats to live.” It is found in myths, plays, poems, biblical songs, short stories, novels, epics. Numerous studies have dealt with repetition, difference, and Narcissism in the fields of literature, music, and art. But mirror structures, per se, have not received systematic notice. This book analyses mirror imagery, scenes, and characters in French prose texts, in chronological order, from the 17th to the 20th centuries. It does so in light of literal, metaphoric, and rhetorical structures. Works analysed in the traditional French canon, written by such writers as Laclos, Lafayette, and Balzac, are extended by studies of texts composed by Barbey d’Aurevilly, Georges Rodenbach, Jean Lorrain, and Pieyre de Mandiargues. This work appeals to readers interested in linguistics, French history, psychology, art, and material culture. It invites analyses of historical and ideological contexts, rhetorical strategies, symmetry and asymmetry. Ovid’s Narcissus and Alice in Wonderland are paradigms for the study of micro and macro-structures. Analyses of mirrors as cultural artefacts are significant to Lowrie’s sight seeing.

This volume was the first historical introduction to women's writing in France from the sixth century to the present day. Specially-commissioned essays by leading scholars provide an introduction in English to the wealth and diversity of French women writers, offering fascinating readings and perspectives. The volume as a whole offers a cohesive history of women's writing which has sometimes been obscured by the canonisation of a small feminine elite. Each chapter focuses on a given period and a range of writers, taking account of prevailing sexual ideologies and women's activities in, or their relation to, the social, political, economic and cultural surroundings. Complemented by an extensive bibliography of primary and secondary works and a biographical guide to more than one hundred and fifty women writers, it represents an invaluable resource for those wishing to discover or extend their knowledge of French literature written by women.

Set against the framework of modern political concerns, Treason: Medieval and Early Modern Adultery, Betrayal, and Shame considers the various forms of treachery in a variety of sources, including literature, historical chronicles, and material culture creating a complex portrait of the development of this high crime.

Through close readings of a selection of European novels and novellas written between 1340 and 1827, this study of "analytical fiction" examines how unconsummated love stories probe the frailty of self-knowledge. Tracing elements of what the French call the roman d'analyse in the works of Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, Cervantes, Marie de Lafayette, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Stendhal, Adele Kudish discusses how the metaphor of unconsummated love is deployed to represent a fundamental lack of insight into the self. Rather than depicting the mind as transparent, analytical fiction deals in the opacity of the mind. Narrators and characters are faced with deception, misprision, doubt, and confusion, leading to self-deception, jealousy, and crises of self. The European Roman d'Analyse reads such epistemological failures as symptoms of a more fundamental preoccupation with the human psyche as un-chartable and bizarre. In this way, the authors of romans d'analyse enact a larger philosophical project: an anatomy of the psyche wherein we are unable-or unwilling-to know ourselves.

As the end of the 20th century approaches, many predict that it will mirror the 19th-century decline into decadence. The author of this text finds a closer analogy with the culture wars of France in the 1690s - the time of a battle of the books known as the Quarrel between the Ancients and Moderns.