Polyphony and counterpoint: Mechanisms of seduction in the diaries of Helen Hessel and Henri Pierre Roché (original) (raw)
Related papers
2015
Après l'amour, Agnès Vannouvong's first novel, gained critical attention when it was published in 2013 as much for its literary qualities as for the erotic nature of its prose. An exploration of female love and doubly so because the novel treats love between women, Après l'amour is a text haunted by the inter-textual presence of Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig and Violette Leduc and which tells the tale of a young Parisian lesbian on the rebound at the end of a long relationship. Taking as its starting point formulations on the erotic by Marguerite Duras and Audrey Lorde, this article proposes to discuss the relationship between desire, the erotic and artistic creation at work in Vannouvong's text. It will consider what it means to write a Don Juan-esque lesbian narrative, set in a capital city (over) synonymous with the romantic and the sensual-an eroticized topography par excellence-at a time when the very codes of amorous encounters are experiencing a radical tra...
Brown University Comparative Literature Theses and Dissertations, 2021
A ghost is haunting the eighteenth-century novel – the ghost of Lucretia, the chaste Roman matron who killed herself after being raped by Tarquinius and whose death ushered in the birth of the Roman Republic. With the rise of the epistolary novel in the eighteenth century, many great writers entered the scene to re-write the story of Lucretia, and new Lucretia stories emerged – among which Clarissa (1748) by the English novelist Samuel Richardson and Julie (1761) by the Genevan philosopher and writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau are two great examples. Both novels are attempts to rehabilitate the virtue of a supposedly “fallen” woman: despite their “tarnished virtue,” the heroines Clarissa and Julie both provide new models for feminine virtue and female heroism. However, the question remains: under what value system are Clarissa and Julie deemed as “fallen” women, and who is it to determine whether they are “fallen” or not? In this project, I will show how Clarissa and Julie are not only physically seduced by men but also ideologically seduced by an aristocratic patriarchy that is perpetuated not just by men but also by women – and whether these young ladies have the free will to consent or not consent to this multi-layered seduction.
Romance Quarterly, 2021
Yves Navarre's literary work is one of the greatest materialisations of epistolary writing in postmodern literature. This article aims to analyse the different elements and procedures through which the epistolary matter becomes a practice of postmodern writing that continues to evolve throughout his prolix literary oeuvre. First, the epistolary writing of fictional characters becomes an element of the renarrativisation that participates in processes of discontinuity: a progressive fragmental writing-from his first novel Lady Black (1971) to the last Dernier dimanche avant la fin du siècle (1994)-and the hybridisation with diaristic writing and literary metadiscourse-Le Petit Galopin de nos corps (1977), Kurwenal ou la Part des êtres (1977), Le Temps voulu (1979), Romances sans paroles (1982). Besides, these same practices are brought into the autofictional space, where the possibilities of hypertextuality are further deepened by quotation, intertext and metadiscourse-Biographie (1981), Romans, un roman (1988). Finally, the two spaces converge in an auto/alter-fiction in which postmodern diversel materialises through experimentation with alterity, giving rise to récits indécidables-L'Espérance de beaux voyages (1984), La terrasse des audiences au moment de l'adieu (1990). Throughout his entire literary work, and in all the aforementioned spaces, the abundant metadiscourse about epistolarity allows to draw a sort of postmodern phenomenology of epistolary activity.
Sexual-textual erotics in Après l’amour by Agnes Vannouvong
2015
Abstract: Apres l’amou r, Agnes Vannouvong’s first novel, gained critical attention when it was published in 2013 as much for its literary qualities as for the erotic nature of its prose. An exploration of female love and doubly so because the novel treats love between women, Apres l’amour is a text haunted by the inter-textual presence of Marguerite Duras, Monique Wittig and Violette Leduc and which tells the tale of a young Parisian lesbian on the rebound at the end of a long relationship. Taking as its starting point formulations on the erotic by Marguerite Duras and Audrey Lorde, this article proposes to discuss the relationship between desire, the erotic and artistic creation at work in Vannouvong’s text. It will consider what it means to write a Don Juan-esque lesbian narrative, set in a capital city (over) synonymous with the romantic, the sensual and even the downright saucy, and this at a time when the very codes of amorous encounters are experiencing a radical transformati...
Gender and Voice in the French Novel: 1730-1782 (book)
Routledge, 2017
Analyzing four best-selling novels - by both women and men - written in the feminine voice, this book traces how the creation of women-centered salons and the emergence of a feminine poetic style engendered a new type of literature in eighteenth-century France. The author argues that writing in a female voice allowed writers of both sexes to break with classical notions of literature and style, so that they could create a modern sensibility that appealed to a larger reading public, and gave them scope to innovate with style and form. Wolfgang brings to light how the 'female voice' in literature came to embody the language of sociability, but also allowed writers to explore the domain of inter-subjectivity, while creating new bonds between writers and the reading public. Through examination of Marivaux's La Vie de Marianne, Graffigny's Lettres d'une Péruvienne, Riccoboni's Lettres de Mistriss Fanni Butlerd, and Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses, she shows that in France, this modern 'feminine' sensibility turned the least prestigious of literary genres - the novel - into the most compelling and innovative literary form of the eighteenth century. Emphasizing how the narratives analyzed here refashioned the French literary world through their linguistic innovation and expression of new forms of subjectivity, this study claims an important role for feminine-voice narratives in shaping the field of eighteenth-century literature.
Review of Judith Coffin, "Sex, Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoiir"
Simone de Beauvoir Studies, 2022
Sex, Love, and Letters is a highly engaging book that makes an important contribution to Beauvoir studies. Drawing on an archive of letters written to Beauvoir by her readers, housed in the Bibliothèque nationale de France, historian Judith G. Coffin investigates readers' receptions of Beauvoir in careful historical context.1 This picture of Beauvoir's relation to her readers is already a significant addition to the field. Yet Coffin goes beyond this picture by contending that attending to readers' letters is true to the spirit of Beauvoir's philosophy, where selves are shaped over time in concrete relation to others. Thus Coffin makes a compelling case that the letters are not only notable historical documents, but also key factors in crafting Beauvoir's self and work.
Written on the Body: Deconstructing the Patriarchal Ideology in the Classic Adultery Literature
2022
This thesis explores the multidimensional character of desire in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body through a wavelength range of an in-visible spectrum. A closer look at the writer’s use of the imaginary and the erotic suggests that the narrative of “nameless desires” (Oranges 15) is at work with its own power, chipping away at the binaries that undergird the patriarchal regulation of sexuality and subjectivity. At the core of my analysis is the deconstruction of ideologically-privileged conventions which stifle desire and the fluid expression of identity. By undermining the ascendancy of the politico-cultural discourse in favour of an aesthetic of corporeal affectivity, Winterson manages to convey a sense of queer novelty, whilst fluttering some critical dovecotes within an ethical framework. In so doing, this study ventures to scout the Wintersonian subversive quest as the writer creatively experiments with stylistic patterns in unlimited ink of poetic love and fetishistic desire against the hollowing of hackneyed clichés. As she presses on the deep connection between flesh and word, text and body, language and sensuality, Winterson brings the reader into her imaginative world that is opened up to unforeseen possibilities beyond all bounds. For that reason, I seek out to correlate the act of reading with the process of writing, each of which is driven by an overflowing force of desire. Most crucially, to elaborate on the idea of a volatile ‘plural subjectivity,’ this paper endeavors to demonstrate how the unity of the desiring subject is dissolved in “the constructive secretions of the spider’s web” (Barthes 64) where meanings are interwoven on the palimpsestic body of text.