Subject collection: Literary Studies (221 titles, 1971–2015)

Israel Pelletier argues that Trois contes demands a different kind of reading which distinguishes it from Madame Bovary and other Flaubert texts. By the time he wrote this late work, Flaubert's attitude toward his characters and the role of fiction had changed to accommodate different social, political, and literary pressures. He constructed two opposing levels of meaning for each of the stories, straight and ironic, which produced a more fruitful way of addressing some of his concerns and assumptions about langauge and illusion. Included in this study are a provocative feminist reading of Un Coeur, an assessment of Saint Julien as Flaubert's attempt to come to terms with his originality as a writer, and an interpretation of Hérodias as an autobiography of the writing process.

The papers in this book respond to the public debate over literary canons, in the United States, and elsewhere, by placing the political-ideological aspects of the conflict inside perspectives derived from comparative literature. Canons are seen by most of the contributors as based on democratic and communal intentions or choices inevitable filtered through and colored by historical experiences and social biases.An examination of the canonical process over many centuries reveals both the impressive durability of its elements and the amazing flexibility of its outlines. The careful individual analyses, as well as the thought-provoking general contributions in this volume agree that the democracy of play is one of the strongest bonds uniting the human race. “Canons or canons”, the contributors argue, are based on it and reflect the intimate interdependence of cultural and intellectual matters with the workings of society as a whole. Contributors Charles Altieri, Lilian R. Furst, Michael G. Cooke, Robert Royal, Roger Shattuck, Rosa E.M.D. Penna, Glen M. Johnson, Yves Chevrel, Raymond A. Prier, Peter Walker, Christopher Clausen, Virgil Nemoianu.

Establishing the notion of reasonable foolishness and foolish reason as a generic principle of the old French farce, Boucquey's study examines the interdependencies among four key mimetic phenomena: the demented universe of the Feast of Fools festival, the genre of the farce, Bruegel's representation of the world, and the euphoric comedies of triumphant madness created by Moliere. This reinterpretation of French farce according to the principle of a topsy-turvy world reveals the link of madness that unites the four modes of production studied, from textual linearity, through representational surface, to theatrical three-dimensionality. Of pluralist conception, the book's eclectic critical apparatus draws readily on foundations as diverse as historicism, semiotics, structuralism, Foucauldian theory, iconography, Derridean textualization, and etymology.

This study of the fictional themes and techniques of Michel Tournier reveals his profound radicalism as a social critic and novelist despite the seeming conventionality of his works. Guided by Tournier's essays and interviews, Petit examines his fiction in light of plot sources, philosophical and anthropological training, and his belief that fiction should change the world. Close study of Vendredi ou les limbes du Pacifique, Le Roi des aulnes, Les Météores, Gaspard, Melchior et Balthazar, and La Goutte d'or, as well as the short fiction in Le Coq de bruyère and Le Médianoche amoureux, shows Tournier's revolutionary conception of plot structuring as he develops key themes, whether religion, sensuality, or prejudice, in more than twenty years spent reconceiving the nature of fiction.

Amadei-Pulice examines the conflict between Lope's dramatic formula (comedia) and the new polytechnic formula that in the hands of Calderon merged dramatic poetry with visual and auditory effects (comedia de teatro). The author places the Spanish baroque theater within the wider context of a revolution in the theory of representation, signs, and meanings that took place at the beginning of the seventeenth century and marked the appearance of a new dramatic style: the stile rappresentativo. Special attention is given to the techniques and applications of perspectival scenery, stagecraft, optics, and the creation of visual and sound effects contributed by the Florentine melodramma. The highlighting of Italian dramatic theory and practice reveals that Calderon was an innovator and creator of a new concept in theater.

Applying recent European and Anglo-American feminist scholarship to the problems of gender representation, Charnon-Deutsch challenges the prevailing idea that the 19th-century Spanish novel is woman centered. The author's examination of novels by Valera, Pereda, Alas, and Galdos demonstrates that these works are instead a complex exploration of male identity. Decoding the gender ideology of women's roles, discourse, and representations, Charnon-Deutsch uncovers in the novels multiple configurations of androcentricity as well as voyeuristic tendencies, which she interprets as a means of mastering what is threatening to the male psyche.

Malcolm K. Read employs a psychoanalytic model which sees civilization as a manner of instinctual renunciation in this analysis of selected texts from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Focusing on their moments of silence and contradiction, he demonstrates that certain attitudes toward the body expressed in these texts have a basis, albeit unconscious, in a motivation which is ultimately political. The central topics, deeply intertwined thematically and theoretically, relate to the nature and development of language; to the Baroque art of Gongora and Quevedo; to Feijoo's defense of the rationalist subject set against Torres Villarroel's subversion of the same; and to the neo-classical aesthetics of Luzan and Arteaga. The result is an interdisciplinary approach that challenges traditional assumptions in both literary criticism and linguistic historiography.

Margitic's critical edition of Pierre Corneille's Le Cid (1637) provides scholar and student with a complete, accurate resource for the study of this famous play. The original text is reproduced, with subsequent variants indicated in footnotes. The book begins with an introduction which examines the play's genesis, sources, successive modifications, critical reception, and stage fortune as well as thematic and dramatic structure, and concludes with a bibliography. Three appendices contain texts contemporary with Le Cid which comment on the work. The first two include Corneille's comments on his masterpiece and his list of Spanish sources (accompanied by French translations). The final appendix presents a selection of particularly important documents that formed part of the Querelle du Cid. All the texts are amply but not excessively annotated. A comprehensive glossary follows the appendices.

It has often been claimed that the aim of semiotics is to establish a general theory of systems of signification. However, as Jean-Claude Coquet notes in a recent collection of essays, what distinguishes one school of semiotics from another is the initial definition given of sign. If, for certain semioticians, the sign is first of all an observable phenomenon, for the Paris School it is first of all a construct and this point of departure has crucial theoretical and practical consequences. The essays appearing in these two volumes are representative of recent work carried out by members of this semiotic school. Essays in Volume I study problems more closely related to theoretical issues, while Volume II focuses more specifically on various fields of application.

A semiotic analysis is made of the six major plays by Eugene O'Neill and an attempt is made to yield a systematic analysis towards humanistic interpretations of texts. Theoretical interpretations are enriched with discussions of the plays. Technical matters such as the segmentation of the text are specified in appendices. Six semiotic dimensions have been studied: motifs, theatrical semiotic systems, their use in communicational functions, role function of the dramatis personae, their levels of awareness, and aristotelian divisions.