| The Limits of Narrative: Essays on Baudelaire, Flaubert, Rimbaud and Mallarme Contributor(s): Wing, Nathaniel (Author) |
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ISBN: 0521114152 ISBN-13: 9780521114158 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $39.89 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: June 2009 Annotation: This book examines the problematic area of narrative structure under conditions of severe stress. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Literary Criticism | European - French |
| Dewey: 840.900 |
| Series: Cambridge Studies in French |
| Physical Information: 0.39" H x 5.5" W x 8.5" (0.48 lbs) 168 pages |
| Themes: - Cultural Region - French |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: This book examines the problematic area of narrative structure under conditions of severe stress. Each of the four authors is shown to be concerned with the tension between narrative coherence as a desirable goal and an unfortunate check placed on the 'free' play of fantasy. This tension produces powerful disruptions of literary form in the lyric (Baudelaire, Mallarm ), prose poetry (Baudelaire, Rimbaud) and the novel (Flaubert) which are examined here. A final chapter draws out some of the historical implications of these readings in a discussion of Baudelaire's and Flaubert's trials for obscenity and of Marx's writings on France from 1848 to 1871. Professor Wing demonstrates that all these texts retain an unstable balance between earlier modes of thought, feeling and expression and the depersonal, fragmented modern text. He revises notions of modernity and invites us to reconsider traces of earlier forms of writing in more canonically modern texts. |