Distant Voices Still Heard Contemporary Readings of French Renaissance Literature

• ISBN13: 9780853237952
• ISBN10: 0853237956
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-01-11
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Summary

This book seeks to satisfy a pedagogical need. It is designed for the new graduate student in England and elsewhere, although it may profitably be used by the enterprising final year undergraduate. Its aim is to introduce the modern student to readings of French Renaissance literature, drawing on the perspectives of contemporary literary theories. The volume is organised by paired readings of five major sixteenth-century French writers, with interpretations covering, among others, structuralism, semiotics, feminism and psychoanalysis. Linking these interpretations is a constant interest in problems such as the role of the reader, the nature of the text and the question of gender. The Introduction contextualises the encounter between literary theory and Renaissance texts by using the contributions as pivotal points in the development of critical thinking about this period in early modern literature. All foreign language quotations are translated into English, and the book is intended to be of practical interest to a wide range of readers, from modern linguists to those studying critical theory, comparative literature or cultural history.

Table of Contents

Editors' Foreword	vii
Introduction: The Time of Theory	1	(52)
John O'Brien
The Highs and Lows of Structuralist Reading: Rabelais, Pantagruel	53	(15)
Francois Rigolot
Rabelais' Strength and the Pitfalls of Methodology: Tiers Livre	68	(17)
Michel Jeanneret
`Blond chef, grande conqueste': Feminist Theories of the Gaze, the blason anatomique and Louise Labe's Sonnet 6	85	(22)
Ann Rosalind Jones
Louise Labe's Feminist Poetics	107	(16)
Carla Freccero
Reading and Writing in the Tenth Story of the Heptameron	123	(15)
Floyd Gray
Fetishism and Storytelling in Nouvelle 57 of Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron	138	(17)
Nancy Frelick
Creative Choreography: Intertextual Dancing in Ronsard's Sonnets pour Helene: II, 30	155	(16)
Malcolm Quainton
An Overshadowed Valediction: Ronsard's Dedicatory Epistle to Villeroy	171	(14)
Thomas Greene
`De l'amitie' (Essais 1.28): `Luy' and `Moy'	185	(17)
Ann Moss
Montaigne's Death Sentences: Narrative and Subjectivity in `De la diversion' (Essais 3.4)	202	(15)
Lawrence Kritzman
Select Bibliography	217	(5)
Index	222