Questions of Influence in Modern French Literature

by Baldwin, Thomas; Fowler, James; de Medeiros, Ana

• ISBN13: 9781137309136
• ISBN10: 113730913X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-10-31
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

What is meant by 'influence' in the realm of literature, art, music or ideas? How is it related to concepts such as pastiche or parody? Self-evidently, our understanding of any 'past' work depends on contemporary methods of reading; but does it makes sense, therefore, to claim that influence can be retroactive? Harold Bloom used the term 'the anxiety of influence' as the title of a famous study, but his is only one of many theorizations that span the modern era. This collection of essays examines a variety of texts written in French from the eighteenth century onwards, together with a number of visual and musical works. (All quotations in other languages are followed by translations in English.) The contributors elucidate, question and/or draw on major theories of influence, in new readings of well-known works. Whilst all engage with French and/or francophone culture, the works examined open cross-disciplinary perspectives.

Author Biography

Thomas Baldwin is Senior Lecturer in French and Co-Director of the Centre for Modern European Literature at the University of Kent, UK. Previous publications include The Picture as Spectre in Diderot, Proust and Deleuze (2011) and Text and Image in Modern European Culture (co-edited with Natasha Grigorian and Margaret Rigaud-Drayton, 2012).

James Fowler teaches French at the University of Kent, UK. He works mainly on French and British literature and thought of the Enlightenment era. Previous publications include Voicing Desire: Family and Sexuality in Diderot's Fiction (2000); The Libertine's Nemesis: the Prude in 'Clarissa' and the 'roman libertin' (2012) and New Essays on Diderot (ed. 2012).

Ana de Medeiros is Reader in French and Life Writing and is Academic Director of the University of Kent at Paris, France. Her primary research interests are Francophone and Lusophone writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Previous publications include Les Visages de l'autre: Alibis, masques et identité dans 'Alexis ou le Traité du vain combat', 'Denier du rêve' et 'Mémoires d'Hadrien' de Marguerite Yourcenar (1996); L'Exil et l'écriture (co-edited with Berengère Deprez, 1999) and co-editor of a special issue of the International Journal of Francophone Studies 15:2. She is currently researching a book on Marie Nimier.

Table of Contents

Series Preface
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Influence: Form, Subjects Time; Daniel Brewer
1. Voltaire, Dante and the Dynamics of Influence; Russell Goulbourne
2. Post-Revolutionary Uses of Pascal; Philip Knee
3. The Survival of Sade in French Literature of the 1950s; Pettine Coudurier
4. Jules Laforgue, Hartmann and Schopenhauer: From Influence to rewriting; Madeleine Guy
5. Text, Image and Music: Paul Valéry's Melodrama Sémiramis and the Influence of the Ballets Russes; Natasha Grigorian
6. Influence as Appropriation of the Creative Gesture: Henri Matisse's Poèmes de Charles d'Orléans; Kathryn Brown
7. Samuel Beckett's Funerary Sculpture; Claire Lozier
8. 'Périmer d'avance': Blanchot, Derrida and Influence; John McKeane
9. Figuring Influence: Some Influential Metaphors in Derrida, Valéry and Freud; Paul Earlie
10. Roland Barthes's Ghosts: Photobiographical Influence and Legacies; Fabien Arriberth-Narce
11. 'Le Cycle de Nestor': Patrick Pécherot's Rewriting of Léo Malet; Angela Kimyongür
12. Jacques Roubaud's Rejection of Japoniste Influence: Tokyo infra-ordinaire; Lucy O'Meara
13. Ghosts of Influence? Spectrality in the Novels of Marie Darrieussecq; Carine Fréville
14. 'Now I See Me, Now You Don't': Working with/against Paternal Influence in Marie Nimier's Photo-Photo; Ana de Medeiros