Love, Desire and Transcendence in French Literature

Deciphering Eros

Paul Gifford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781351921251
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

European literature and theory of the twentieth century have been intensely preoccupied with questions of 'Desire', whereas 'love' has increasingly represented a fractured and strange, if not actually suspect, proposal: this is a prime symptom of an age of deep cultural mutation and uncertainty. Paul Gifford's book allows this considerable contemporary phenomenon to be observed steadily and whole, with strategic understanding of its origins, nature and meaning. Gifford paints a clear and coherent picture of the evolution of erotic ideas and their imaginary and formal expressions in modern French writing. He first retraces the formative matrix of French tradition by engaging with five classic sources: Plato's Symposium, the Song of Songs, the myth of Genesis, the tension between Greek Eros and Christian Agape and the repercussions of Nietzsche's declaration of the 'death of God'. Modern variations on these perennial problematics are then pursued in ten chapters devoted to Proust, Valéry, Claudel, Breton, Bataille, Duras, Barthes, Irigarary, Emmanuel, Kristeva. Literary and theoretical perspectives are perfectly blended in his study of these attempts at 'deciphering Eros'. The book will appeal not only to students of French literature, but to all those interested in the cultural upheavals of the twentieth century.

Index

Abelard and Héloïse 77, 174

Adam and Eve 36, 47, 49, 295, 298, 315

Agape. See love

Alexandrian, S. 196, 197, 233

androgyny 11–12, 122, 127, 174, 242–43, 248, 258, 292–93, 300 (n.8), 307

Aquinas, Saint Thomas 141, 150, 261, 312–14

Augustine, Saint 62–3, 154, 209, 251, 278, 314

Balzac, H. de 90

Barth, K. 288–89

Barthes, R. 196, 236, 237–54, 302, 328

Bataille, G. 175, 195–211, 214, 215, 226, 229, 238, 258, 282, 288, 307, 308

Baudelaire, Ch. 52, 70, 93–4, 96, 111, 154

Baudrillart, J. 196, 235

Beatrice 78

beauty 16, 29–30, 92–3, 112–15, 123–4, 165, 179–82, 182–4, 184–7, 197, 205, 298

Bergson, H. 56

Bernanos, G. 278

Bernard de Clairvaux 62, 311–12, 319

Blanchot, M. 83, 229

body 55, 106, 196–7, 233, 258, 262, 265; Platonic ‘body’ and Biblical ‘flesh’ 43 (n.24), 265

Bossuet 53

Breton, A. 173, 175, 177–94, 195, 198, 201, 204, 206, 210, 258, 324

Buber, M. 31

Carte du tendre, la 80

Catharism 55

Chateaubriand, A. de 90–91

Christianity

and Christendom: 57, 59–60, 62–3, 233; foundational adversary of French secularism 57, 259; patristic mistrust of sexuality 60–3; moral regulation of sex 188–9, 208–9, 268; voluptas ab opprobriis vindicata 140–41, 204–5, 259, 278, 283–6; ‘caritas synthesis’ 61–2, 75, 154; ‘One Love’ tradition 154, 169, 208; Communion of saints, 167; God-orientation of Eros 207

culture narrat...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Author’s Note on Translation of Quoted Material
• Introduction
• First Series: Origins, Recognitions
• Second Series: Love as Cultural Construct
• Third Series: Deconstructing Romantic Transcendence
• Fourth Series: The Immanent Beyond
• Fifth Series: The Postmodern Symposium
• Sixth Series: Agape Remembered?
• Conclusion: Remembering the Past, Negotiating the Future
• Select Bibliography
• Index