The Romanic Review articles from January 1997

The Romanic Review archives from January 1997

Rereading rape in medieval literature: literary, historical, and theoretical reflections.
January 1, 1997... The following essay is a reflection on rape.(2) More precisely, it bears on the ways in which the theme of rape has been handled in some recent scholarship--in a number of books and articles, and in a wide array of lectures and...

The inquisitorial origins of literary debate.
January 1, 1997... While common conceptions of encounters between Catholic clergy and heretics during the Middle Ages are often limited to the in camera interrogations and auto-da-fes of the Inquisition, in twelfth-century Languedoc Catholics and...

Of horns and words: a reading of Rabelais's signs.
January 1, 1997... Among all the episodes of the Rabelaisian corpus perhaps that of the frozen words (Quart Livre 55-56) is the most disturbing because it forces the reader to stop short and consider a virtual oxymoron. Indeed, the antithetical nature of...

"Ce nceud subtil": Moliere's invention of comedy from 'L'Etourdi' to 'Les Fourberies de Scapin.'
January 1, 1997... Moliere is rarely taken seriously as a writer. His plays are most appreciated as social, moral, or philosophical documents. They are literature, to be sure, but are they literary? Are they writerly? Moliere seems, more often than not,...

Diderot's family romance: 'Les Bijoux Indiscrets' reappraised.
January 1, 1997... In his perceptive analysis of Les Bijoux indiscrets, Ellrich situates it in a tradition of debate on women, "the familiar opposition dating at least from the Roman de la Rose".(1) There is on the one hand the "Platonic defense of...

Nerval's "Le Christ aux Oliviers": the subject writes after its own death.(Gerard de Nerval)
January 1, 1997... On the one hand, saying `I die' is the condition of possibility of any `I' whatsoever; on the other hand, `I die' is not anything that can be said by an `I' since death can have no, is no, subject. --Andrzej Warminski(1)...

Fiction et transgression epistemologique: le mythe de l'origine dans 'La Tentation de saint Antione' de Flaubert.
January 1, 1997... Fiction et documentation sont souvent indissociables chez Flaubert. Les livres peuvent etre les substituts d'un referent disparu comme dans Salammbo (1862): une Carthage imaginaire est inventee A partir de donnees pheniciennes,...

"Ce tourment qui est un rire": Maurice Blanchot with Samuel Beckett.
January 1, 1997... "Le signe de son importance, c'est que l'ecrivain n'ait rien a dire. Cela aussi est risible. . . . il n'est pas si courant qu'un homme n'ait rien a dire." Faux pas ". . . il semble impossible de parler pour ne rien dire,...

Praxis and parapraxis: Sartre's "Le Mur."(Jean-Paul Sartre's story)
January 1, 1997... I will not tell him the whereabouts of my friends nor of my enemies, either... Am I a spy in the land of the living, that I should deliver men to Death? EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY. "Conscientious Objector". Ou...

'Tel Quel' and surrealism: a re-evaluation. Has the avant-garde become a theory?
January 1, 1997... Is the notion of the avant-garde in culture irrelevant and out of date? If this question is answered positively, then a further question: what are the possibilities for the avant-garde in literature in the present climate, also...

Selon Mallarme.
January 1, 1997... By Paul Benichou (Bibliotheque des Idees). Paris: Gallimard, 1995. Pp. 420. 185 FF. This volume completes Professor Benichou's series of studies of the history of Romantic poetics published with Gallimard (Le Temps des prophetes....