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Baroque Fictions
Revisioning the Classical in Marguerite Yourcenar
Series: - Faux Titre Online, Volume: 271
- Faux Titre, Volume: 271
Author:
This volume is the first in-depth study of the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenarâs fiction to contend that the authorâs texts exhibit in unexpected ways numerous characteristics of the neobaroque. This subversive, postmodern aesthetic privileges extravagant artistic play, flux, and heterogeneity. In demonstrating the affinity of Yourcenarâs texts with the neobaroque, the author of this study casts doubt on their presumed transparency and stability, qualities associated with the French neoclassical tradition of the past century, where the Yourcenarian Åuvre is most often placed.
Yourcenarâs election to the prestigious, tradition-bound French Academy in 1981 as its first female âimmortalâ cemented her already well-established niche in the twentieth-century French literary pantheon. A self-taught classicist, historian, and modern-day French moralist, Yourcenar has been praised for her polished, âclassicalâ style and analyzed for her use of myth and universal themes.
While those factors at first seem to justify amply the neoclassical label by which Yourcenar is most widely recognized, this studyâs close reading of four of her fictions reveals instead the textsâ opacity and subversive resistance to closure, their rejection of stable interpretations, and their deconstruction of postmodern Grand Narratives. Theirs is a neobaroque âlogic,â which stresses the absence of theoretical assurances and the limitations of reason.
The coincidence of the new millennium â which in so many ways reflects Yourcenarâs disquieting vision â and her centenary in 2003 affords not so much an excuse to reject the authorâs neoclassical label, but rather the obligation to reassess it in light of contemporary discourses. This study will be of interest to students of twentieth-century French fiction and comparative literature, especially that of the latter half of the twentieth century.
Yourcenarâs election to the prestigious, tradition-bound French Academy in 1981 as its first female âimmortalâ cemented her already well-established niche in the twentieth-century French literary pantheon. A self-taught classicist, historian, and modern-day French moralist, Yourcenar has been praised for her polished, âclassicalâ style and analyzed for her use of myth and universal themes.
While those factors at first seem to justify amply the neoclassical label by which Yourcenar is most widely recognized, this studyâs close reading of four of her fictions reveals instead the textsâ opacity and subversive resistance to closure, their rejection of stable interpretations, and their deconstruction of postmodern Grand Narratives. Theirs is a neobaroque âlogic,â which stresses the absence of theoretical assurances and the limitations of reason.
The coincidence of the new millennium â which in so many ways reflects Yourcenarâs disquieting vision â and her centenary in 2003 affords not so much an excuse to reject the authorâs neoclassical label, but rather the obligation to reassess it in light of contemporary discourses. This study will be of interest to students of twentieth-century French fiction and comparative literature, especially that of the latter half of the twentieth century.
I. A Frontispiece
II. Introduction
Marguerite Yourcenar and the Writing of Fiction: An Aesthetic Imperative
III. Chapter 1
Anna,Soror...: Neobaroque Sacralizes the Abject
IV. Chapter 2
Denier du rêve : Baroque Discourses,Fascist Practices
V. Chapter 3
Neobaroque Humanism: âSounding the Abyss â in L âÅuvre au Noir
VI. Chapter 4
Neobaroque Confessions: Un homme obscur and the Oppressive Superficiality of Words
VII. Conclusion
An Author for the New Millennium
VIII. Selected Works Cited and Consulted
IX. Index of Proper Names
II. Introduction
Marguerite Yourcenar and the Writing of Fiction: An Aesthetic Imperative
III. Chapter 1
Anna,Soror...: Neobaroque Sacralizes the Abject
IV. Chapter 2
Denier du rêve : Baroque Discourses,Fascist Practices
V. Chapter 3
Neobaroque Humanism: âSounding the Abyss â in L âÅuvre au Noir
VI. Chapter 4
Neobaroque Confessions: Un homme obscur and the Oppressive Superficiality of Words
VII. Conclusion
An Author for the New Millennium
VIII. Selected Works Cited and Consulted
IX. Index of Proper Names