Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Introduction: The Object In France Today, Martine Antle

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Gilles Lipovetsky has aptly characterized the last two decades of the twentieth century as a period of ideologies crumbling into ethical ambiguity and contradictory values…

From Iron To Glass: Transparency And Pluralism, Maryse Fauvel

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The author reads a number of recent architectural constructions in Paris (mainly the Louvre pyramid, but also the Musée d'Orsay and the Institut du monde arabe) and argues that they affirm the plurality of contemporary France while at once inscribing and subverting the conventions of its (once) dominant culture: the Arab world in the heart of Paris, the museum cum railway station as the focal point of conflicting tastes, the pyramid as both accomplice and critic of history. Their pluralism qualifies them as postmodern. These monuments also propose a new role for today's museum. The building itself becomes an art …

Body / Antibody, Lawrence R. Schehr

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Unique object in the exchange-system, the gay body occupies a locus where a phantom identity and an imagined reciprocity define the poles of the subject-object relation. Made of the right stuff, it is an object circulating in a system that tends to reproduce the concept of identity in its search for mirror images of itself. Often rejected by the world, it has recently become a cynosure equated with sickness, pestilence, and death in the age of AIDS. The representations of that object change: no longer perceived as a part of libidinal economy, it has become a mass of symptoms, having …

Subverting The Dominant Order: Narrative As Weapon In Simone De Beauvoir's Tous Les Hommes Sont Mortels, Barbara Klaw

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This essay argues that through the narrative techniques of point of view and embedding, Beauvoir carefully constructed her narrative and those of her male and female characters in Tous les hommes sont mortels, her third novel, published in 1946, in order to explain why males dominate society and to encourage women to fight against the current patriarchal social order. Many critics view Fosca as the principal character, and his 400-page embedded recapitulation of his past as the predominant text, but shifting the focus from Fosca to Régine, who constitutes the only focalizer of present events in the embedding text, …

Addressing Success: Fame And Narrative Strategies In Colette's La Naissance Du Jour, Juliette M. Rogers

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Colette's La Naissance du jour (1928) is probably her most renowned work on the complex mother-daughter relations between her mother Sido and herself. Yet, as I demonstrate in this article, the book is just as much about renown itself. Beginning with the theoretical works of Leo Braudy (The Frenzy of Renown), John Rodden (The Politics of Literary Reputation), and a close analysis of La Naissance du jour, I look at the ways in which Colette manipulated her narratives to create her own public images ofherself. These manipulations would allow her to perpetuate the fame that …

Reviews Of Recent Publications

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Anderson, Stephanie. Le Discours Féminin de Marguerite Duras by Julia Lauer-Chéenne

Booker, M. Keith. Literature and Domination: Sex, Knowledge, and Power in Modern Fiction by Frédérique Chevillot

Chevillot, Frédérique. La Réouverture du texte by Susan Ireland

Cixous, Hélène. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing by Jeff Schneider

Descombes, Vincent. The Barometer of Modern Reason: On the Philosophies of Current Events by André Pierre Colombat

Holmgren, Beth. Women's Works in Stalin's Time: On Lidiia Chukovskaia and Nadezhda Mandelstam by Serafima Roll

Lyotard, Jean François. Political Writings. Trans. Bill Readings and Kevin Paul Geiman by Ronald Bogue

McPherson, Karen S. …

The Disappearance Of Objects In "Surmodernity": From Object-Images To Meta-Objects, Dominique D. Fisher

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This article examines various modes of disappearance of objects from modernity to the latest stage of postmodernity. From the loss of the aura to the proliferation of fractal images, whether it be in literature, contemporary art, or daily life, objects undergo a series of mutations (object-signs, image-objects, object-images, meta-objects) that lead to a new kind of obscenity in which "jouissance" 'pleasure' is released into the madness of a vision obdurated by pathos and panopticism.

Reading In Colette: Domination, Resistance, Autonomy, Laurel Cummins

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The act of reading on the part of Colette's characters reveals itself as a dynamic involving domination and resistance. A study of passages from two of her semi-autobiographical works, La Maison de Claudine and Sido, brings to light both a positively connoted model of reading, exemplified by the character 'Colette,' and a negatively connoted model, exemplified by the older sister Juliette. While Juliette approaches texts with no sense of self, and seeks instead to be defined by the texts she reads, 'Colette' remains in relation to texts and to the discourses they contain, and resists them. Gender complicates the …

Border Crossings In Maríe Redonnet's Splendid [Seaside] Hôtel, Elizabeth A. Mazza-Anthony

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Maríe Redonnet crosses previously established boundaries in Splendid Hôtel and Seaside. Her writing flows across traditional literary genres as she revisits certain motifs, characters, and situations in her novel and play. In addition to crossing the border between the novel and theater, she echoes the works of other authors—specifically Rimbaud and Duras. Moreover, within a particular text Redonnet erases subject boundaries. That is to say, her characters are not individuals; their uniqueness is washed away by a continual ebb and flow of common characteristics and traits. By creating such fluid personae, Redonnet captures the societal homogeneity that is symptomatic …

Combas & Co. Or The Figure And The Great Divide, Monique Yaari

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

The young painter, Robert Combas, leader of the 1980s "figuration libre" 'free figuration' movement, is seen here both as representative of stylistic and thematic trends in contemporary French art, and as illustrative, through the unfolding of his career, of the object "painting" and its sociology in contemporary France. Examined are: first, the "Postmodern convergence" of figurative, indeed narrative art, with the collapse of the "great divide" between elite and popular art forms; and second, traits such as hypertrophic verbal paratext, high erotic content, and political stand. Similar threads are followed in the work of a number of other artists, old …

The Fictions Of Surrealism, Walter A. Strauss

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Surrealism is an attitude toward life, even more than a literary and artistic movement. It aspired to no less than the remaking of man and the world by reintroducing "everyday" magic and a new idealization of the Female. In many respects, its goal was spiritual renewal. This enterprise was most prominently successful in the domain of poetry and painting. The major spokesman for the movement, Andre Breton, disliked the novel. Nevertheless, the members of the movement and their associates made numerous ventures into prose fiction, with notable results. Four types of fiction are delineated: the neo-Gothic romance; the adventure diary …

What's Behind The Billboard: Dead Men And Private Parts. Object? Sign? Thing?, Peter Schofer

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

It is a truism that objects and visual sign systems convey meaning. But the meanings shift radically according to the viewer and how the signs are read. Several years ago I asked an American student to photograph scenes which either shocked her or perplexed her upon her arrival in France. One photo is of a publicity panel at the entry to Le Père Lachaise cemetery. The panel consisted of nine magazine covers, including covers for magazines on children, cooking, hunting, and computers, as well as two pornographic magazines. The young student focused on just the last two covers, thus masking …

Fashion, Bodies, And Objects, Jean-François Fourny

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

This essay is based on the assumption that the body has undergone a process of fragmentation that started with "modern" art and commodity fetishism that is being amplified today by an increasingly fetishistic high fashion industry itself relayed by music videos and a gigantic pornography industry. This article begins with a discussion of fetishism and objectification as they appear in high fashion shows where underwear becomes wear (turning the inside into the outside), thus expanding (or dissolving) the traditional notion of pornography because they are both reported in comparable terms by mainstream magazines such as Femmes and less conventional publications …