Questions Of Influence In Modern French Literature

This collection engages with questions of influence, a vexed and problematic concept whose intellectual history is both ancient and vast. It examines a range of texts written in French, sometimes in dialogue with visual/musical works, drawn mainly from the eighteenth century onwards. Connections are made with related work in a range of disciplines.

The aim of the book is, first, to give to the novice in literary history a clear idea of the field he is entering¿to define its characteristics and limits, its relations with the two neighboring provinces of literary criticism and history; next, to familiarize him with the indispensable implements and tools; lastly, to introduce him to the principal problems that may arise and to help him to find the solutions.The book answers many persistent problems of the subject which have hampered the complete understanding of the subject. These problems, after all, are not endlessly varied: they fall under a certain number of headings, corresponding to different stages in the creation of a literary work and to its varying fortunes with the public; for instance, questions of linguistic or grammatical commentary and interpretation, questions of sources or of influence, questions of chronology or of authenticity, of biography or of bibliography, of language, style, or versification. The student is never the first person who has had to deal with them: others before him have made the attempt; others have solved them. Their researches, considered particularly from the point of view of method, form a treasure of accumulated experience on which the present volume invites the newcomer to draw as often as he can. ¿To be useful to students has been my constant thought¿

Futurist Women broadens current debates on Futurism and literary studies by demonstrating the expanding global impact of women Futurist artists and writers in the period succeeding the First World War. This study initially focuses on the local: the making of the self in the work by the women who were affiliated with the journal L'Italia futurista during World War I in Florence. But then it broadens its field of inquiry to the global. It compares the achievements of these women with those of key precursors and followers. It also conceives these women's work as an ongoing dialogue with contemporary political and scientific trends in Europe and North America, especially first wave feminism, eugenics, naturism and esotericism. Finally, it examines the vital importance and repercussions of these women's ideas in current debates on gender and the posthuman condition. This ground-breaking study will prove invaluable for all scholars and upper-level students of modern European literature, Futurism, and gender studies.

Moving through the elegiac ruins of the Berlin Wall and the Yugoslav disintegration, Writing Postcommunism explores literary evocations of the pervasive disappointment and mourning that have marked the postcommunist twilight.

This book is about how France's two major documentary authors of the nineteenth century – Gustave Flaubert and Émile Zola – incorporate medical knowledge about the body into their works, and in so doing exploit its metaphorical potential of the body to engage in critical reflection about the accumulation and reconfiguration of knowledge.