The Madder Stain (Contemporary Psychoanalytic Studies, 21) - Softcover

AnnieRamel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 900429340X ISBN 13: 9789004293403

Publisher: Brill | Rodopi, 2015

Synopsis

The "madder stain" imprinted on Tess d'Urberville's arm is part of a motif which runs through Hardy's fiction. Similar to Barthes's punctum shooting out of the studium, the stain is a place where the Real erupts, a blind spot that eludes interpretation. In the diegesis of the tragic novels, it is a surplus object whose intrusion disrupts reality and spells disaster. This book attempts to approach that unknowable kernel of jouissance by using Lacan's concepts of object-gaze and object-voice--sometimes revisited by Zizek.
The stain has a vocal quality: it is silence audible. In a world where sound cannot reverberate for lack of a structural void, voice is by necessity muted, stuck in the throat. Hence the peculiar quality of Tess's voice, a silent feminine cry that has retained something of the lost vocal object. The sound of silence is what Hardy's poetic prose allows us to hear.

About this title

About the Author:

Annie Ramel taught Victorian and contemporary literature at University Lumière-Lyon 2. She is president of FATHOM (French Association for Thomas Hardy Studies). The author of numerous articles on Thomas Hardy, she has also published a book on Great Expectations (Great Expectations: Le Père ou le pire), as well as articles on Charles Dickens, Henry James, George Eliot, and Oscar Wilde.

About this edition

• Publisher: Brill | Rodopi
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 900429340X
• ISBN 13: 9789004293403
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 190