The Fevered Novel from Balzac to Bernanos: Frenetic Catholicism in Crisis, Delirium and Revolution (Volume 2) (Institute of Modern Languages Research) - Softcover

Manzini, Francesco

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0854572260 ISBN 13: 9780854572267

Publisher: University of London Press, 2010

Synopsis

This book examines a corpus of frenetic novels - by Balzac, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Zola, Huysmans, Bloy and Bernanos - that foreground the motif of fever within a recurring master plot: a pious young woman, just discovering her sexuality, finds herself torn between two father-figures, a doctor (typically a blood-relative, often the biological father) and a priest (the spiritual father). She contracts a disease of uncertain origin, made manifest by a series of fevers that require interpretation in the light of contemporary religious, medical and literary discourses. Manzini traces the motifs of fever and frenzy back to Rousseau, the Gothic novel and Frenetic Romanticism, as well as forward to their recuperation within Surrealism, in order to produce an original history of Frenetic Catholicism in the age of realism. Francesco Manzini is a Stipendiary Lecturer in French at Christ Church, Oxford, and is the author of Stendhal's Parallel Lives (2004). He has also published numerous articles on nineteenth-century French literature.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of London Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0854572260
• ISBN 13: 9780854572267
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 266