In this 1995 book, which includes a substantial introduction, Jeffrey Mehlman confronts the politically devastating resonances in the work of several leading French writers. The essays focus on the series of enigmas surrounding the 'Blanchot affair' - a scandal provoked by Mehlman's revelation in 1977 that Maurice Blanchot, one of the tutelary figures of contemporary French thought, had in the 1930s been a prominent fascist journalist. Mehlman takes the issue of Blanchot's forgotten political essays deep into the most revered - and misunderstood - of his novels, L'Arrêt de mort. Using this affair as a point of departure, Mehlman sheds light on the question of the usability of psychoanalysis for literary readings (examining, for example, Baudelaire, Mallarmé and Valéry); he also investigates the ideological and political connotations of similar literary and theoretical material. The volume as a whole provides a consistently provocative meditation on literature, ethics, and the experience of the French in World War II.
| ISBN: | 9780521032353 |
| Publication date: | 23rd November 2006 |
| Author: | Jeffrey (Boston University) Mehlman |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Paperback |
| Pagination: | 276 pages |
| Series: | Cambridge Studies in French |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 |