The European Roman d’Analyse: Unconsummated Love Stories from Boccaccio to Stendhal
Adele Kudish, "The European Roman d’Analyse: Unconsummated Love Stories from Boccaccio to Stendhal"
English | ISBN: 1501352229 | 2020 | 240 pages | PDF | 2 MB
English | ISBN: 1501352229 | 2020 | 240 pages | PDF | 2 MB
Through close readings of a selection of European novels and novellas written between 1340 and 1827, this study of "analytical fiction" examines how unconsummated love stories probe the frailty of self-knowledge. Tracing elements of what the French call the roman d'analyse in the works of Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, Cervantes, Marie de Lafayette, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Stendhal, Adele Kudish discusses how the metaphor of unconsummated love is deployed to represent a fundamental lack of insight into the self.
Rather than depicting the mind as transparent, analytical fiction deals in the opacity of the mind. Narrators and characters are faced with deception, misprision, doubt, and confusion, leading to self-deception, jealousy, and crises of self.
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