The romantic art of confession : De Quincey, Musset, Sand, Lamb, Hogg, Frémy, Soulié, Janin / Susan M. Levin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Levin, Susan M., 1950-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sand, George, 1804-1876.

English prose literature--19th century--History and criticism.

English prose literature.

Confession in literature.

Authors, English--19th century--Biography--History and criticism.

Authors, English.

Authors, French--19th century--Biography--History and criticism.

Authors, French.

De Quincey, Thomas, 1785-1859. Confessions of an English opium-eater.

De Quincey, Thomas.

Hogg, James, 1770-1835. Private memoirs and confessions of a justified sinner.

Hogg, James.

Musset, Alfred de, 1810-1857. Confession d'un enfant du siècle.

Musset, Alfred de.

Sand, George, 1804-1876--Confession d'une jeune fille.

Sand, George.

Lamb, Charles, 1775-1834. Confessions of a drunkard.

Lamb, Charles.

Autobiography.

Romanticism.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

147 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Columbia, SC : Camden House, 1998.

Summary:

The Romantic Art of Confession is about works specifically entitled "confessions" written during the Romantic period in Britain and France: Thomas De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Alfred de Musset's Confession d'un enfant du siecle, George Sand's La Confession d'une jeune fille, Charles Lamb's Confessions of a Drunkard, and James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner are among the works dealt with in this study.

Professor Levin argues that Romantic prose works entitled confessions share certain characteristics: I) they appropriate a religious form and employ it in a secular way 2) the authors of these works react to the self-transparency of Rousseau's Confessions by creating narrators (confessors) with whom they identify and from whom they distance themselves 3) the works focus on a specific problem, such as opium addiction, alcoholism, or illegitimacy, that creates guilt or anxiety but which suggests broader issues 4) the confessors are outcasts 5) these narrators deal with similar issues regarding their narratives (such as their truth, comprehensiveness, and usefulness). Each of the book's chapters considers a confessional work as representative of the concerns of autobiographical discourse in general and of the form of Romantic confession in particular.

These readings draw upon the procedures of post-structuralist critics and upon the psychological and feminist theories of Lacan and Chodorow. Reading these similarly conceived texts together illuminates uniquely the Romantic art of confession as it illuminates the written craft of self-recollection and definition.

Contents:

1 Romantic Confessional Writing in Britain and in France 1

2 Thomas De Quincey: Confessions of an English Opium-Eater 18

3 Alfred de Musset: La Confession d'un enfant du siecle 42

4 George Sand: La Confession d'une jeune fille 61

5 Charles Lamb: "Confessions of a Drunkard" 83

6 James Hogg: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner 99

7 Frederic Soulie, Arnould Fremy, Jules Janin, and the Pattern of Romantic Confessional Writing 120.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [131]-139) and index.

ISBN:

1571131892

OCLC:

37783004