Sightings : mirrors in texts -- texts in mirrors / Joyce O. Lowrie.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lowrie, Joyce O.

Series:

At the interface/probing the boundaries ; v. 54.

At the interface/probing the boundaries. Visual literacies.

At the interface/probing the boundaries ; 54

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chiasmus.

French literature--History and criticism.

French literature.

French language--Rhetoric.

French language.

French language--Style.

Symmetry in literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam ; New York : Rodopi, c2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Mirrors are mesmerizing. The rhetorical figure that represents a mirror is called a chiasmus , a pattern derived from the Greek letter X (Chi). This pattern applies to sentences such as “one does not live to eat ; one eats to live .” It is found in myths, plays, poems, biblical songs, short stories, novels, epics. Numerous studies have dealt with repetition, difference, and Narcissism in the fields of literature, music, and art. But mirror structures, per se , have not received systematic notice. This book analyses mirror imagery, scenes, and characters in French prose texts, in chronological order, from the 17th to the 20th centuries. It does so in light of literal, metaphoric, and rhetorical structures. Works analysed in the traditional French canon, written by such writers as Laclos, Lafayette, and Balzac, are extended by studies of texts composed by Barbey d’Aurevilly, Georges Rodenbach, Jean Lorrain, and Pieyre de Mandiargues. This work appeals to readers interested in linguistics, French history, psychology, art, and material culture. It invites analyses of historical and ideological contexts, rhetorical strategies, symmetry and asymmetry. Ovid’s Narcissus and Alice in Wonderland are paradigms for the study of micro and macro-structures. Analyses of mirrors as cultural artefacts are significant to Lowrie’s sight seeing .

Contents:

Preliminary Material

Veluti in Speculum (As in a Looking Glass)

The Mirror in the Middle: Mme de Thémines’s Letter in Lafayette’s La Princesse de Clèves

The Prévan Cycle as Pre-Text in Laclos’s Les Liaisons dangereuses

The Frame and the Framed: Mirroring Texts in Balzac’s Facino Cane

Barbey d’Aurevilly’s Une Page d’histoire: Incest as Mirror Image

Reversals and Disappearance: Georges Rodenbach’s L’Ami des miroirs and Bruges-la-morte

Man Mirrors Toad, or Vice-Versa: Decadent Narcissism in Jean Lorrain’s Oeuvre

The Wheel of Fortune as Mirror: André Pieyre de Mandiargues’s La Motocyclette

Kaleidoscopic Reflections in Guise of a Conclusion: Close, Maupassant, Douglas, and Borges.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

94-012-0656-2

1-4356-9520-8

OCLC:

714567278

Publisher Number:

10.1163/9789401206563 DOI