Capital letters : Hugo, Baudelaire, Camus, and the death penalty / Ève Morisi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Morisi, Ève, author.

Series:

FlashPoints (Evanston, Ill.) ; 33.

Flashpoints ; 33

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Camus, Albert, 1913-1960.

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867.

Hugo, Victor, 1802-1885.

Capital punishment in literature.

French literature--19th century--History and criticism.

French literature.

French literature--20th century--History and criticism.

Hugo, Victor, 1802-1885--Criticism and interpretation.

Hugo, Victor.

Baudelaire, Charles, 1821-1867--Criticism and interpretation.

Baudelaire, Charles.

Camus, Albert, 1913-1960--Criticism and interpretation.

Camus, Albert.

Criticism and interpretation.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

xiv, 265 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Evanston, Illinois : Northwestern University Press, 2020.

Summary:

"'Capital Letters' sheds new light on how literature has dealt with society's most violent legal institution, the death penalty. It investigates this question through three major French authors with markedly distinct political convictions and literary styles: Victor Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and Albert Camus. Working at the intersection of poetics, ethics, and law, Ève Morisi uncovers an unexpected transhistorical dialogue both on the modern death penalty and on the ends and means of post-Revolutionary literature. She offers close textual analysis and careful contextualization of the representations of state killing that these prominent writers crafted over two centuries during which the guillotine consistently fulfilled its function. Combined with concepts forged by critics of violence such as Agamben, Foucault, and Girard, this detailed examination reveals that, despite their differences, Hugo, Baudelaire, and Camus converge in questioning the humanitarian redefinition of capital punishment dating from the late eighteenth century. Conversely, capital justice leads all three writers to interrogate the functions, tools, and limits of their art"--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Introduction. Three writers and a punishment

New abolitionist poetics: Hugo's Le dernier jour d'un condamn?

The death penalty, from representation to expression

Pain and punishment: the guillotine's torture

Words that kill in Baudelaire

Prose praising sacrifice: Hugo, Maistre, and beyond

Poeticized slaughter? Execution in Les fleurs du mal

Camus's capital fiction and literary responsibility

Ad nauseam: Camus's narrative roads to abolitionism

Poetic accountability: critical language and its limits

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 239-251) and index.

ISBN:

9780810141513

0810141515

9780810141520

0810141523

OCLC:

1107152275