DOCSLIB.ORG

Book Chapter Reference

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Book Chapter Reference Book Chapter The Geneva School: form and signification in motion POT, Olivier Reference POT, Olivier. The Geneva School: form and signification in motion. In: Marina Grishakova, M. & Salupere, S. Theoretical schools and circles in the twenthieth-century humanities. New York : Routledge, 2015. Available at: http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:78309 Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version. 1 / 1 9 The Geneva School Time] in 1949. Toward the end of 1949, Raymond and Poulet embarked on a long correspondence reporting on and discussing their respective work. Form and Signification in Motion In 1950, the three names René Wellek (1992) associated with "The Geneva School" were Raymond (1897-1981), Béguin (1901-1957), and Poulet (1902-1991). Olivier Pot Later, two of Raymond's students, Jean Rousset (1910-2002) and Jean translated by Helena Taylor Starobinski (1920) joined this initial circle. Poulet, who from 1952 had taken up a post at Johns Hopkins University in Bàltimore, introduced Starobinski to the circle in 1954, and in the same year he became acquainted with Jean Rousset's thesis (Rousset 1953). Historians sometimes also add Poulet's doctoral student, Jean-Pierre Richard (1922; Richard 2002, 47-48) to this "The Geneva School" was the term used from the 1950s and 1960s to group. The term "Nouvelle critique"' appears for the first time in Poulet's describe a group of literary cri tics who belonged to the movement known in preface to Richard's book, Littérature et sensation published in 1954. In France as the Nouvelle Critique, following the confrontation between Picard 1956, Poulet accepted a chair in literature at Zurich University, probably and Barthes over Sur Racine in 1963. Like the American New Criticism because it afforded him greater proximity to both Geneva and to Raymond of the 1940s, the Geneva School practiced "close rea<\ing" and promoted who had supported his application for this position. As for Albert Béguin, stylistic analysis that was based on the intimate relationship between the having held the chair at Bâle from 1937 to 1946, he went on to pursue structure of a text and its meaning (signification). However, unlike New political activities, culminating in his editorship of the journal Esprit. His Criticism, the Geneva School was also committed to looking "outside" the premature dea th in 1957 made the group aware of its comradeship: this is text, taking into account intentionality (authorial consciousness), readers' attested by the collection, Albert Béguin-Essais et témoignages. reactions (reader-response theory), and even historical and cultural contexts During the 1960s, theoretical thinking intensified. In 1962, Rousset (history of ideas). Employing phenomenological and hermeneutic methods, dedicated the preface, "Pour une lecture des formes" ("Toward a Reading these critics conceived of thé literary work as representing the deep struc­ of Forms"), of Forme et Signification (1962) to Poulet. In this preface he tures of an author's consciousness, revealing his experience of the physical unequivocally sided with "Nouvelle critique," which he claimed included world. This approach, which is also called "criticism of consciousness" and Russian Formalists, American New Criticism3, the art historian Focillon, as "criticism of identification," invites the interpreter to identify "empathetically" weil as the artists who had forged modern critical consciousness (Flaubert, with representations and meanings as they appear in the structures of the Mallarmé, Proust, Valéry). 1963 was a particularly fruitful year. According work. Broadly speaking, the School's methodology can be surnmarized as the to Rousset, who bad been Raymond's student since 1935, Raymond and desire to résolve the tension between form and meaning. his fellow scholars opened the way between Charles Du Bos's criticism of identification, "more attentive to the 'milieu intérieur' than to style," and "the formai analysis of Wôlfflin" (Rousset 1963, 469). Poulet published an SCHOOL OR COMRADESHIP: A "TOTALITY" OPEN TO extremely detailed study on Raymond (latet reprinted in La Conscience THE FUTURE Critique). In the same year the Geneva School paraded its visibility at the Congress held in Paris on J uly 26-for which these two cri tics bad carefully The "Geneva School," technically speaking, does not exist-not, that is, in put together the program.< The first part was to include "three presentations the same way that the Frankfurt School or· the Saussurean School exists. informing the audience on developments outside France since 1920; and "It was a bit rnislea_ding to have coined this name," reflected its inventor, two presentations on France": "Cl. Pichois on traditional, historicizing crit­ Georges Poulet (Poulet and Grotzer 1979, 257). The "mythical Genevan icism" and Starobinski on the "trends of New Criticism." The second part school," or the "so-called Geneva School,"1 which was in fact a sort of infor­ aimed to bring together, once again in relation to France, three presentations ma! intellectual society, or at the very most a "laboratory" in which to cir­ given by "representative critics": Georges Blin ("to avoid only giving the culate i<jeas, formed in the win$:er of 1937-1938. Poulet, while teaching at floor to the 'anti-Sorbonards,' which would have been ridiculous"), Gaëtan Edinbutgh University and reàding Albert Béguin's thesis, L'Ame romantique Picon and Poulet (or, failing that, Richard). In addition, papers were to be et le rêve (1937), came across the name of its author's supervisor, Marcel given by Paul de Man, René Wellek, Arnaldo Pizzorusso, Giovanni Macchia, Raymond, wh ose work he already admired, and to whom he would go on to Lucien Goldmann, Yves Bonnefoy, Boris de Schloezer, and others. Behind dedicate the first volume of Etudes sur le temps humain [Studies in Human this apparent! y eclectic program, the genesis and focus of the Geneva School 154 Olivier Pot The Geneva School 155 were given priority: "by hearing Rivière, Du Bos, Raymond and Béguin, of interest. The first of these was German Romanticism, a tradition insepa­ Bachelard and Richard, Blanchot and Staro(binski)" in succession, the rable from the posture of "ferryman" (passeur) that had first been assumed intention was to trace "the progress of consciousness from 1920 to the pres­ by translator-poets such as Gustave Roud' and Philippe Jaccottet. In the ent," sa that the "predecessors" would only be taken into account "in so far Genevan tradition, it was expected that young intellectuals would spend as they have enlightened and guided us" (letter of January 2, 1963 ). Jacques sorne years "improving themselves" abroad in Germany. Raymond was a Derrida attests to the fact that the Geneva School had become a point of lector in Leipzig from 1926 to 1928; he immersed himself in Kierkegaard, reference: two of his articles published in 1962 and 1964, and repeated in Gundolf, Dilthey (who had also influenced Du Bos), and every angle of the Grammatologie in 1967; used the studies of both Rousset (on "forme et "metaphysics of poetry and metaphysical poetry." 7 Until he was forced to signification") and Starobinski (on Rousseau) as starting points. leave Germany, Béguin was a lector at the University of Halle an der Saale The Geneva School undertook a project of "critical renovation"; this tri­ from 1929 to 1934, a position Rousset would then go on to hold from umphed in 1966 thanks to the meetings organized in Cerisy by Poulet (Poulet 1939 to 1942 before he went to Munich. This period of critical "incuba­ and R.icardou 1967). Other like-minded figures, such as Gérard Genette, tion" was marked for al! of them by translation projects: the Romantics for Hélène Tuzet, and Serge Doubrovsky, joined the group. The same year an Béguin, Baroque poets for Rousset, Wolfflin for Raymond, and Kafka for article by]. Hillis Miller (1966) made the label, "The Geneva School," offi­ Starobinski. cial; Sarah Lawall (1968) then integrated this into her analysis of "criticism Epistemologically, the Geneva School was also inspired by the anti­ of consciousness". "The myth began to take shape-before it broke up, that positivism of the German school of philology, and thinkers such as Vossler, is," Raymond comment wryly; for him, the "Geneva School" was at most a Curtius, Spitzer, Auerbach, Friedrich, as Poulet notes (letter of January 7, "family," "attesting to our friendship," rather than a movement with a for­ 1963 ). They opposed the stance of the neogrammarians; the latter was also malized corpus of methods and techniques. Poulet takes this further: "Mme being questioned by Saussurean linguistics, which Raymond and Béguin Lawall saw the world through glasses of my making. And thus, a whole were the first to incorporate into their work, without making it a dominant series of other-even more contestable-myths joined the principal one" tool ("appareillage lourd," Starobinski 1979b ). Raymond, who had defended (letter of October 12-23, 1968). The Geneva School is, therefore, somewhat his thesis on [;Influence de Ronsard sur la poésie française (1550-1585) at the snark of criticism. the Sorbonne in 1927, later regretted having "given in to the need for the Furthermore, by reworking previous studies on his critical affinities and tangible and the pragmatic in literary history." By contras!, the "participant friendships in La Conscience critique in 1971, Poulet set out to trace the reader" method he adopted in 1933 for De Baudelaire au surréalisme felt history of.a research project that was constantly evolving, rather than give like a sort of liberation (Starobinski 2000, 133, 135). This approach, which . the impression of methodological coherence: "a totality th at was open to "reached far beyond historical positivism," was for Starobinski "the corn­ the future from each publication date" (letter of December 29, 1970). The mon denominator of the Genevans" (Poulet and Grotzer 1979, 257, 267). expression "criticism of identification" (the term "identification" cornes He highlights the group's distrust of "systematic" or "structuralist" research.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Jean Rousset, Forme Et Signification, Paris, Corti, 1963
    Jean Rousset, Forme et signification, Paris, Corti, 1963. (Introduction- avec de légères coupures et des notes ajoutées) INTRODUCTION POUR UNE LECTURE DES FORMES «Le mystère sacré de la structure » Henry James 1 Ce livre a-t-il besoin d’une longue justification ? Rien de plus normal, semble-t-il, que son propos : saisir des significations à travers des formes, dégager des ordonnances et des présentations révélatrices, déceler dans les textures littéraires ces nœuds, ces figures, ces reliefs inédits qui signalent l’opération simultanée d’une longue expérience vécue et d’une mise en œuvre. Il y a longtemps qu’on s’en doute : l’art réside dans cette solidarité d’un univers mental et d’une construction sensible, d’une vision et d’une forme. Les choses ne sont pourtant pas si simples ; sur la nature du fait littéraire et sur la manière de saisir les œuvres, sur les rapports de la création et de la réalité, de l’artiste et de l’histoire, de la sensation et du langage, sur le rôle dans l’art de cette fonction capitale, l’imagination, les incertitudes et les oppositions abondent. Mais s’il est une notion qui provoque la contradiction ou le désaccord, c’est bien celle, pourtant centrale, de la forme. Il faut le dire, les difficultés ici s’accumulent et je ne prétends pas les résoudre. Dans ces pages qui préludent non pas à un ouvrage de spéculation, mais à une série d’applications, je me bornerai à préciser quelques points, à prévenir certains malentendus, et à dire tout d’abord sur quelle expérience je m’appuie.
    [Show full text]
  • Between Two Worlds
    BETWEEN TWO WORLDS By the same author The Crazy Fabric: Essays in Irony The Inimitable Dickens: A Reading of the Novels Dickens: (Modem Judgements series) (editor) Dickens: Bleak House (Casebook series) (editor) BETWEEN TWO WORLDS Aspects of Literary Form A. E. Dyson Macmillan Education © A. E. Dyson 1972 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1972 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission. First published 1972 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in Toronto Dublin Melbourne Johannesburg and Madras Library of Congress catalog card no. 79-183545 SBN 331 13131 2 ISBN 978-1-349-01311-1 ISBN 978-1-349-01309-8 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-01309-8 For GEORGE AND TINA COLE Contents Preface and Acknowledgements IX I Between Two Worlds: Prologue I 2 Virtue Unwavering: Milton's Comus 15 3 The Last Enchantments: Arnold's The Scholar Gipsy 41 4 Murderous Innocence: James's The Turn of the Screw 53 5 The Stranger God: Mann's Death in Venice 81 6 Faith among the Ashes: Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby 100 7 Trial by Enigma: Kafka's The Trial I I4 8 Eagles and Trumpets: The Transmuted Experiences of Literature I 35 9 Between Two Worlds: Epilogue I50 Index 153 Preface and Acknowledgements This book is about literature, not about criticism, and I have tried to avoid 'the critical debate'. But a few general acknowledge­ ments seem called for, and I am glad to name the critics who have influenced me most.
    [Show full text]
  • Cover 65 3&4.Pmd
    EVENTEENTH- ENTURY EWS FALL - WINTER 2007 Vol. 65 Nos. 3&4 Including THE NEO-LATIN NEWS Vol. 55, Nos. 3&4 SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEWS VOLUME 65, Nos. 3&4 FALL-WINTER, 2007 SCN, an official organ of the Milton Society of America and of the Milton Section of the Modern Language Association, is published as a double issue two times each year with the support of the English Departments of: University of Akron Oklahoma State University Texas A&M University SUBMISSIONS: As a scholarly review journal, SCN publishes only commis- sioned reviews. As a service to the scholarly community, SCN also publishes news items. A current style sheet, previous volumes’ Tables of Contents, and other information all may be obtained via our home page on the World Wide Web. Books for review and queries should be sent to: Prof. Donald R. Dickson English Department 4227 Texas A&M University College Station, Texas 77843-4227 E-Mail: [email protected] WWW: http://www-english.tamu.edu/pubs/scn/ ISSN 0037-3028 SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEWS EDITOR DONALD R. DICKSON Texas A&M University ASSOCIATE EDITORS James Egan, University of Akron Jeffrey Walker, Oklahoma State University Michele Marrapodi, University of Palermo Patricia Garcia, Our Lady of the Lake University E. Joe Johnson, Clayton State University EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS Mark A. Houston, Texas A&M University Jacob A. Tootalian, Texas A&M University CONTENTS VOLUME 65, NOS. 3&4 ......................... FALL-WINTER, 2007 REVIEWS Harold Love, English Clandestine Satire, 1660-1702. Review by MARGARET J.M. EZELL ............................................................................. 105 Anthony Adolph, Full of Soup and Gold: The Life of Henry Jermyn.
    [Show full text]
  • Hermeneutics
    1 HERMENEUTICS The World as Conversation J Eric M. Kramer The University of Oklahoma Tempora mutatur, nos et mutamur in illis. [The times are changing, and we are changing with them] The idea that things depend on the standpoint of the observer, and cannot be counted on according to the 'objective' rules of Newtonian physics, rocked people's sense of certainty. -Joseph Kerman1 Where is the wisdom we have losr, in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lo\;t in information? -T. S. Eliot, Choruses from "The Rock" F The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehen­ sible. 3 -Albert Einstein PROLEGOMENA: DICTION AND PREDICTION At the outset, it is necessary to define the word diction especially as it relates to prediction. Herein the word diction is used to identify human action and mean­ ing. To dictate is to proclaim a reality or guiding principle as in the "dictates 13 l\Kl\M~K Htl<MtNtU /IC> I :J of reason"-to order by the power of speech and gesture, to issue commands, Locution indicates a style of saying or expressing. By contrast, diction has to to prescribe, to call into being. The word diction both articulates what is said do more with expression insofar as it is meaningful or intelligible to an audience, and how it is said, the idea and the embodiment of it, be it ritualistic, legalistic, as it initiates action. Diction always has style, but it is also more than style. It religious, scientific, and so on. manifests the originating impulse of imperative.
    [Show full text]
  • Paul De Man Papers MS.C.004
    http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf6p30071t Online items available Guide to the Paul de Man papers MS.C.004 Finding aid prepared by Jeffrey Atteberry and updated by Laura Clark Brown, 1997; machine-readable finding aid created by Audrey Pearson; updated by Alexandra M. Bisio, 2015. Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries (cc) 2015 The UCI Libraries P.O. Box 19557 University of California, Irvine Irvine 92623-9557 [email protected] URL: http://special.lib.uci.edu Guide to the Paul de Man papers MS.C.004 1 MS.C.004 Contributing Institution: Special Collections and Archives, University of California, Irvine Libraries Title: Paul de Man papers Creator: De Man, Paul Identifier/Call Number: MS.C.004 Physical Description: 11.8 Linear Feet(25 boxes) Date (inclusive): 1948-1999 Abstract: This collection contains the personal and professional papers of Paul de Man documenting his career as a scholar and literary theorist in the field of comparative literature, and as an academic in the United States. Files primarily contain his manuscripts and typescripts related to literary criticism, rhetoric, and critical theory, and reflect his general interests in Romanticism. In particular, materials document his approach to literary texts that became known as deconstruction. His works focus on writers and philosophers such as Hegel, Hölderlin, Mallarmé, Nietzsche, Rousseau, Wordsworth, and Yeats. The collection also contains published and unpublished writings, student papers, notes, teaching notebooks, and related materials. Language of Material: English . Access The collection is open for research. Access to student record material is restricted for 75 years from the latest date of the materials in those files.
    [Show full text]
  • Janet Gurkin Altman Approaches to a Form
    Janet Gurkin Altman Approaches to a Form EPISTOLARITY Approaches to a Form By Janet Gurkin Altman Though the letter's potential as an artistic form and a narrative vehicle has been recog­ nized by writers of nearly every nationality and period from Ovid, in the Epistulae Heroidum, to Saul Bellow, in Herzog, episto­ lary literature has only recently become the object of close and sustained critical scrutiny as a result of the revival of the letter form in contemporary fiction, and a growing recogni­ tion that the genre was not, in fact, abandoned following the period of its greatest popularity in the eighteenth century. This was the age that produced such classics as Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, Richardson's Pamela and Clarissa, Rousseau's La Nouvelle Héloïse, Smollett's Humphry Clinker, Goethe's Werth­ er, and Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses. Such well-known works, Professor Altman suggests, though they represent a wide di­ versity in style, plot, and characterization, re­ veal a surprising number of similar literary structures or intriguingly persistent patterns when read together with other examples of the epistolary genre. And these structures — re­ curring thematic relations, character types, narrative events and organization — can, in turn, be related to properties inherent in the letter itself. For in numerous instances, these basic formal and functional characteristics of the letter, far from being purely ornamental, significantly affect the way in which meaning is constructed, consciously and unconscious­ ly, by both writers and readers. The epistolary novel. Dr. Altman points out, was born in an age when novelists like Diderot and Sterne had moved beyond story­ telling to indulge in playful reflection upon history and fiction, and the means by which historical and fictional events are recounted.
    [Show full text]
  • History of Structuralism. Vol. 2
    DJFHKJSD History of Structuralism Volume 2 This page intentionally left blank History of Structuralism Volume 2: The Sign Sets, 1967-Present Francois Dosse Translated by Deborah Glassman University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis London The University of Minnesota Press gratefully acknowledges financial assistance provided by the French Ministry of Culture for the translation of this book. Copyright 1997 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota Originally published as Histoire du structuralisme, 11. Le chant du cygne, de 1967 anos jour«; Copyright Editions La Decouverte, Paris, 1992. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press III Third Avenue South, Suite 290, Minneapolis, MN 554°1-2520 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper http://www.upress.umn.edu First paperback edition, 1998 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dosse, Francois, 1950- [Histoire du structuralisme. English] History of structuralism I Francois Dosse ; translated by Deborah Glassman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. Contents: v. 1. The rising sign, 1945-1966-v. 2. The sign sets, 1967-present. ISBN 0-8166-2239-6 (v. I: he: alk. paper}.-ISBN 0-8166-2241-8 (v. I: pbk. : alk. paper}.-ISBN 0-8166-2370-8 (v. 2: hc: alk. paper}.-ISBN 0-8166-2371-6 (v. 2: pbk. : alk. paper}.-ISBN 0-8166-2240-X (set: hc: alk. paper}.-ISBN 0-8166-2254-X (set: pbk.
    [Show full text]
  • Promenade En Suisse Romande POUR UN QUESTIONNEMENT DES LIENS ENTRE LANGUE, TERRITOIRE ET IDENTITÉ(S) ______
    Promenade en Suisse romande POUR UN QUESTIONNEMENT DES LIENS ENTRE LANGUE, TERRITOIRE ET IDENTITÉ(S) ________ Hélène BARTHELMEBS-RAGUIN (Université du Luxembourg, RU IPSE) Pour citer cet article : Hélène BARTHELMEBS-RAGUIN, « Promenade en Suisse romande – Pour un questionnement des liens entre langue, territoire et identité(s) », Revue Proteus, no 15, (dés)identification postcoloniale de l’art contemporain, Phoebe Clarke et Bruno Trentini (coord.), 2019, p. 53-64. Résumé Longtemps les productions artistiques helvétiques ont été enfermées dans un rapport attrac- tion / répulsion vis-à-vis du voisin français. Pourtant, si les artistes suisses sont proches géographique- ment de la France, usent de la même langue et partagent des références communes, l’effet de frontière est ici tout à fait opérant et ses manifestations se retrouvent au niveau littéraire. La proximité entre ces deux aires culturelles amène les auteur·rice·s à interroger leur place sur la scène des littératures de langue française. Comment, dès lors, envisager ces écritures décentrées ? littérature romande — centre/périphérie — assimilation/marginalisation — langue Abstract For a long time, Swiss artistic productions have been locked in an attraction / repulsion relation with the French neigh- bor. The Swiss artists are geographically close to France, they use the same language, and they share common references, however the border effects are here quite operative and their manifestations impact the literary level. The proximity bet- ween these cultural areas leads the authors
    [Show full text]
  • Suicide-Authors: a Deconstructive Study by Lilia Loman
    Suicide-Authors: A Deconstructive Study By Lilia Loman ( Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham Table of Contents Introduction .................................................................................................. 1 Part I ............................................................................................................ 6 1. Theorising Suicide .......................•.............................................................. 6 2. Memorial Texts: Suicide as a Posthumous Performance ..................•...........•.. 33 3. The Deaths of the Suicide-Author ............................................................... 71 Part II ........................................................................................................ 99 4. Speaking to/about the Dead: Plath's Belated Witnesses ................................ 99 5. "The blood jet is poetry": Plath in Her Own Words ...................................... 134 6. "Burning the Letters": The Plath-Hughes Dialogue ...................................... 168 ,., Conclusion ..........•.........................•...•...................•................................... 194 Works Cited ..........................................................•..•.•.............................. 199 Abstract The purpose of this thesis is to problematise the relationship between suicide and the author. On the basis of a deconstructive approach, it will study the effect of the self-inflicted death of the writer, namely the emergence of a dual figure, the "suicide-author".
    [Show full text]
  • Review Article Reading (Deconstructing) J. Hillis Miller: Humanist and Pluralist Daniel R
    Review Article Reading (Deconstructing) J. Hillis Miller: Humanist and Pluralist Daniel R. Schwarz Cornell University Miller, J. Hillis. Communities in Fiction. New York: Fordham UP, 2015. 303 Pp. xvi+313. In his day, J. Hillis Miller, now in his eighty-eighth year, was one of the most influen- tial of literary scholars, among the leaders in introducing phenomenology and, later, deconstruction to an Anglo-American audience. His early books The Disappearance of God (1963), Poets of Reality (1965), and The Form of Victorian Fiction (1968) were greatly influenced by Georges Poulet and the Geneva school. Fiction and Repetition (1982) was written under the umbrella of Derridean Deconstruction. All four were required reading for a generation of graduate students. I wrote a full chapter on what we might now call Miller’s early work and what was certainly his most influential period in my The Humanistic Heritage: Theories of the English Novel from James to Hillis Miller; here I discussed his relationship to the Anglo-American tradition. I cannot say that I have kept up with all of his more than thirty books. In 2005, Stanford University Press thought he had enough of a following to publish The J. Hillis Miller Reader, bringing together examples of his work with commentary by others on his work. With some regret, I wonder if a major press would do such a volume in 2015 or whether his place in the firmament has somewhat faded. I saw Miller on occasion when I still went to MLA and at times when he still lived on the East Coast, and found him a generous colleague, which meant a great deal to me as young aspiring scholar working my way through the ranks.
    [Show full text]
  • Reading Between the Minds: Intersubjectivity and The
    READING BETWEEN THE MINDS: INTERSUBJECTIVITY AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERNISM FROM ROBERT BROWNING TO HENRY JAMES by Jennie Hann A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Baltimore, Maryland May 2017 © 2017 Jennie Hann All Rights Reserved DEDICATION For my parents, Alan and Mary Kay Hann And in memory of Shaughnessy ii Is the creature too imperfect, say? Would you mend it And so end it? Since not all addition perfects aye! Or is it of its kind, perhaps, Just perfection— Whence, rejection Of a grace not to its mind, perhaps? Shall we burn up, tread that face at once Into tinder, And so hinder Sparks from kindling all the place at once? —Robert Browning, “A Pretty Woman” (1855) Really, universally, relations stop nowhere, and the exquisite problem of the artist is eternally but to draw, by a geometry of his own, the circle within which they shall happily appear to do so. He is in the perpetual predicament that the continuity of things is the whole matter, for him, of comedy and tragedy; that this continuity is never, by the space of an instant or an inch, broken, and that, to do anything at all, he has at once intensely to consult and to ignore it. All of which will perhaps pass but for a supersubtle way of pointing the plain moral that a young embroiderer of the canvas of life soon began to work in terror, fairly, of the vast expanse of that surface, of the boundless number of its distinct perforations .
    [Show full text]
  • Fribourg Vu Par Les Écrivains
    Michel Dousse Claudio Fedrigo Fribourg vu par les écrivains Extraits de l’anthologie et de l’exposition de la Bibliothèque cantonale et universitaire de Fribourg, 2015 Fribourg vu par les écrivains : exposition et anthologie Quels sont les livres qui, à travers les siècles, ont décrit la ville et le canton de Fribourg ? Quels écrivains ont parlé de Fribourg ? Quels voyageurs ont passé par Fribourg ? Nous ont-ils laissé un récit de leur découverte ? Et les Fribourgeois, ont-ils évoqué leur pays ? Quelle image du pays fribourgeois s’en dégage-t-il ? Jusqu’au XVIIIe siècle, les voyageurs passent plutôt par Morat, pour découvrir l’ossuaire des Bourguignons, vestige de la fameuse bataille de Morat (1476). A la fin du XVIIIe et au début du XIXe siècles, ils parcourent volontiers la Veveyse et la Gruyère pour admirer les paysages pastoraux situés au- dessus de Clarens et de Vevey, rendus célèbres par La Nouvelle Héloïse de Rousseau (1761). Au XIXe siècle, outre l’ermitage de la Madeleine, ce sont l’orgue d’Aloys Mooser (1834) et les ponts suspendus de Joseph Chaley (1834, 1840) qui attirent les voyageurs romantiques dans la capitale. Au XXe siècle, la Seconde Guerre mondiale et l’exil transforment Fribourg en un foyer culturel, où séjournent et passent bon nombre d’écrivains. A travers ces trois siècles, nombreux sont les auteurs qui ont décrit le canton de Fribourg, dans les genres littéraires les plus variés. On trouvera dans la nouvelle édition illustrée de cette anthologie une centaine d’extraits de leurs œuvres, accompagnés de portraits, ainsi qu’une introduction et une bibliographie.
    [Show full text]