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Description
This module will focus in depth on the first volume of the novel which perhaps more than any other work dominated French literature in the twentieth century, Proust鈥檚 A la recherche du temps perdu, before studying texts by a number of other important writers who wrote in Proust鈥檚 wake. Domination inevitably implies a power struggle; at the heart of the questions the module will explore is the relationship between literature and power. By means of close textual analysis, we shall examine how the prescribed texts all thematise domination in some form, notably with regard to social and sexual relations. Sometimes they universalise it, suggesting that intersubjective relations are necessarily hierarchical; sometimes they explore the possibility of subverting it, beckoning towards a mode of relation that need not involve the submission of one element to another, positing the existence of a non-subordinating dominance, a dominance that does not dominate.
The texts also raise questions of intertextual domination: what makes for a specifically literary power? is beauty a form of power? does a very powerful text overshadow others, or on the contrary call them into being in response to its appeal? Finally, the seminars will discuss the power relationship between reader and text: is a powerful text precisely one that can never be mastered? And, if reading is not an exercise in domination, what is it? One of a series of final-year options which provide a close study of French literary political and philosophical texts.听
Module deliveries for 2024/25 academic year
Last updated
This module description was last updated on 8th April 2024.
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