The Fevered Novel from Balzac to Bernanos

Download or read book The Fevered Novel from Balzac to Bernanos written by Francesco Manzini and published by Igrs, University of London. This book was released on 2011 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines a corpus of frenetic novels - by Balzac, Barbey d'Aurevilly, Zola, Huysmans, Bloy and Bernanos - that foreground the motif of fever within a recurring master plot: a pious young woman, just discovering her sexuality, finds herself torn between two father-figures, a doctor (typically a blood-relative, often the biological father) and a priest (the spiritual father). She contracts a disease of uncertain origin, made manifest by a series of fevers that require interpretation in the light of contemporary religious, medical and literary discourses. Manzini traces the motifs of fever and frenzy back to Rousseau, the Gothic novel and Frenetic Romanticism, as well as forward to their recuperation within Surrealism, in order to produce an original history of Frenetic Catholicism in the age of realism. Francesco Manzini is a Stipendiary Lecturer in French at Christ Church, Oxford, and is the author of Stendhal's Parallel Lives (2004). He has also published numerous articles on nineteenth-century French literature.