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Subversions of Verisimilitude: Reading Narrative from Balzac to Sartre

Online ISBN:
9780823241095
Print ISBN:
9780823231355
Publisher:
Fordham University Press
Book

Subversions of Verisimilitude: Reading Narrative from Balzac to Sartre

Lawrence R. Schehr
Lawrence R. Schehr

Professor of French

University of Illinois
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Published online:
1 September 2011
Published in print:
1 September 2009
Online ISBN:
9780823241095
Print ISBN:
9780823231355
Publisher:
Fordham University Press

Abstract

This book focuses on the ways in which a number of French literary narratives written in the realist tradition show a dynamic balance between the desire of the author/narrator to present a verisimilar world and the need for aesthetic balance. While the works studied — narratives by Balzac, Flaubert, Zola, Colette, Proust, and Sartre — range over the course of a century, from 1835 to 1938, they share a perspective on the relations between and the need to engage questions of realist verisimilitude and narrative interest and aesthetics. The book discusses some of the subversive paths taken in realism and, specifically, in canonical narratives solidly anchored in the tradition. The goal here is to analyze these realist texts, regardless of the narrative mode chosen, in order to see the deviations and detours from realism, mostly for aesthetic ends.

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