Memory and Desire: Rétif de la Bretonne, Autobiography and Utopia: 115 (Faux Titre, 115) - Softcover

Peter Wagstaff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 9042000287 ISBN 13: 9789042000285

Publisher: Brill | Rodopi, 1996

Synopsis

This study challenges the conventional view of Rétif de la Bretonne as a chronicler of eighteenth-century France and notorious exponent of 'la littérature galante', to provide both students and scholars with a fresh analysis focusing on two themes autobiography and utopianism which feature prominently in his writing. It suggests that each is the product of similar impulses, reflecting common polarities between public and private, self and others, past and future. In tracing Rétif's persistent but frustrated attempts to reconcile the conflicting elements of the world he inhabits rural and urban, old and new, stable and changing this volume analyses the failure of his utopian dream of a well-ordered and harmonious society. By exploring his absorption in the autobiographical project, and in particular Monsieur Nicolas ou le cur humain dévoilé, it offers an interpretation of his work as a sustained reflection on selfhood and on the power of memory which enables Rétif to create, within the confines of the text, a utopian space where self and world are reconciled, and time and space no longer count.

About this title

Review

"Peter Wagstaff's excellent book belongs to the renewal of critical attention spurred by reeditions of Retif's voluminous work in the last few decades. ...thought-provoking ... a reading pleasure to boot" in: Eighteenth-Century Studies 31/3 (Spring 1998) "En lisant ce volume lucide et judicieux, on a l'impression de mieux cerner cet auteur a la prolixite souvent deconcertante." in: Studi Francesi No. 127, Vol. 1, 1999

Edition details

• Publisher: Brill | Rodopi
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9042000287
• ISBN 13: 9789042000285
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 180