Overview

Through close readings of a selection of European novels and novellas written between 1340 and 1827, this study of ""analytical fiction"" examines how unconsummated love stories probe the frailty of self-knowledge. Tracing elements of what the French call the roman d'analyse in the works of Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, Cervantes, Marie de Lafayette, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Stendhal, Adele Kudish discusses how the metaphor of unconsummated love is deployed to represent a fundamental lack of insight into the self. Rather than depicting the mind as transparent, analytical fiction deals in the opacity of the mind. Narrators and characters are faced with deception, misprision, doubt, and confusion, leading to self-deception, jealousy, and crises of self. The European Roman d’Analyse reads such epistemological failures as symptoms of a more fundamental preoccupation with the human psyche as un-chartable and bizarre. In this way, the authors of romans d'analyse enact a larger philosophical project: an anatomy of the psyche wherein we are unable—or unwilling—to know ourselves.

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9781501373756

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Reviews

With literary and psychological acumen, Adele Kudish has ushered in a new classification for the history of the European novel: the roman d'analyse, a narrative tradition of erotic failure that reveals a prehistory, for one example, of the novels of Elena Ferrante. The scope of texts and richness of interpretation in this book staggered me. * Wendy Anne Lee, Assistant Professor of English, New York University, USA * As fascinating in subject matter as it is wide-ranging, this book engages in what is, among many other things, a truly comparative project, presenting English-language readers with an exciting formulation of what the author calls the sub-genre of analytical fiction, fiction that 'anatomizes the epistemology of troubled or failed love,' in an account that cuts through traditional linguistic and period separations. Weaving together texts not commonly discussed within a single project, Adele Kudish provides us, by comparison and some beautiful close readings, new insights into each of the texts she addresses. * Tony C. Brown, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota, USA *

Author Information

Adele Kudish is Associate Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, USA. She has published articles in Studies in Philology and The French Review, among others.

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