Please help

[margherita]

Hi,

I'm studying for a very important exam - well it is for me!- on literature and I'd need suggestions on a few topics regarding English and French Literature.
(from 18th century on). Just suggestions on what comes to mind would be great for me, especially in regards to 18th cen!
hero and anti-hero
realism and anti-realism
rewriting myth
novel, especially in regards to human experience and abolition of aristotelan laws
literature and psychoanalysis

I know...they are very complicated but any suggestion would be of great help!


Thanks so very much!!!

[Niamh]

for french under hero and anti hero i'd go with Candide.

[Bitterfly]

I'm not a expert on French literature but why for anti-heroes why don't you try Choderlos de Laclos for Valmont(18th); Vautrin in Balzac's Illusions perdues and Splendeur et misère des courtisanes, Maupassant's Bel-Ami; Huysman's main character in A rebours (19th)? And for the eighteenth century again, look into Sade: plenty of anti-heroes!!! :D

Tons of heroes around, but Fabricio del Dongo from the Charterhouse of Parma (Stendhal) and Rastignac (Illusions Perdues and Splendeur..) spring to mind? Don't know whether Julien Sorel (Le rouge et le noir, Stendhal again) could be qualified as a hero or an anti-hero... just like the main character (whose name I've forgotten) of Flaubert's Education sentimentale. You've got Proust's Swann as well for the twentieth century (possibly anti-hero as well, in fact). Jacques le Fataliste (Diderot) I suppose could be considered as a kind of hero... or the main character of Les Lettres Persanes (Montesquieu, also 18th)?

realism and anti-realism: for realism you can have a look at Balzac, Zola (naturalism rather), Flaubert. I'm not sure what you mean by anti-realism. Does it designate the literary currents that followed realism? Such as symbolism, surrealism, etc? I'd go with Breton (Nadja) for surrealism. Then you've got the nouveau roman. And Boris Vian (beautiful Ecume des jours, which is not realistic, and he wrote other good books as well).

I'll think about your other three categories. I'd be interested to know, by the way, what you mean by "abolition of aristotelan laws".

[johann cruyff]

I'd be interested to know, by the way, what you mean by "abolition of aristotelan laws".

Perhaps the topic creator was referring to drama, but got it mixed up a bit?

Anyway, I second Candide. A short, little book, but offers so much food for thought. Surely you can fit it into your first topic(hero, anti-hero)?

[margherita]

Well, aristotelan laws are the ones 'forcing' the writer to follow unity of time and space.
Modern novels such as mrs dalloway do not follow the rules, time has a 'personal' meaning.

Thanks all for your suggestions!!!

What would you suggest in English literature for the same topics?

Thanks, you're invaluable!!!

[Bitterfly]

Well, aristotelan laws are the ones 'forcing' the writer to follow unity of time and space.
Modern novels such as mrs dalloway do not follow the rules, time has a 'personal' meaning.

I thought the "unities" ( of action, as well as time and space) were only appliable to drama, especially tragedy. I would have said most novels don't respect the unities of time (the action had to take place within 24 hours, no?) and place, not only Mrs Dalloway.

Now I've always wondered why Shakespeare freed himself from the unities, while his French counterparts (especially Racine, but also Molière and Corneille; and then Beaumarchais in the 18th) stuck so closely to them. I think the Romantics rejected the unities at the beginning of the 19th: Hugo (Hernani), Musset (Lorenzaccio), among other reasons because they admired Shakespeare so greatly.