Baroque Fictions: Revisioning the Classical in Marguerite Yourcenar (Faux Titre 271) (Faux Titre S.)

This volume is the first in-depth study of the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar’s fiction to contend that the author’s texts exhibit in unexpected ways numerous characteristics of the neobaroque. This subversive, postmodern aesthetic privileges extravagant artistic play, flux, and heterogeneity. In demonstrating the affinity of Yourcenar’s texts with the neobaroque, the author of this study casts doubt on their presumed transparency and stability, qualities associated with the French neoclassical tradition of the past century, where the Yourcenarian œuvre is most often placed. Yourcenar’s election to the prestigious, tradition-bound French Academy in 1981 as its first female “immortal” cemented her already well-established niche in the twentieth-century French literary pantheon. A self-taught classicist, historian, and modern-day French moralist, Yourcenar has been praised for her polished, “classical” style and analyzed for her use of myth and universal themes. While those factors at first seem to justify amply the neoclassical label by which Yourcenar is most widely recognized, this study’s close reading of four of her fictions reveals instead the texts’ opacity and subversive resistance to closure, their rejection of stable interpretations, and their deconstruction of postmodern Grand Narratives. Theirs is a neobaroque “logic,” which stresses the absence of theoretical assurances and the limitations of reason. The coincidence of the new millennium — which in so many ways reflects Yourcenar’s disquieting vision — and her centenary in 2003 affords not so much an excuse to reject the author’s neoclassical label, but rather the obligation to reassess it in light of contemporary discourses. This study will be of interest to students of twentieth-century French fiction and comparative literature, especially that of the latter half of the twentieth century. TABLE OF CONTENTS: I. A Frontispiece II. Introduction Marguerite Yourcenar and the Writing of Fiction: An Aesthetic Imperative III. Chapter 1 Anna,Soror...: Neobaroque Sacralizes the Abject IV. Chapter 2 Denier du rêve : Baroque Discourses,Fascist Practices V. Chapter 3 Neobaroque Humanism: “Sounding the Abyss ” in L ’Œuvre au Noir VI. Chapter 4 Neobaroque Confessions: Un homme obscur and the Oppressive Superficiality of Words VII. Conclusion An Author for the New Millennium VIII. Selected Works Cited and Consulted IX. Index of Proper Names This in-depth study of the French novelist Marguerite Yourcenar's fiction contends that the author's texts exhibit, in unexpected ways, numerous characteristics of the neobaroque, the subversive, postmodern aesthetic that privileges extravagant artistic play, flux, and heterogeneity. In demonstrating the affinity of Yourcenar's texts with the neobaroque, the author of this study casts doubt on their presumed transparency and stability, qualities associated with the French neoclassical tradition of the past century, where the Yourcenarian oeuvre is most often placed. Yourcenar's election to the prestigious, tradition-bound French Academy in 1981 as its first female "immortal" cemented her already well-established niche in the twentieth-century French literary pantheon. A self-taught classicist, historian, and modern-day French moralist, Yourcenar has been praised for her polished, "classical" style and analyzed for her use of myth and universal themes. While those factors at first seem to justify amply the neoclassical label by which Yourcenar is most widely recognized, this study's close reading of four of her fictions reveals instead the texts' opacity and subversive resistance to closure, their rejection of stable interpretations, and their deconstruction of postmodern Grand Narratives. Theirs is a neobaroque "logic," which stresses the absence of theoretical assurances and the limitations of reason. TABLE OF CONTENTS: I. A Frontispiece II. Introduction Marguerite Yourcenar and the Writing of Fiction: An Aesthetic Imperative III. Chapter 1 Anna,Soror...: Neobaroque Sacralizes the Abject IV. Chapter 2 Denier du rve : Baroque Discourses, Fascist Practices V. Chapter 3 Neobaroque Humanism: Sounding the Abyss in 'L uvre au Noir' VI. Chapter 4 Neobaroque Confessions: Un homme obscur and the Oppressive Superficiality of Words VII. Conclusion An Author for the New Millennium VIII. Selected Works Cited and Consulted IX. Index of Proper Names This study will be of interest to students of twentieth-century French fiction and comparative literature, especially that of the latter half of the twentieth century. Table of Contents 10 I. A Frontispiece 12 II. Introduction: Marguerite Yourcenar and the Writing of Fiction: An Aesthetic Imperative 18 III. Chapter 1: Anna, Soror...: Neobaroque Sacralizes the Abject 52 IV. Chapter 2: Denier du rêve: Baroque Discourses, Fascist Practices 78 V. Chapter 3: Neobaroque Humanism: “Sounding the Abyss” in L’Œuvre au Noir 106 VI. Chapter 4: Neobaroque Confessions: Un homme obscur and the Oppressive Superficiality of Words 144 VII. Conclusion: An Author for the New Millennium 158 VIII. Selected Works Cited and Consulted 166 IX. Index of Proper Names 176 A 176 B 176 C 176 D 176 E 176 F 176 G 176 H 176 I 177 J 177 K 177 L 177 M 177 N 177 O 177 P 177 R 177 S 177 T 177 V 178 W 178 Y 178 One of the more transgressive fictional texts in modern European literature, Marguerite Yourcenar's novella Anna, Sóror... recounts the consummation of physical passion between a brother and a sister living in Naples at the end of the sixteenth century.