The Aesthetics of Artifice: Villiers’s L’Ève future: 254 (North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures)

A detailed reading of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's 1886 novel L'Eve future , this study explores the author's construction of the android woman from two angles: science and art. Marie Lathers shows that the novel is a satire of the era's belief that science would cure the ills of the modern world and redeem the femme fatale. She also exposes Villiers's prescient discussion of technologies that form hybrids of science and art. The only lengthy study of Villiers's novel in English, Lathers's book engages significant thinkers of nineteenth-century French aesthetic, medical, and scientific discourse. Contemporary cultural and feminist criticism, particularly that of Roland Barthes, Mary Ann Doane, and Judith Butler, forms the framework of her analysis. The first extensive English language study of Julien Gracq's work, this book focuses on the role of history in his two major novels and his critical essays. Carol Murphy draws on contemporary theories of allegory, textuality, and history in her analysis of the interplay of fictional and factual history in Gracq's writings. She also shows that history's rhetorical dimension, as presented by Gracq, puts forth the hypothesis that narratives of history influence actual events. In addition, she uses Freudian theory to investigate the links between Walter Benjamin's understanding of history as ruin, Gracq's sense of catastrophic history, and Andre Breton's notion of the "emotional coefficient" of history. Cover Title Copyright CONTENTS FOREWORD: Tekhné: State of the Art and L'Eve future PREFACE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1: Representational Texts [A] Bride of Frankenstein [B] Chefs-d'oeuvre CHAPTER 2: Photosculpture CHAPTER 3: Sculpture [A] Statues [B] Grounding Sculpture [C] The Hypnotic Feminine CHAPTER 4: Photography [A] Photogenic Women [B] Maternal Photographs [C] Moving Pictures CHAPTER 5: Early Images of Psychoanalysis [A] Technologies of the Feminine [B] Aura Hysterica [C] Saxa Loquuntur! CONCLUSION WORKS CITED Back Cover Drawing on feminist and psychoanalytic theory, this study exposes the ideological foundations of Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's "L'Eve Future", a late 19th century revision of the Genesis story. Villier's future Eve symbolizes the complex conjunction of art, technology, and the feminine. By Marie Lathers. Includes Bibliographical References.