Affinities between Nietzsche and Proust have been suggested by a variety of influential critics (Georges Bataille and Maurice Blanchot, more recently Paul de Man, Alexander Nehamas and Richard Rorty), but this is the first full-length comparative study of the two writers. Proust was intimately familiar with nineteenth-century post-Kantian aesthetics, and indeed the narrator in A la recherche du temps perdu glosses his involuntary memories using an explicitly idealist philosophical vocabulary, but by developing Vincent Descombes's thesis that Proust's novel is more advanced than the philosophical interpretations it contains, I argue that Proust ultimately moves beyond the Schopenhauerian position which has often been imputed to him, and that he joins Nietzsche in an overcoming of dualistic metaphysics. After first considering those critical works which have prepared the ground for a comparative study of the two writers - in particular Gilles Deleuze's Proust et les signes, whose Nietzschean contours I argue have been insufficiently appreciated - I then discuss the surprising amount Proust actually wrote about Nietzsche, in A la recherche and elsewhere, and focus on the theme of friendship, which is Proust's chosen terrain for his most extended engagement with the philosopher. In subsequent chapters I address 'Proust's perspectivism' in the light of Nietzsche's radical critique of traditional epistemology, and then turn to Proust's narrator's search for the self, which I argue culminates in an 'ubermenschlich' aesthetics of self-creation. I use Deleuze's emphasis on the difference and repetition in Proustian 'essences' so as to read involuntary memory as the intimation not of an essential self, but of the eternal return. In my final chapter I then attempt to break open the two writers' metamorphoses of the circle by stressing the asymmetries of temporal structure in their work, their exploitation of postmodern 'logics of the future perfect'.

Thesis--München. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 122-126). 1325960.

No description available.

Thesis--München. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 122-126). 1325960.

No description available.

In modernity, probably more than ever, “knowledge” has become the object of an intense desire. The tensions underwriting this modern desire for knowledge are inscribed in the very term, curiosity, which is at the centre of this dissertation. A venerable motif, curiosity anchors the specifically modern desire to know within a longstanding philosophical, theological and literary tradition. By the 19th century, “curiosity” is certainly an anachronistic paradigm. Yet, inscribed in curiosity, there are two conflicting dialectics which can be found at the heart of modernity’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge: one the one hand, the dialectic between curiosity as a disenchanting desire to see through into the innermost secrets of things, and curiosity as a “thing”, the product of a fetishist desire arrested on the glittering surface of things. On the other hand, curiosity is beset by the dialectic between the desire for a “totalizing”, meaningful vision and the compulsive drive of an increasingly specialized, meaningless pursuit of knowledge. This dissertation examines a series of Modernist narratives which expose this double dialectic. The protagonists of Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet, Elias Canetti’s Die Blendung and Jorge Luis Borges’ El Aleph are all caricatural, anachronistic, curieux ultimately seeking an “absolute knowledge” that cannot be embodied. The moment it seems to have been attained, it is reified, “objectified” into a fetish, a “curiosity”. Yet, these narratives are not only about curiosity; they are in fact true vortexes of curiosity: that of the protagonists of the narratives as well as that of the authors and the readers themselves. As a result, these narratives also speak to the paradoxical location of literature within culture: literature appears simultaneously as the privileged site of all – ultimately phantasmic – totalizing, meaningful visions of the world, as well as a marginal locus, a monstrous cultural residue.

In modernity, probably more than ever, “knowledge” has become the object of an intense desire. The tensions underwriting this modern desire for knowledge are inscribed in the very term, curiosity, which is at the centre of this dissertation. A venerable motif, curiosity anchors the specifically modern desire to know within a longstanding philosophical, theological and literary tradition. By the 19th century, “curiosity” is certainly an anachronistic paradigm. Yet, inscribed in curiosity, there are two conflicting dialectics which can be found at the heart of modernity’s unquenchable thirst for knowledge: one the one hand, the dialectic between curiosity as a disenchanting desire to see through into the innermost secrets of things, and curiosity as a “thing”, the product of a fetishist desire arrested on the glittering surface of things. On the other hand, curiosity is beset by the dialectic between the desire for a “totalizing”, meaningful vision and the compulsive drive of an increasingly specialized, meaningless pursuit of knowledge. This dissertation examines a series of Modernist narratives which expose this double dialectic. The protagonists of Gustave Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pécuchet, Elias Canetti’s Die Blendung and Jorge Luis Borges’ El Aleph are all caricatural, anachronistic, curieux ultimately seeking an “absolute knowledge” that cannot be embodied. The moment it seems to have been attained, it is reified, “objectified” into a fetish, a “curiosity”. Yet, these narratives are not only about curiosity; they are in fact true vortexes of curiosity: that of the protagonists of the narratives as well as that of the authors and the readers themselves. As a result, these narratives also speak to the paradoxical location of literature within culture: literature appears simultaneously as the privileged site of all – ultimately phantasmic – totalizing, meaningful visions of the world, as well as a marginal locus, a monstrous cultural residue.

No description available.

It has long been recognized that Flaubert took a great deal of interest in the literature of classical antiquity. Contemporaries such as Gautier and Maupassant considered him widely-read; a significant minority of his works - La Tentation de saint Antoine, Salammbô and Hérodias- are set roughly during the classical period; and a number of critics have investigated specific aspects of his debt to antiquity. Generally critics have concentrated on Flaubert's documentary use of the literature of antiquity in the works mentioned above (this is Benedetto's and Seznec's approach) or on the incorporation of mythical imagery and symbolism into his work (this is Lowe's approach in Towards the real Flaubert). A few articles have dealt with specific classical works to which Flaubert may be indebted artistically, but there has been to my knowledge no attempt to define the overall effect upon Flaubert's work, in terms of textual influence or more broadly, of his interest in antiquity. I have attempted in this study to evaluate the impact of the literature of classical antiquity upon Flaubert's entire œuvre. I first attempt to define, mainly by reference to the Correspondance, the extent of his knowledge of classical literature. I then consider his works - juvenilia and adult material - in approximately chronological order in the light of the writers he knew and admired, with a view to suggesting ways in which classical texts may have influenced them; textual influence is investigated closely, but attention is also paid to the use of classical themes, imagery and symbolism. Works with a modern setting are considered as well as those of a more obviously classical pedigree. Having identified a range of authors as being of importance - including Homer, Virgil, Ovid and Apuleius - I conclude by considering more broadly Flaubert's position relative to that of his contemporaries and the overall implications of my findings for the understanding of his work.

Thesis (M.A.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2005. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (May 18, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.