TY - CHAP
T1 - Secrets of Literature, Resistance to Meaning
AU - Mortimer, Armine Kotin
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2001 Brill. All rights reserved
PY - 2001
Y1 - 2001
N2 - Meaning resists: Did Merimee's Venus d'Ille intend to murder Alphonse, or did she merely embrace him with all the strength of her passion for him-and then discover she had killed him? What did Maupassant expect his readers to think at the end of "En Voyage," which closes with ellipses? Barbey d' Aurevilly's "Le plus bel amour de Don Juan" gives enough to create an unsettling air of mystery about a "reality" behind the story that will always be hidden. Even Balzac sometimes allows missing or ambiguous elements to enhance the attractiveness of his dramas; examples are Maitre Cornelius and L'Auberge rouge. Clearly resistance to meaning is itself a meaning, when the unpolished surface of the text allows insight beyond apparent fact and ratified meanings.
AB - Meaning resists: Did Merimee's Venus d'Ille intend to murder Alphonse, or did she merely embrace him with all the strength of her passion for him-and then discover she had killed him? What did Maupassant expect his readers to think at the end of "En Voyage," which closes with ellipses? Barbey d' Aurevilly's "Le plus bel amour de Don Juan" gives enough to create an unsettling air of mystery about a "reality" behind the story that will always be hidden. Even Balzac sometimes allows missing or ambiguous elements to enhance the attractiveness of his dramas; examples are Maitre Cornelius and L'Auberge rouge. Clearly resistance to meaning is itself a meaning, when the unpolished surface of the text allows insight beyond apparent fact and ratified meanings.
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U2 - 10.1163/9789004486164_006
DO - 10.1163/9789004486164_006
M3 - Chapter
AN - SCOPUS:85179387094
T3 - Faux Titre
SP - 55
EP - 66
BT - Faux Titre
PB - Brill
ER -