
Figures of Alterity
French Realism and Its Others
Lawrence R. Schehr(Author)
Stanford University Press
Published on 28. February 2003
Book
Hardback
264 pages
978-0-8047-4333-4 (ISBN)
Description
This book focuses on the extension of realist writing toward alterity, toward otherness, in its ongoing efforts to enable individuals to speak and be heard correctly. Through a series of close readings of six authors from Balzac to Proust, the author shows the ways realist narrative engages the problem of bringing the other into the realm of the discursively representable. The acts of representation involved in that development were not necessarily coterminous with either the representation of the exotic and its attendant stereotypes or with the representation of individuals themselves. The representation of the other was the extension of discourse to what was previously unrepresentable. The author argues that the unrepresentable is often perceived as oppositional because of the structuring of discourse by hierarchies and metaphysics, whereby any bivalent pair is made into an oppositional pair.
Reviews / Votes
"This complex and deep book, the result of a great deal of careful reflection, opens a perspective on realism that differs from those in the existing critical literature. The notion of alterity allows the author to bring together texts from different moments in the tradition of realism and to establish a new and original commonality among them. The range of the book's argument, its sweep, is impressive, and it will stimulate debate and provoke fruitful scholarly reactions." -David Bell,Duke UniversityMore details
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Palo Alto
United States
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Cloth
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 158 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
485 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-8047-4333-4 (9780804743334)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Lawrence R. Schehr is Professor of French at the University of Illinois. His most recent books are Rendering French Realism (Stanford, 1997) and Parts of an Andrology: On Representations of Men's Bodies (Stanford, 1997