Heroism and Passion in Literature: Studies in Honour of Moya Longstaffe

Ed. Graham Gargett. Amsterdam; N.Y.: Rodopi, 2004. XII, 282 pp. Pb: 90-420-1692-2 EUR 64 / US$ 80 

This volume, prompted by the publication in 1999 of Moya Longstaffe's remarkable study, Metamorphoses of Passion and the Heroic in French Literature: Corneille, Stendhal, Claudel, further investigates and analyses the multiple appearances of Passion and Heroism in literature. It pursues the exploration of these themes in a variety of cultures (English, French, German, Spanish), genres, and critical approaches. In addition, the chronological span represented is extremely wide. Contributions range from La Fontaine, Molière and Voltaire to Rimbaud and Camus; from Baudelaire to Beckett; from Wagner to Goytisolo. This very diversity gives necessary context, providing scope for reflection and analysis. Although passion seems timeless, can heroism have any real meaning - apart from an individual and existential one - in our postmodern age? Has a notion at the centre of European culture for so many centuries really disappeared from our intellectual and cultural universe? This volume will be of interest to all students of literature, whatever their critical or linguistic allegiance, since it focuses on the varying manifestations of two vital ingredients of all societies and cultures

Sommaire: Notes on the Contributors; Moya Longstaffe: A Tribute; Bibliography of Moya Longstaffe's Writings; Introduction
Part One The Early Modern Period
H.T. BARNWELL: Heroic Discourse? A Note on Racine's Bérénice
Angela RYAN: The Lost Heroine and the Memetics of Cultural Inscription in Euripides's Hippolytus and Racine's Phèdre
John CAMPBELL: The Twilight of Heroism: Ambition and Ambitions in La Princesse de Clèves
Robert McBRIDE : Le Héros moliéresque et les pièges du langage
Jane McKEE; A Passion for the Scriptures: The Biblical Sonnets of Laurent Drelincourt
Marité OUBRIER : La Fontaine: Anti-Hero or Reluctant Hero?
Graham GARGETT : Voltaire's L'Ingénu, the Journal chrétien and Saint-Foix: A New Source for Hercule de Kerkabon?
Part Two The Nineteenth Century
Brian Keith-Smith: A Germanic Hero Par Excellence? Richard Wagner in Paris
Anne JUDGE and Solange LAMOTHE: Stendhal's Style and the Expression of Passion and Heroism
Elisabeth M. LILLIE: Heroes of the Mind: The Intellectual Elite in the Work of Ernest Renan
John McCANN : Heroism and Villainy in Les Fleurs du Mal
Henri GODIN : Bel-Ami: postérité d'un héros
Part Three The Twentieth Century
Marie-Joséphine WHITAKER : Rimbaud, Claudel: la passion du voyage
Alan GABBEY: The Last Great Voice of Soldierly Heroism' and the Philosophy of Rationalism: Péguy on Descartes
Michael R. JONES: The Passion of Adam von Trott: the Heroic Stance of the Foreign Minister of the German Resistance
John H. GILLESPIE: Camus's Passionate Heroes
Gerard M. MACKLIN: (Un)Sung s in the Drama of Samuel Beckett
Angela CHAMBERS: Prophets and Heroes: Ideology and Aesthetics in Aimé Césaire's Poetic Heroes
Stanley BLACK: The Author as Hero in the New World Order: The Power of Fictionality in Goytisolo's El sitio de los sitios
Richard YORK: Evelyn Waugh's Farewell to Heroism
Philip TAYLOR: A Passion for Debate: French Communist Party Internal Opposition from Garaudy to Fiterman
Pól Ó DOCHARTAIGH: Jewish Outsiders as Anti-Heroes in Jurek Becker's Novels

Index