Bloomsbury European Roman d’Analyse, The: Unconsummated Love Stories from Boccaccio to Stendhal

Through close readings of a selection of European novels and novellas written between 1340 and 1827, this study of "analytical fiction"examines how unconsummated love stories probe the frailty of self-knowledge. Tracing elements of what the French call the roman d'analyse in the works of Boccaccio, Marguerite de Navarre, Cervantes, Marie de Lafayette, Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, and Stendhal, Adele Kudish discusses how the metaphor of unconsummated love is deployed to represent a fundamental lack of insight into the self. Rather than depicting the mind as transparent, analytical fiction deals in the opacity of the mind. Narrators and characters are faced with deception, misprision, doubt, and confusion, leading to self-deception, jealousy, and crises of self. The European Roman d’Analyse reads such epistemological failures as symptoms of a more fundamental preoccupation with the human psyche as un-chartable and bizarre. In this way, the authors of romans d'analyse enact a larger philosophical project: an anatomy of the psyche wherein we are unable―or unwilling―to know ourselves. Review [A] well-researched and wide-ranging study … Kudish situates and describes the roman d’analyse as a subgenre within literary history that has its roots in a long tradition of philosophical scepticism and which can fruitfully be approached from comparatist and narratological perspectives. … The parallel readings offered by this book can enrich our understanding of canonical French texts … [and] the book’s ‘pan-European’ approach, which looks beyond national literary traditions and conventional chronological divisions to seek out connections between works that place disconnection at their centres, is enough in itself to make this book a valuable addition to scholarship. --Maria C. Scott, French StudiesAdele Kudish’s study of the roman d’analyse covers an impressively wide range in terms of both period and geography ... there is much to admire and enjoy here, and both those interested in the history of the novel and those researching the individual authors and texts analysed here will wish to consult it. --Modern Language ReviewWith literary and psychological acumen, Adele Kudish has ushered in a new classification for the history of the European novel: the roman d’analyse, a narrative tradition of erotic failure that reveals a prehistory, for one example, of the novels of Elena Ferrante. The scope of texts and richness of interpretation in this book staggered me. --Wendy Anne Lee, Assistant Professor of English, New York University, USA About the Author Adele Kudish is Associate Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, USA. She has published articles in Studies in Philology and The French Review, among others.