This collection of eight critical essays on the modern French novelist (selected from a session devoted to her at the 1991 MLA meeting) employs contemporary theory to examine "the unspeakable" in relation to postmodern (and classical) issues of desire and language: textuality, selfhood, femininity, psychoanalysis, madness, ontology, and mythology.
- Cover
- TABLE OF CONTENTS
- INTRODUCTION
- I: DAME DURAS: BREAKING THROUGH THE TEXT
- II: ELLE EST UNE AUTRE: THE DUPLICITY OF SELF IN L'AMANT
- III: THE UNSPEAKABLE HEROINE OF EMILY L
- IV: LOSS, ABANDONMENT, AND LOVE: THE EGO IN EXILE
- V: BATTAMBANG: THE UNNAMABLE
- VI: DURAS' 'LAUGHING CURE' FOR LACAN'S HYSTERICAL LACK
- VII: MEMORY AS ONTOLOGICAL DISRUPTION: HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR AS A POSTMODERN WORK
- VIII: IMAGINATION INTO MYTH: LOVE (LANGUAGE) AS MADNESS IN PLATO AND DURAS
- SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
- NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS