Old Man Goriot - Lecture Notes, Lectures 2 - 9 PDF

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Old Man Goriot

1/29/2015 3:32:00 PM

Balzac credited with inventing or perfecting the novel  Balzacian novel Also rebels against Balzacian novel in Old Man Goriot Invented how we conceive the modern world  Helped define the dreams and desires of many generations  What to conceive of the modern world, what to expect from it, and how to get it Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) Born in Tours Began writing fiction in his 20s Launched several failed business schemes Became professional writer in 1829  First novels were historical novels about French history Wrote series of novels with characters that reappear in others  

“The Human Comedy” 91 finished works

First sentence about Madame Vauquer (neé de Conflant) sets scene for present world Obsessed with declaring truth value at start of novel

1/29/2015 3:32:00 PM Rastignac’s education  Bad in law school, good in knowledge of Parisian social life Has instinct about good upper class behavior because of his noble birthroots First lesson:  Money is everything and the Parisian social world is cruel Novel that centers around protagonist’s education = bildungsroman  One of dominant forms of realist novel in 19th century  Also Red and the Black  Lost Illusions by Balzac Education of the reader and society What did readers need to learn in the 19th century? 

Has to do with modernity

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How to make it in Paris with capitalism in the aftermath of the Revolution

Novel is best way to learn in the world of confusion when the schools were still mostly focused on Greek and Latin education Novel poses a series of enigmas in boarding house that are resolved slowly 

by Rastignac Part of confusion in this society is semiotic = confusion of signs Before revolution, things were easier to decode  People dressed by their rank  Signs corresponded to reference After revolution, hard to tell nobility by clothing if you could not read the subtle signs Novel is about reducing all human interactions to monetary values and exchanges, quantifying all emotions Vautrin’s interest in Rastignac and other young men may be sexual Vautrin suggests that there are other ways to get ahead in Paris:  Take advantage of the fact that Victorine is in love with Rastignac 

Kill her brother so that Victorine inherits money and marries Rastignac

 Vautrin would become slave owner in the American South Rastignac does not want to murder and has more noble plan of taking Delphine as his mistress  Both plans propose the instrumentalization of other people Capitalist society described by novel doesn’t allow for pure moral choices

 Always relies on instrumentalization of other people Even Goriot profited from famine during Revolution Had inside knowledge of food shortage and sold grain at 10x normal price Old Goriot is about queer or alternative families 

 Boarding house sign Several voices in Balzac’s novels  Narrator’s intervention: orients reader toward most conservative way to approach the novel  Voice of characters Idea that we need novels to instruct us in the confusing new way of family life Marriages are economic coalitions  Cheating is accepted Even the affairs are business transcations

1/29/2015 3:32:00 PM Illusions in the novel “Pure” love  Rastignac wants to profit from Delphine’s husband  Delphine is married and is heartless toward her father Relationship among Rastignac’s family  

Mother and sisters send money when they don’t have any Seems pure and selfless, however want him to succeed so Rastignac can pay sisters’ dowries

The church is also stingy: no mass said for Goriot  Church is forced to ask for payments because of Revolution Anticlimactic ending  Rastignac goes to see Delphine after “challenging” Paris  Idea that the only fights in Paris are in drawing and dining rooms In other novels, we learn that his plan works  Provides dowries for his sisters  

Secures political position as Minister of the Interior Cited as character who succeeded at a price

Realism of his novels allows Balzac to pass on his opinions as facts  

Such as assumptions on nature of genders Half the women in Paris live “wealthy on the outside, cruel cares inside their hearts”

No novels with female protagonist  No women who dream of accomplishing big things  Sometimes focalized his point of view through female characters Novels helped perpetuate stereotypes against women of the time

Madame Bovary

2/10/2015 3:32:00 PM

Flaubert (1821-1890) Father was a famous surgeon  Accused of “dissecting” his characters and treating them clinically Dropped out of law school Traveled to Egypt and Middle East as a young man Lived with mother for the rest of his life His family’s money enabled him to devote himself to writing  

Spent years writing Worked on Madame Bovary 1850-1856

Tried for outrage against public morals and religions Emma is a very unlikeable character  Frivolous, frustrating, bored, selfish Don’t want to become her, but analyze her Boredom of being married to a dull man in a small town consumes her Flaubert analyzes Emma’s depression like a modern psychiatrist Flaubert is perhaps trying to tell us that history is made of small day-to-day events 

In analyzing depressed bourgeois woman, gives portrait of this

social class at this time in history Emma reads books to live vicariously through them  Balzac and Sand Long descriptions of details of dress Hat description at the beginning  Not real, could only exist in literature Characters’ voice expressed without quotations  Indirect discourse Flaubert holds some of her thoughts to ridicule, such as her glorification of adultery

2/10/2015 3:32:00 PM Main target of Flaubert’s critique is bourgeoisie 19th century novel = bourgeois novel Flaubert attacks specific kind of stupidity that is common to the bourgeoisie  Being dumb but thinking they are smart  Having opinions and stating them as fact Madame Bovary can be read as guide to stupidity in small town bourgeois Charles is example of actual stupidity Flaubert wants readers to believe opposite of what characters say Never intervenes and says that characters like Homais are stupid  Lets their own actions show this Pharmacists are badly represented in French literature  Society values their kind of stupidity Agricultural fair scene is juxtaposition of speeches and Emma’s seduction Flaubert praises government ironically  Says one thing but means the opposite

2/10/2015 3:32:00 PM Emma’s death scene is both literary and scientific Refused to censor his work  Racy carriage scene Defense attorney argued that Flaubert meant to write novel as a warning  

Emma dies gruesome death after adultery Conservative novel that teaches against upward social mobility

Prosecution argued that novel goes against moral foundation of religion  No one to condemn Emma in the novel’s world; no “central moral  

authority” Dies on her own, in her own ways Husband continues to love her after her death and revelation of her

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adultery Didn’t understand that Emma’s thoughts are not the same as

Flaubert’s Free indirect discourse allows for empathy and irony at the same time

Swann in Love

3/24/2015 2:32:00 PM

Swann in Love is like a 19th century novel within The Search, perhaps to show that Proust can write something like this Tells story of a man who fails aesthetically where he succeeds himself  Consuming works of art vs. creating them Swann’s story allows narrator to break through writer’s block  Recognizing that the work had always been within him Mise en abîme = story within a story Uses pronoun “my” in Swann in Love and reasserts narrator’s identity at the end of the section to go back to Marcel’s story What is jealousy according to Proust?  Overly zealous form of reading and interpretation of loved one  Paranoia and misreading  Search for signs of betrayal In the form of spying and interrogation  Spying at the time: Dreyfus affair Swann does not find Odette attractive until he compares her with a painting like a collector Odette’s bad taste compared to Swann’s good taste shows how blind love is Swann must convince himself that Odette is attractive, but she is not even his type Odette’s Anglicisms and love for England 

In Proust’s world, artistic achievement is more valuable than social class Madame Verdurin does not like aristocrats (“the bores”) Proust also does not like aristocracy; novels suggest problems within hierarchy Swann’s social class does nothing to help him with Odette and the Verdurins The aristocracy Proust describes is ancient The dream is so realistic because it does not symbolize anything Proust tells us that reality is not only banal, but ridiculous; only way to counter it is by creating art

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3/3/2015 3:39:00 PM Proust was gay, however writes exclusively about heterosexual couples Proust’s “paperoles” to add on to his work What does the word “search” mean for Proust? The series ends with the narrator discovering that the work he has been trying to create has been in his head Proust denounces Sainte-Beuve for thinking that works can only be understood by understanding the writer The madeleine dipped in a cup of tea: important concept of suppressed memories From the beginning, not sure who narrator is, what his age is, and his connection to the events he is going to document Proust is not interested in one specific class or race of humans like Zola or Balzac 

Still constant obvious struggles between bourgeoisie and aristocracy

The plot of The Recherche describes the book being written itself Narrator is referred to as Marcel only three times in seven books Many critics thought the novel was not French, but Jewish  

Long sentences Yiddish phrases

With Proust, negative things happen once you win the object of your object

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The Lover

4/16/2015 2:33:00 PM

Female writers in post-war era 

Just gotten the vote

 No suffrage movement, a “gift” after liberation Many novels were neo-realist Duras’s style changed over the years, but focus of novel remained constant  Violent and incestuous brother  Mother’s thwarted ambition Teenage girl in a novel of troubled adolescence was new in post-war era Literary criticism was still male-centered and critics weren’t interested in changes to literary world 

Called themselves “structuralists” o In favor of cooler appraisal of surfaces and form than existentialists

Tropism = expresses currents of feelings between people in dialogue Part of the underground In resistance movement with François Mitterand, who later became president of France Became interested in the gray area after war 

Underside of conventional morality o Wrote about seducing a fascist, testifying against him later

o Wrote about being a torturer Joined Communist party Became emblem of modern French novel after war 

Abusive childhood in colonial setting

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During flowering of French feminism, Duras was central to “écriture féminine”, idea that women wrote differently from men Wrote screenplays with new-wave directors and consolidated with avant garde energy

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Created fictional universe where nothing is clear and no one was innocent at a time when France was doubting its morality

 Was many things to many people Spoke Vietnamese as a child, perhaps related to repetitive writing style Autofiction Writes about themes dear to the blues: poverty, love, sadness Claimed that Sartre didn’t write and that true writing is rare  Sartre came up with ideas first, then wrote

4/16/2015 2:33:00 PM No clues as to whether the story is fiction or autobiographical Such a romance would have been impossible Switch from 3rd to 1st person narration is unannounced   

The author’s thoughts Author can be identical to the narrator and distant from narrator Fragmentation of speaking subject and confusion of time

 Effect is Proustian but with different style Borderline writing? Hated the film adaptation Traits that make up Duras’s style  Minimalism  

Switching point of view and tense Self conscious narcissism

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Accumulation of memory fragments that echo one another o Brother compared to Natzis occupying France o Straight memory line is always interrupted by memory fragments  Sides feed into the main story

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Focus on the personal Madness o Perhaps explains all other stylistic choices o Family madness of mother and older brother  She and younger brother are victims of mother and

older brother Last page of the novel 

“C’est moi” = puts narrator back in intimacy with the lover

Class/race hierarchies don’t correspond: white girl is poor and Chinese man is part of the business elite  

Is she expressing guilt for colonialism? Chinese man is also a colonialist in a way

Does she actually love the man or not?  She loves his love for her and it makes her feel powerful  

He is always upset and pining for her because it’s a “one-way obsession” Mother is real object of affection for girl but mother loves older son

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The Plague

4/2/2015 2:36:00 PM

Camus biography: Grew up in rural colonial Algeria Mother was illiterate, deaf, and nearly mute Diagnosed with TB at age 17 and battled it for the rest of his life Developed sense of the absurd Favorite Greek myth was the allegory of Sisyphus  Most important part was seeing the rock roll back down the hill After Operation Torch of 1942, Camus could not leave France for Algeria and was separated from his wife for 2 years  Feelings went into writing novel Denial; idea of when to label illness as a plague similar to the denial of the existence of war in France Similar questions posed during the war and during the plague in the novel  Has God abandoned humankind? Rats coming out of gutters at the beginning of the novel = like Greek chorus announcing the beginning of the play  Are not seen for the rest of the novel The books is like a chronicle, by a narrator who does not revel himself until 8 pages before the end of the book   

Withholding identity = gives book momentum Know that has to be someone who writes Says that is qualified to speak about separated lovers, but there are many men like this in the novel

Camus and Sartre’s friendship and disagreement on Arab independence and communism  Camus was moderate and Sartre was radical

4/2/2015 2:36:00 PM Communism and Camus: Camus’s activism closer to humanitarian causes than communist ideas of the 1940s The Plague is an allegory, not specifically about Natzism or WWII 

In 1940s, Oran was most European city in Algeria  Europeans outnumbered natives 

Large number of Europeans with Spanish background; seen in the novel

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No descriptions of the colonial dynamic or Arab characters o For some Arabs, French colonialism resembled German invasion of France

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Critic Conor Cruise O’Brien accuses Camus of “exterminating” Arabs from the novel similar to the Holocaust

Shoshanna Felman:  Interested in passages counting number dead  Compares them to the Holocaust 

One sentence about “une fumée dans l’imagination” is describing the gas chambers?

Black Panthers read the Plague Gay activists read it during AIDS epidemic WWII veterans read it and thought it described their war Passage about Tarrou and Rieux swimming Last paragraph is like a response to O’Brien’s criticism  Plague can be whatever evil one imagines (disease, Holocaust, war, etc.) The plague is a neutral, natural force that just happened, unlike the deliberately evil force of Natzism  Was it supposed to be about Natzism or not?  Beneficial to disregard time period and relation to historical events Women are also erased from novel except for the mother 

Perhaps mirrors prisoner camps which were male-only

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The Red and the Black

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Bourgeoisie By 1815 (Restoration), Industrial Revolution was taking place By 1830, France was beginning to industrialize  Literacy was rising Old kind of novel was by and about aristocrats  Bourgeoisie felt that these novels did not apply to them  New consumers of literature who want to read about themselves New novel took bourgeoisie seriously 

Stendhal was the first writer to do this

Stendhal Belonged to upper bourgeoisie, but did not like the pretentiousness of it First novel: Armance (1827) was not a success Red and the Black (1830) was considered a masterpiece, even by Balzac The Charterhouse of Parma (1839) was also a success Followers began studying “Beylism” or way of life The Red and the Black “La vérité, l’âpre vérité” –Danton  Truth, bitter truth Realist novel: makes claims about (ugly) truths of life, but in fictional form  What people eat, say, how much things cost o Considered ugly and bad and not serious literature Responded to critics within novels  Metaphor of realist novel as a mirror taking a walk down a big road o Sometimes shows blue skies, sometimes shows mud on road Country needed new stories to explain new sentiments and occurrences, like people moving into Paris from the country A new sense that the presence is different from the past, and that it’s taking place as a result of specific historical events Landscape description in opening sounds like tour guide book  Establishes contrast between Paris and the small town; civilization and nature Characters are not romanticized: cold, calculated, and obsessed with money Julien is an extremely psychologically complex character New techniques for putting us inside Julien’s head

Julien’s ambition drives the plot, dominant force in novel  Not sure how Stendhal’s narrator feels about this Desires money, success, social position, women, love that he didn’t experience at home  Stendhal shows how family dynamics shape one’s life Napoleon is an ongoing model of mobility in novel  Example of what individual could accomplish if he set his mind to it In this era, Napoleon had died and Bourbon kings had been restored, limiting any opportunities for young men like Julien Novel about what happens when these doors have been shut Intertext: books within books  

Establish character by showing what books they like Set literary time period

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The Bible, Tartuffe from Molière’s book, Rousseau’s Confessions Mme de Renal’s failure to read certain books that would have better prepared her to deal with her affair

Stendhal makes point that we are never as original as we think we are

1/15/2015 3:31:00 PM Narration style creates three dimensionality  Weaves in and out of character’s point of view Free indirect discourse: characters’ thoughts being reported in 3rd person without quotations 

Distances himself from characters

Mathilde Julien’s equal Contradicts model of domesticity Women’s rights declined after Revolution In Stendhal’s world, everyone lies about their true feelings No such thing as true desire or emotions 

Product of someone else’s opinions

1/15/2015 3:31:00 PM Mathilde begins to love Julien when someone else does  Is there an authentic human desire?  Everything we want and believe is second hand Fascination with history in novel 

Julien and Mathilde share interest in hi...