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News & Events 2011
James Fowler, The Libertine's Nemesis: The Prude in Clarissa and the 'roman libertin' (Legenda)
April 2011
What is the role of the prude in the roman libertin? James Fowler argues that in the most famous novels of the genre (by Richardson, Crébillon fils, Laclos and Sade) the prude is not the libertine's victim but an equal and opposite force working against him, and that ultimately she brings retribution for his social, erotic and philosophical presumption. In a word, she is his Nemesis. He is vulnerable to her power because of the ambivalence he feels towards her; she is his ideological enemy, but also his ideal object. Moreover, the libertine succumbs to an involuntary nostalgia for the values of the Seventeenth Century, which the prude continues to embody through the age of Enlightenment. In Crébillon fils and Richardson, the encounter between libertine and prude is played out as a skirmish or duel between two individuals. In Laclos and Sade, the presence of female libertines (the Marquise de Merteuil and Juliette) allows that encounter to be reenacted within a murderous triangle.
James Fowler, New Essays on Diderot (Cambridge University Press)
April 2011
The great eighteenth-century French thinker Denis Diderot (1713–1784) once compared himself to a weathervane, by which he meant that his mind was in constant motion. In an extraordinarily diverse career he produced novels, plays, art criticism, works of philosophy and poetics, and also reflected on music and opera. Perhaps most famously, he ensured the publication of the Encyclopédie, which has often been credited with hastening the onset of the French Revolution. Known as one of the three greatest philosophes of the Enlightenment, Diderot rejected the Christian ideas in which he had been raised. Instead, he became an atheist and a determinist. His radical questioning of received ideas and established religion led to a brief imprisonment, and for that reason, no doubt, some of his subsequent works were written for posterity. This collection of essays celebrates the life and work of this extraordinary figure as we approach the tercentenary of his birth.
Thomas Baldwin, The Picture as Spectre in Diderot, Proust and Deleuze (Legenda)
April 2011
The possibility of ekphrasis, the verbal representation of visual imagery, is fundamental to all writing about art, be it art criticism, theory or a passage in a novel. But there is no consensus concerning how such representation works. Some take it for granted that writing about art can result in a precise match between words and visual images. For others, ekphrasis amounts to a kind of virtuoso rivalry, in which the writer aims to outdo the pictorial image that is being described. In close readings of Diderot, Proust and Deleuze, Thomas Baldwin shows how ekphrasis can create a spectral effect. In other words, ekphrastic spectres do not function as fully present stand-ins for given works of art; nor can they be reduced to the status of passive and absent others. Baldwin also explores the ways in which the works of Diderot, Proust and Deleuze inhabit each other as ghostly influences.
University of Kent at Paris postgraduate programmes launched in September 2009
The University of Kent at Paris has a range of unique and innovative cross-disciplinary postgraduate programmes in the Humanities. Combining taught courses and a dissertation, they allow you to share your year between Canterbury and Paris.
- Acquire a valuable postgraduate qualification in one year
- Share the academic year between two great cities
- Join a vibrant postgraduate community
- Work with a team of internationally respected academics
- Attend lectures by prestigious visiting speakers
- Study the history and culture of Paris in the heart of Paris
- Use English for your MA
Hot off the press
Peter Read (co-ed.), Giacometti: Critical Essays (Ashgate, 2009)
Giacometti: Critical Essays brings together new studies by an international team of scholars who together explore the whole span of Alberto Giacometti's work and career from the 1920s to the 1960s. During this complex period in France's intellectual history, Giacometti's work underwent a series of remarkable stylistic shifts while he forged close affiliations with an equally remarkable set of contemporary writers and thinkers. This book throws new light on under-researched aspects of his output and approach, including his relationship to his own studio, his work in the decorative arts, his tomb sculptures and his use of the pedestal. It also focuses on crucial ways his work was received and articulated by contemporary and later writers, including Michel Leiris, Francis Ponge, Isaku Yanaihara and Tahar Ben Jelloun. This book thus engages with energising tensions and debates that informed Giacometti's work, including his association with both surrealism and existentialism, his production of both 'high' art and decorative objects, and his concern with both formal issues, such as scale and material, and with the expression of philosophical and poetic ideas. This multifaceted collection of essays confirms Giacometti's status as one of the most fascinating artists of the twentieth century.