The Order of Mimesis
Balzac, Stendhal, Nerval and Flaubert

This book is a challenging investigation of the idea of literary mimesis in the light of contemporary literary theory.

Christopher Prendergast (Author)

9780521369770, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 28 October 1988

300 pages
22.4 x 14.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.46 kg

This book is a challenging investigation of the idea of literary mimesis in the light of contemporary literary theory. Drawing on a range of theoretical perspectives developed in and around the work of Barthes, Kristeva, Genette and Derrida, Dr Prendergast explores approaches to the concept of mimesis and relates these to a number of narrative texts produced in the period which literary history familiarly designates as the age of realism: Balzac's Illusions Perdues and Splendeurs et Misères des Courtisanes, Stendhal's Le Rouge et le Noir, Nerval's Sylvie and Flaubert's L'Education Sentimentale. The book is not merely expository however: one of the author's aims is to engage with much of the polemical debate which has surrounded the topic, in the belief that a recognition of the historical conditions determining both the theory and practice of mimesis must be recovered.

General editors preface
Acknowledgements
1. The order of mimesis: poison, nausea, health
2. The economy of mimesis
3. Balzac: narrative contracts
4. Stendhal: the ethics of verisimilitude
5. Nerval: the madness of mimesis
6. Flaubert: the stupidity of mimesis
7. Conclusion: mimesis, a matter for the police?
Notes
Translations
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]