91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳

Barthes's Death Sentences and the End of Literature

Humanities Center, Conference Room D

Presented by Professor Lawrence D. Kritzman, Dartmouth College
Pat and John Rosenwald Research Professor in the Arts and Sciences
Professor of French and Comparative Literature
Director, Institute of French Cultural Studies

In the shadow of his mother's death, Roland Barthes undertakes a quest to turn the act of mourning into a reparative gesture destined to culminate in the writing of a novel. Can the great French theorist of the late twentieth century become a novelist or is this quest undermined by an inability to engage in a creative act resulting from the loss of the mother? A psychoanalytic look at Barthes's life crisis. 

Lunch will be provided

This lecture is sponsored by the French Program, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures