Never Say I , livre ebook

331

pages

English

Ebooks

2006

Écrit par
Lucey Michael Lucey

Publié par
Duke University Press

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331

pages

English

Ebooks

2006

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

17 novembre 2006

EAN13

9780822388371

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

Never Say I reveals the centrality of representations of sexuality, and particularly same-sex sexual relations, to the evolution of literary prose forms in twentieth-century France. Rethinking the social and literary innovation of works by Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, and Colette, Michael Lucey considers these writers' production of a first-person voice in which matters related to same-sex sexuality could be spoken of. He shows how their writings and careers took on political and social import in part through the contribution they made to the representation of social groups that were only slowly coming to be publicly recognized. Proust, Gide, and Colette helped create persons and characters, points of view, and narrative practices from which to speak and write about, for, or as people attracted to those of the same sex.Considering novels along with journalism, theatrical performances, correspondences, and face-to-face encounters, Lucey focuses on the interlocking social and formal dimensions of using the first person. He argues for understanding the first person not just as a grammatical category but also as a collectively produced social artifact, demonstrating that Proust's, Gide's, and Colette's use of the first person involved a social process of assuming the authority to speak about certain issues, or on behalf of certain people. Lucey reveals these three writers as both practitioners and theorists of the first person; he traces how, when they figured themselves or other first persons in certain statements regarding same-sex identity, they self-consciously called attention to the creative effort involved in doing so.

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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

17 novembre 2006

EAN13

9780822388371

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

1 Mo

French

Never Say I

S E R I E S

edited by Michèle Aina Barale, Jonathan Goldberg,

Michael Moon, and

Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick

Never Say I

Sexuality and the First

Person in Colette, Gide,

and Proust

M I C H A E L L U C E Y

Duke University Press

Durham & London

2006

∫2006 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper$ Designed by C. H. Westmoreland Typeset in Bembo with Centaur and Futura display by Keystone Typesetting, Inc. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.

This project was partially supported by funding from the President’s Research Fellowships in the Humanities, University of California.

Additionally, Duke University Press gratefully acknowledges the support of the Arts and Humanities Division at the University of California, Berkeley, which provided funds toward the production of this book.

Contents

Acknowledgmentsvii Introduction: Referring to Same-Sex Sexualities in the First Person 1 ∞Gide, Bourget, and Proust Talking 29 ≤57Questions of Register in and around 1902 ≥Colette, the Moulin Rouge, andLes Vrilles94 ∂165Gide and Posterity ∑193Proust’s Queer Metalepses ∏Sodom and Gomorrah: Proust’s Narrator’s First Person 215 Epilogue 250 Notes259 Works Cited303 Index317

Acknowledgments

Interlocution, intersubjectivity, and the importance of a surrounding social context are major themes throughout these pages, beginning here. To all who helped create the context and conditions in which this work came to seem doable and exciting, my heartfelt thanks. Four of the chapters inNever Say Igot going or got ﬁnished thanks to invita-tions to speak or to write from various people including Remi Lenoir, Françoise Gaspard and Didier Eribon, Tom Conner, Naomi Segal, and Elisabeth Ladenson. An earlier version of chapter 4 was published in English as ‘‘Practices of Posterity: Gide and the Cultural Politics of Sexuality,’’ inAndre Gide’s Politics: Rebellion and Ambivalence, ed. Tom Conner (New York: Palgrave, 2000), and is reprinted with permission. An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared as ‘‘Proust’s Queer Metalepses’’ inMLN116 (2001): 795–815,∫The Johns Hopkins University Press. It is reprinted with permission of The Johns Hopkins University Press. The participants in a Berkeley graduate seminar on Proust and the ﬁrst person helped me out a good deal, as did various members of the audiences for lectures drawn from these chapters. The good fortune of time in which to read, think, and write came thanks to a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, which en-abled an extended research stay in Paris. Further essential support came from a University of California President’s Research Fellowship in the Humanities, and a Humanities Research Fellowship from the Univer-sity of California, Berkeley. I am immensely grateful for this support. David Copenhafer provided research assistance for some of these chap-ters. Librarians and the collections at Berkeley and Stanford and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France were essential to the research that went into this book. It’s been a pleasure to work with Ken Wissoker,

Justin Faerber, Sage Rountree, and everyone else at Duke University Press again. Elizabeth Povinelli pointed me in the direction of some helpful reading at a crucial moment. Monique Nemer o√ered a set of pertinent comments on a couple of chapters and some key references. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Ann Smock showed their support gener-ously. Tim Hampton, Leslie Kurke, and Celeste Langan, invaluable intellectual companions of many years, trained their canny eyes on a good number of these pages. Ross Chambers, Elisabeth Ladenson, and Sharon Marcus troubled themselves to comment extensively on the whole manuscript, much to its betterment. Most essential and beloved enabler of all, Gerry Gomez, thank goodness, has been there most every day.

viii

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Referring to Same-Sex

Sexualities in the First Person

‘‘Listen, dear, now you must make me a promise. YourNourritures terrestres is ﬁne . . . very ﬁne, even. . . . But dear, from now on never again write ‘I.’ ’’ And as I didn’t seem to understand him fully enough, he went on: ‘‘In art, you see, there is noﬁrstperson.’’

[«Écoutez, dear, il faut maintenant que vous me fassiez une promesse. LesNourritures terrestres, c’est bien . . . c’est très bien . . . Mais, dear, promettez-moi: maintenant, n’écrivez plus jamais JE». Et comme je paraissais ne pas su≈samment comprendre, il reprenait:—«En art, voyez-vous, il n’y a pas depremièrepersonne».] — a n d r é g i d e ,Oscar Wilde(1910)

He is fat, or rather pu√y; he reminds me somewhat of Jean Lorrain. I am taking himCorydon, of which he promises not to speak to anyone; and when I say a word or two about my Memoirs: ‘‘You can tell anything,’’ he exclaims; ‘‘but on condition that you never say:I.’’ But that won’t suit me.

[Il est gras, ou plutôt bou≈; il me rappelle un peu Jean Lorrain. Je lui apporteCorydonil me promet de ne parler à personne; et dont comme je lui dis quelques mots de mes Mémoires: «Vous pouvez tout raconter, s’écrie-t-il; mais à condition de ne ja-mais dire:Je.» Ce qui ne fait pas mon a√aire.] — a n d r é g i d e, speaking of Proust in the May 14, 1921, entry to hisJournal

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