Description
Book SynopsisLiterature and Error comprises a series of essays by French scholars who seek to lay down the foundations of a theory that would argue for the productivity of errors and mistakes in literary works. While the necessity of errors has repeatedly been tackled from a philosophical angle, rarely has the demonstration been attempted from the standpoint of literature. Beyond the thematic importance of errors (evidenced in the age-old motifs of learning from one's errors, mistaken identities, malapropism, comic or tragic misunderstandings, hamartia, the fallibility of man, etc.), the proposition is made here that errare is not just humanum but also literariumthat Erring Becomes Literature with or, preferably, without corrections. Indeed, approached from various angles, it is the literariness of errors and mistakes that this joint study sets out to explore. Modern and contemporary Anglo-American literature structurally accommodates and even welcomes errors. Rangi
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments – Isabelle Alfandary/Marc Porée: Introduction – Marc Porée: Glances at a Poetics of Error – François Crampe: "Truth Broken in Prismatic Hues": False Prophets, Ambiguous Testimonies, and Poetic Truth in the Works of Robert Browning – Christine Savinel: Take a Closer Look, or the System of Error in Elizabeth Bishop’s Poetry – Fanny Quément: "That day I’ll be in step with what escaped me": Senses and the Rhythm of Error in the Work of Seamus Heaney – Jean-Jacques Lecercle: Error/Mirror: How to Generate Fiction – Jean-Pierre Naugrette: Has Mr. Utterson the Right to Err? – Catherine Lanone: Literature and the Sensation of Error – Dennis Tredy: Henry James’s "Theatre of Error and Renouncement": Guy Domville and the Novels of the Experimental Period – Isabelle Alfandary: Errare Americanum Est: On Errors in American Fiction – Sylvain Belluc: "Language Never Errs": A Saussurean Study of Some Mistakes in James Joyce’s Works – Juliette Nicolini: The—Forced?—Choice of Error in Sorrentino’s Writing – Laurent Mellet: Comic Mistakes and Intimate Errors in Jonathan Coe’s Fiction – Béatrice Pire: Jonathan Franzen’s Tragi-Comedy of Errors – Contributors.
