Back to Search
Start Over
Desire on Ice: The Menace of Albertine's Mimicry in "La PrisonniƩre."
- Source :
-
College Literature . Spring2005, Vol. 32 Issue 2, p43-61. 19p. - Publication Year :
- 2005
-
Abstract
- Albertine's discourse on the ices in "La Prisonnière" has proven fertile ground for Proustian criticism. Some critics have interpreted this passage as "homosexual discourse in the guise of a lesbian discourse" (qtd. in Gray, 111). Others have cited its architectural tropes as a prophetic allusion to the narrator's imminent masterpiece. A few have interpreted the passage as a "fantasy of fellatio" amply supported by the proliferation of phallic images. Finally, a body of criticism has interpreted this passage as evidence of a self-parodying, authorial mastery. Reading against the rain of this tradition, Margaret Gray develops a provocative reading that asserts the precise opposite: that Albertine's discourse on the "ices" evidences the loss of authorial mastery to the emergence of a "feminine ecriture," In this paper, I develop the subversive elements of Albertine's discourse on the "ices" while contesting Gray's assertion: if Albertine's discourse evidences the loss of Marcel's mastery over her, it leads to the recuperation of his authorial mastery by virtue of the suffering it inflicts on him. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Subjects :
- *CRITICISM
*DISCOURSE
*ALLUSIONS
*AUTHORSHIP
*LITERARY style
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00933139
- Volume :
- 32
- Issue :
- 2
- Database :
- Academic Search Index
- Journal :
- College Literature
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 16861569
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1353/lit.2005.0022