"Using the perspective of neuroscience and analyses of archetypal patterns, Gaze, Memory, and Gender in Narrative from Ancient to Modern proposes a fresh and convincing reinterpretation of Alain-Fournier's canonic novel Le Grand Meaulnes. Nelly G. Kupper's analysis sheds light on the oppositional dynamic between Meaulnes as archetype of the masculine hero, who must not look back, and Seurel, the narrator who embodies Christian values. The book's stimulating inquiry demonstrates the centrality of the adventure novel for the renewal of French literature in the early twentieth century."-Marie-Eve Thérenty, Professor of French Literature; Director of the Research Center on Literature and the Arts of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries (RIRRA21), University of Paul-Valéry, Montpellier 3, France
Acknowledgments - Preface - Anatomy of the Archetype: Gaze-Memory-Gender - The Archetypal Plot: Gaze as an Instrument of the Genders - Keeping an Eye on the Gaze of the Masculine Gender - Memory Patterns in Fiction and Neuroscience - Orpheus's Gaze Forward: The Metaphor of Forgetfulness, the Promise of Adventure - Ancient Narrative: (Homo)Sexuality and the Masculine Gaze Upon Itself - Feminine Archetype in the Ancient Plot: Beauty and Beast - From Ancient to Modern Hero: Recognizable Archetype Patterns - Modern Narrative, Ancient Design: The Case of Le Grand Meaulnes - Modern Narrative and the New Law - Modern Narrative: Clash Between Ancient and Modern Imaginations - Feminine Archetype in Modern Text: Response to an Ancient Order - Index.
Nelly G. Kupper is Professor of French and Russian at Northern Michigan University, Marquette. She earned her PhD in Modern Foreign Languages from the University of Tennesee, Knoxville. Her more recent publications include "Obsessively Estranged, Compulsively Creative" in Perspectives on Creativity: Volume 2 (2011), "Daughters Who Remember: the Omnipresent Mother in Nathalie Sarraute's Enfance, and the Absent Mother in Patrick Modiano's La Petite Bijou" in Orbis Litterarum (2011), and «Le Piège du discours maternel dans le roman de Mme de Lafayette» in Gradiva, revue européenne d'anthropologie littéraire (2006).