The writing of melancholy

Ross Chambers, an eminent critic of French literature, proposes an original theory of the development of French modernism. His bold rereading of mid-nineteenth-century texts, from Madame Bovary to Les Fleurs du mal, leads to a reconception of the workings of narrative - in themselves and in relation to history. Chambers makes a distinction between a text's formal mode of address (narrative function) and the reflexive devices by which it invites interpretation (textual function). The works he considers reveal a discontinuity or disjunction between these two functions and as a result seem uncentered, their manner of conveying meaning oddly blurred. In this they recall the general malaise that swept through French society in the wake of the failed revolution of 1848. Chambers shows how the internal opposition of narrative and textual function, often read as a willful resistance to this historical ennui, is actually its symptom.

Pursuing this argument through works by Flaubert, Nerval, Baudelaire, Gautier, and Hugo, Chambers uses theoretical insights to illuminate textual details, which in turn clarify and advance his theory. The process yields a subtle and compelling meditation on the powers of writing and reading, which contributes significantly to the debate about the historical status of literary texts. At the heart of the book is the concept of oppositionality; in this respect The Writing of Melancholy is both a necessary complement to Chambers's previous work in Room for Maneuver and a discreet homage by a member of the post-1968 generation to those who were thirty-something in 1848. Originally published in French, the book has been revised and expanded to include an entirely new chapter on Gerard de Nerval's "Sylvie."