Possessions

Possessions emerges from the fifth Cambridge French Graduate Conference, which took place in 2001. The theme has provoked a broad scope of investigation, covering French literature, film and theory, and ranging from the early medieval period to the present day. Despite the lack of attention which has so far been explicitly devoted to the idea of possession, it is shown to be an ever-present concern, and this volume seeks to fill this critical blind spot. The essays confront the central notion on several levels, tackling issues of authorship and ownership, postcolonialism, gender, and the potential trauma implicated in possession. The juxtaposition of different media, periods and critical schools allows common links to emerge, demonstrating ways in which possession acts as both problem and enabling notion. As a stimulating and original investigation into an under-explored area of critical thinking, the volume offers a critical examination of the possessing power of the text.

Contents: James R. Simpson: The Fox and the Lion's Share: Tyranny, Textuality and Jouissance in the Roman de Renart ( Le partage des proies ) - Valerie Worth-Stylianou: Whose Life is it Anyway? The Politics of the Representation of Motherhood in two Female-Authored Memoirs of French Renaissance - Katherine Griffiths: Scribbling Ghosts. The Textual Spectres and Spectral Texts of Émile Zola - Jérôme Game: The Self as Dispossession: Deleuzian Becomings and Bataillian Excess - Siobhán Shilton: Repossessing Travel: Postcolonial Theory and the Reordering of Space - Colin Davis: Repossessing Theory - Joseph Harris: Stealing Beauty: The abbé de Choisy's Appropriation of the Feminine - Susan Griffiths: Who Owns the Female Body? Women and Possession in Crébillon's Lettres de la Marquise de M au Comte de R - Fiona Handyside: Possessing Stars, Possessing Texts: Jeanne Moreau and the New Wave - Francesca Nicholson: Troubadour Loves and Gloves - Sue Harris: Dispossession and Exclusion in La Vie rêvée des anges - Libby Saxton: Surrendering Possession? Images and Ethics after Auschwitz.