Jens Kirk Dept. of Languages and Literature Love Stories: The Discourses of Desire in Literature and Culture, 1800 – the Present Session Six

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature Agenda  Recap of course  Electronic love stories

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature Recap  Brooks: Desire propels narrative Narrative = Freud’s dynamic model of the psyche Narrative = Freud’s dynamic model of the psyche  Bersani: Narrative contains desire. Desire is a desire for something else; desire is mobile, fluid, disruptive, and restless. (Mimetic) narrative is a form of violence, a way of subduing desire. Desire is a desire for something else; desire is mobile, fluid, disruptive, and restless. (Mimetic) narrative is a form of violence, a way of subduing desire.  Boone: Narrative shapes and is shaped by desire Gender, ideology, dialogism, polyphony, heteroglossia Gender, ideology, dialogism, polyphony, heteroglossia  Belsey, ”Adultery in King Arthur’s Court” Desire is historical Desire is historical

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature Recap  Happy love has no history: love stories concern that which threatens or prevents love  Desire is triangular: love stories concern relationships between lover, beloved and an antagonist  Desire is intertextual: love stories concern love as simulation, copy, quotation.

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature Electronic fiction  Marie Laure Ryan and the reader´s experiences and responses Interactivity: text = a game of signification (5- 6) Interactivity: text = a game of signification (5- 6) Immersion: text = autonomous reality (14-15) Immersion: text = autonomous reality (14-15)

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature La Belle Dame Sans Merci

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature Picasso, The Dream

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature Picasso, Guitar Player (1910)

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss (1860) A WIDE plain, where the broadening Floss hurries on between its green banks to the sea, and the loving tide, rushing to meet it, checks its passage with an impetuous embrace. On this mighty tide the black ships - laden with the fresh-scented fir-planks, with rounded sacks of oil-bearing seed, or with the dark glitter of coal - are borne along to the town of St Ogg's, which shows its aged, fluted red roofs and the broad gables of its wharves between the low wooded hill and the river brink, tinging the water with a soft purple hue under the transient glance of this February sun. Far away on each hand stretch the rich pastures and the patches of dark earth, made ready for the seed of broad-leaved green crops, or touched already with the tint of the tender-bladed autumn-sown corn. There is a remnant still of the last year's golden clusters of bee-hive ricks rising at intervals beyond the hedgerows; and everywhere the hedge-rows are studded with trees: the distant ships seem to be lifting their masts and stretching their red-brown sails close among the branches of the spreading ash. Just by the red-roofed town the tributary Ripple flows with a lively current into the Floss.

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature Samuel Beckett, ”Ping” (1966)  All known all white bare white body fixed one yard legs joined like sewn. Light heat white floor one square yard never seen. White walls one yard by two white ceiling one square yard never seen. Bare white body fixed only the eyes only just. Traces blurs light grey almost white on white. Hands hanging palms front white feet heels together right angle. Light heat white planes shining white bare white body fixed ping fixed elsewhere. Traces blurs signs no meaning light grey almost white. Bare white body fixed white on white invisible. Only the eyes only just light blue almost white. Head naught eyes light blue almost white silence within. Brief murmurs only just almost never all known.

Jens KirkDept. of Languages and Literature Facade  Immersion and interactivity