F351 Troubling Desires: Narcissism and its vicissitudes in
Twentieth-century French literature
Primary reading
Gide, L’Immoraliste (Paris: Gallimard, Collection ‘Folio’)
Proust, La Prisonnière (Paris: Gallimard, Collection Folio ‘Classique’)
Genet, Notre Dame des fleurs (Paris: Gallimard, Collection ‘Folio’)
Cocteau, Orphée (film available on DVD from BFI) [screenings will be arranged]
Freud, ‘Three Essays on Sexual Theory’ in The Psychology of Love (Penguin
Classics, 2006)
‘On Narcissism’ in The Penguin Freud Reader (Penguin 2006)
‘Mourning and Melancholia’ in The Penguin Freud Reader (Penguin 2006)
‘Drives and their Fates’ in The Unconscious (Penguin Classics, 2005)
‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ in The Penguin Freud Reader (Penguin 2006)
Critical reading (texts marked * are essential reading)
Bersani, L., The Freudian Body (New York: Columbia UP, 1986)
—The Culture of Redemption (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1980)
—Homos (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1996)*
—Baudelaire and Freud (University of California Press, 1978)*
Bowie, M., Freud, Proust, Lacan: Theory as Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1987) *
Butler, J., Gender Trouble (New York, London: Routledge, 1990)*
—Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’ (London and New York:
Routledge, 1993)
Derrida, J., ‘La différance’ in Marges de la philosophie (Paris: Minuit, 1972)
Evans, D., An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Pyschoanalysis (London:
Routledge, 1996)
Mathews, T., The Pursuit of Decay (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000)
Millot, Catherine, Gide, Genet, Mishima: Intelligence de la Perversion (Paris:
Gallimard, 1996)
Phillips, A., ‘Narcissism’, in Promises, Promises (London: Faber and Faber, 2000)*
Sedgwick, E. Kosofsky, Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial
Desire (New York: Columbia UP, 1985)
— Epistemology of the Closet (London: Harvester Weatsheaf, 1991)*
Wilson, E., Sexuality and the Reading Encounter (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)*
Wright, E., Feminism and Psychoanalysis: A Critical Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell,
1993)
Žižek, S., The Metastases of Enjoyment (London: Verso, 1994)