{"title":"Baudelairean Empathy and the Limits of Transcendence","authors":"Maria Scott","doi":"10.7173/164913321833983088","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7173/164913321833983088","url":null,"abstract":"Inscriptions of empathy for other human beings, in Baudelaire's poetry, communicate an affective experience that has long outlived both the poet and its originator. His poems, which often give thematic prominence to the idea of an afterlife, tend therefore to have their own afterlife,\u0000 even as they gesture towards both the possibility and the impossibility of the transcendence of physical limitations. The article, which begins with a brief discussion of both the history and meaning of empathy, will suggest that Baudelaire can be understood not only as an early theorist of\u0000 empathy, but also as a very early theorist of an ethical, because unsettling, form of empathy. The poet anticipated the thinking of the first empathy theorists insofar as, like them, he conceived of an at least partial imaginary merging of self and object. However, he also went beyond these\u0000 thinkers to the extent that at least some of his poetry describes a disquieting recognition of kinship with other human beings that anticipates far more recent thinking about empathy. The article considers the inscription of empathy in a number of poems that focus on non-human objects before\u0000 giving more sustained attention to how empathy expresses itself in poems that foreground virtual, real, or imagined human beings. It is argued that Baudelaire's most dramatic evocations of empathy with other human beings foreground the idea of human mortality and the limits of human knowledge\u0000 even as they hint at the possibility of the magical removal of limitations. While the notion of an ideal communication of souls is certainly present in Les Fleurs du mal, representations of interpersonal empathy in the verse poems tend to involve a recognition of both the possibility\u0000 and the impossibility of human transcendence of physical limitations.","PeriodicalId":102367,"journal":{"name":"Irish Journal of French Studies","volume":"77 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117232461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Marie Kawthar Daouda, L'Anti-Salomé: Représentations de la féminité bienveillante au temps de la Décadence (1850–1910) (Oxford: Peter Lang, Romanticism and After in France / Le Romantisme et après en France, 2020) 330 pp.","authors":"Marion Krauthaker","doi":"10.7173/164913321833983114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7173/164913321833983114","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":102367,"journal":{"name":"Irish Journal of French Studies","volume":"126 29","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133085929","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kathleen Gyssels and Christa Stevens (eds.), Écriture des origines, origines de l'écriture: Hélène Cixous (Leiden; Boston: Brill-Rodopi, C. R. I. N. volume 66, 2019) 158 pp.","authors":"Lucile Richard","doi":"10.7173/164913321833983123","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7173/164913321833983123","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":102367,"journal":{"name":"Irish Journal of French Studies","volume":"8 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116980265","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"'Au meilleur de soi': Yves Bonnefoy and the Making of Baudelaire","authors":"M. Brophy","doi":"10.7173/164913321833983132","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7173/164913321833983132","url":null,"abstract":"Yves Bonnefoy has singled out Baudelaire as a primary formative influence. The breadth and depth of critical enquiry afforded by Bonnefoy to his predecessor over the decades are attested by two substantial collections of his essays compiled in later years, as well as by verse resonating\u0000 on occasion with the other’s name and voice. Bonnefoy’s goal is at once scholarly and creative: not only does he explore the full import of Baudelaire’s poetic legacy and lend it lasting pertinence within the history of literary endeavour, he also seeks to enter actively\u0000 into its struggle, uncovering in its contradictions and aporias a corrective and recuperative dynamics that is played out anew in his own poetic writing as part of a larger and pressing ‘refondation de l’être’.","PeriodicalId":102367,"journal":{"name":"Irish Journal of French Studies","volume":"47 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115725532","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Sarah Leahy and Isabelle Vanderschelden, Screenwriters in French Cinema (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021) xvi + 374 pp.","authors":"Barry Nevin","doi":"10.7173/164913321833983042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7173/164913321833983042","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":102367,"journal":{"name":"Irish Journal of French Studies","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125321699","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"James Patrick Gosling, Raymond Queneau's Dubliners: Bewildered by Excess of Love (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019) 219 pp.","authors":"Douglas Smith","doi":"10.7173/164913321833983060","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7173/164913321833983060","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":102367,"journal":{"name":"Irish Journal of French Studies","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121575210","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Jane Hiddleston and Khalid Lyamlahy (eds.), Abdelkébir Khatibi: Postcolonialism, Transnationalism and Culture in the Maghreb and Beyond (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures 72, 2020) xi + 401 pp., ill.","authors":"P. Dine","doi":"10.7173/164913321833983105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7173/164913321833983105","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":102367,"journal":{"name":"Irish Journal of French Studies","volume":"100 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125216576","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Baudelaire's Afterlives : Immortality and its Discontents","authors":"Douglas O. Smith","doi":"10.7173/164913321833983150","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7173/164913321833983150","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":102367,"journal":{"name":"Irish Journal of French Studies","volume":"215 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116825726","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Joseph Ford, Writing the Black Decade: Conflict and Criticism in Francophone Algerian Literature (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, After the Empire: The Francophone World and Postcolonial France, 2021) viii + 169 pp.","authors":"Aoife Connolly","doi":"10.7173/164913321833983097","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7173/164913321833983097","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":102367,"journal":{"name":"Irish Journal of French Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133650811","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}