Rendering French Realism

“This is an outstanding book that builds on a solid tradition of literary criticism centered around the notion of realism and brings to this debate an original and fascinating perspective. Schehr is a subtle and masterly reader of the texts he studies, and the combination of theoretical synthesis and detailed reading that defines his method is rare and exhilarating. Although the works he treats are nineteenth-century French, the theoretical concerns he raises and works through are of importance for any scholar of realism and the novel in general.”—David Bell, III, Duke University
“To his eminently philosophical cast of mind, as evidenced by the rigor of his argument’s deconstructive frame, Schehr marries a remarkable range of literary reference, a strong grounding in narrative theory, and an acute sense for the way questions of gender and sexuality haunt the realist project.”—Peter Starr, University of Southern California

Based on 19th-century French novels, this book argues that the point defining realism is the point at which the processes of representation break down, a sort of black hole of textuality, a rent in the tissue.

Lawrence R. Schehr is Professor of French at the University of South Alabama. He is the author, most recently, of The Shock of Men: Homosexual Hermeneutics in French Writing and Alcibiades at the Door: Gay Discourses in French Literature (both Stanford, 1995).