area rugs
the limits of narrative
this book examines the problematic area of narrative structure under conditions of severe stress . each of the four authors is shown to be concerned with the tension between narrative coherence as a desirable goal and an unfortunate check placed on the free play of fantasy . this tension produces powerful disruptions of literary form in the lyric baudelaire mallarm prose poetry baudelaire rimbaud and the novel flaubert which are examined here . a final chapter draws out some of the historical implications of these readings in a discussion of baudelaires and flauberts trials for obscenity and of marxs writings on france from 1848 to 1871 . professor wing demonstrates that all these texts retain an unstable balance between earlier modes of thought feeling and expression and the depersonal fragmented modern text . he revises notions of modernity and invites us to reconsider traces of earlier forms of writing in more canonically modern texts .