In this Modern Master on Jacques Lacan (1901-81), Malcolm Bowie presents a clear, coherent introduction to the work of one of the most influential and forbidding thinkers of our century. A practising psychoanalyst for almost 50 years, Lacan first achieved notoriety with his pioneering article on Freud in the 1930s. After the Second World War, he emerged as the most original and controversial figure in French psychoanalysis, and because a guiding light in the Parisian intellectual resurgence of the 1950s, Lacan initiated and subsequently steered the crusade to reinterpret Freud's work in the light of the new structuralist theories of linguistics, evolving an elaborate, dense, systematic analysis of the relations between language and desire, focusing on the human subject as he or she is defined by linguistic and social pressures. His lectures and articles were collected and published as Ecrits in 1966, a text whose influence has been immense and persists to this day. Knowledge of Lacan's revolutionary ideas, which underpin those of his successors across the disciplines, is useful to an understanding of the work of many modern thinkers - literary theoriest, linguists, psychoanalysts, anthropologists. Malcolm Bowie's accessible critical introduction provides the perfect starting point for any exploration of the work of this formidable thinker.

This book brings together essays and reviews that Malcolm Bowie published in journals and collective volumes but did not subsequently use as chapters in his books. It reflects Malcolm's love and knowledge of music, the fine rhythms and patterns of his style, and his liking for brief forms.

The Selected Essays of Malcolm Bowie I and II

This book explains the relationship between imagination and intellectual inquiry. It is written in the form of articles intended for academic readers. The book focuses on main subjects: proust, modern French poetry, and psychoanalysis.

For many, Proust is the supreme European writer of the twentieth century. This book tackles his achievement head-on. Art, death, sex, politics, loss, guilt, morality -- Proust's major themes are revealed and explained here.

"Proust Among the Stars" is a matchless close reading of "Remembrance of Things Past" and a lesson in how to read the great books profitably and pleasurably. Malcolm Bowie asserts that Proust's novel is one of the great exercises in speculative imagining in the world's literature; and that its originality lies first in the quality of Proust's textual invention, page after page, line after line. Proust's world constantly shimmers with a sense of multiple possibilities and is at the same time infused with the urge to order, obsessively to organize. Bowie examines how Proust achieves this in his writing, as opposed to his themes, plots, or theories.

An original, beautiful, and deeply moving book, "Proust Among the Stars" shows how Proust's work deepens our understanding of our lives and ourselves.

Mallarme is widely regarded as one of the most original and distinctively modern writers of the late nineteenth century. At the same time, his fame is accompanied by a certain notoriety, and his works are often thought of as unnecessarily complicated. In this study Malcolm Bowie shows that difficulty is of the essence in a number of Mallarme's major works, notably 'Prose pour des Esseintes' and Un Coup de des jamais n'abolira le hasard. He argues that the poems are difficult because they are concerned with complex metaphysical questions and with speculative states of mind. Their closely interwoven multiple meanings, their intricate word-play and sound-patterning invite us to read inventively on many levels at once. Professor Bowie discusses difficulty as a general critical problem, analyses several major poems in detail, and calls attention to a number of techniques for the analysis of verse. He directs the reader away from the question 'What does this poem mean?' and towards the question 'How can this poem be read fully and with enjoyment?'. The book contains the complete text of the main poems discussed.

This book traces the history of French literature from its beginnings to the present. Within its remarkably brief compass, it offers a wide-ranging, personal, and detailed--though selective--account of major writers and movements. Developments in French literature are presented in an innovative way, not as an even sequence of literary events but as a series of stories told at varying pace and with different kinds of focus. Readers can thus take in the broad sweep of historical change, grasp the main characteristics of major periods, or enjoy a close appraisal of individual works and their contexts. The book is written in an accessible and non-technical style that will make it attractive both to students of French and to non-specialist readers.

The French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan (1901-1981) is a uniquely complex writer and the originator of an especially unsettling view of the human subject. But the singularity of Lacan's achievement has been understated by many of his critics. Often he is seen merely as a figure famous for being famous--an essential reference point in structuralist and poststructuralist debate--rather than as a theorist whose writings demand and reward detailed scrutiny.

Malcolm Bowie traces the development of Lacan's ideas over the fifty-year span of his writing and teaching career. The primary focus is on the fascinating mutations in Lacan's interpretation of Freud. Bowie reinserts the celebrated slogans--"The unconscious is the discourse of the Other," "The unconscious is structured like a language," and so forth--into the history of Lacan's thinking, and pinpoints the paradoxes and anomalies that mark his account of human sexuality. This book provides a firm basis for the critical evaluation of Lacan's ideas and the rhetoric in which they are embedded; it is based on a close reading of Lacan's original texts but presupposes no knowledge of French in the reader.

Although Bowie is sharply critical of Lacan on several major analytic questions, he argues that Lacan is the only psychoanalyst after Freud whose intellectual achievement is seriously comparable to Freud's own. "Lacan" provides the ideal starting point for any exploration of the work of this formidable thinker.

Innumerable scholars have looked to Alison Fairlie for guidance in locating important areas for research and in choosing productive and provocative critical questions to ask about nineteenth-century French literature. These essays contain not simply practical guidance, but intellectual stimulus far richer than that provided by many of the full-length critical volumes that others have devoted to Constant, Baudelaire, Nerval and Flaubert. The essays in this volume, which was originally published in paperback in 1984, fall into four sharply characterised groups, one on each author. In each group, Alison Fairlie explores a recurrent set of critical problems and describes a series of exemplary encounters between language and the artistic imagination. Also containing a previously unpublished essay on Nerval and a bibliography of Professor Fairlie's critical writings, this is a volume readers of all kinds will find a work of exceptional depth and coherence.

Malcolm Bowie (1943-2007) was described by A.S. Byatt as 'one of our best living critics. He writes beautifully, subtly and lucidly about very difficult subjects.' Bowie was Marshal Foch Professor of French at Oxford (1992-2002) and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge (2002-2006). He received numerous honours, was invited to speak all over the world, and in 2001 won the international Truman Capote Prize for Literary Criticism for his Proust Among the Stars. The essays and reviews in these volumes have never before been brought together. Ranging across literature, art, music, and psychoanalysis, they offer fresh insights into topics tackled in Bowie's books, and discuss quite new ones. Volume I, Dreams of Knowledge, presents essays on memory, Proust, modern poetry (Mallarme, Valery, Eluard), and psychoanalysis. Bowie explores the uncertainties of knowledge, the relationship between fantasy and experience, and the ways great writers, artists and thinkers represent these.

Malcolm Bowie (1943-2007) was described by A.S. Byatt as 'one of our best living critics. He writes beautifully, subtly and lucidly about very difficult subjects.' Bowie was Marshal Foch Professor of French at Oxford (1992-2002) and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge (2002-2006). He received numerous honours, was invited to speak all over the world, and in 2001 won the international Truman Capote Prize for Literary Criticism for his Proust Among the Stars. The essays and reviews in these volumes have never before been brought together. Ranging across literature, art, music, and psychoanalysis, they offer fresh insights into topics tackled in Bowie's books, and discuss quite new ones. Volume II, Song Man, presents shorter pieces, including Bowie's essays on song and music criticism. They explore important cultural issues such as anti-Semitism, images of gender, and ideas of the nation.

Malcolm Bowie (1943-2007) was described by A.S. Byatt as 'one of our best living critics. He writes beautifully, subtly and lucidly about very difficult subjects.' Bowie was Marshal Foch Professor of French at Oxford (1992-2002) and Master of Christ's College, Cambridge (2002-2006).

In this book Malcolm Bowie aligns psychological science and imaginative literature of the 20th century, and aims to provide challenging answers to the question What are theorists desiring when they theorize upon desire?