The differential calculus as the model of desire in French fiction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Hockman, Kenneth Charles
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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/18939
Description
Title
The differential calculus as the model of desire in French fiction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Author(s)
Hockman, Kenneth Charles
Issue Date
1994
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Nelson, Robert J.
Department of Study
French
Discipline
French
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, Romance
Mathematics
Philosophy
Language
eng
Abstract
The discovery of the calculus registers an epistemological shift. A differential calculus permits the localization of a point as a limit of a formal procedure, such as the maximum achieved by a curve. Under such localization, the imperfection of a mechanical measurement is corrected by the exact determination of the formal method. The actual physical contact of the scientist with his apparatuses serves as a culmination of his experimental encounter with the force of the universe. In like manner, desire emerges as a force independent from other social formations. An effort to localize this desire as sexual corresponds to the similar procedure that motivates the calculus's determination of a maximum. Where desire was previously regulated by narrative processes to maintain state legitimacy, the emerging fiction meditates on the suspension of the satisfaction of the narrative model. I situate my study of the differential calculus in the work of Pascal. Throughout his works a constructive notion of time, a fiction of duration, threads a narrative that extends from his scientific treatises to his theological and philosophical speculations. These writings portray a subject contemplating a tragic vision and I extend this vision to the fiction treated in this study: Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Cleve, Crebillon's Les Egarements du coeur et de l'esprit and Les Lettres de la Marquise de M*** au Comte de R***, Rousseau's Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise, and Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses. The model of the integral calculus offers justification for the localization of a point as part of a description of the totality of matter in the universe. When the subject considers his abandonment by a lover, he is offered a glimpse of a more profound rift, his separation from this integral totality. So this rift provides dynamic for desire that finds its sense of totality in a new image of the state. A general reading of Sade shows how this new totality is based on an inertia of desire.
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