Background
Guerlac, Suzanne was born on March 20, 1950 in Ithaca, New York, United States. Daughter of Henry Edward and Rita (Carey) Guerlac.
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book
The Impersonal Sublime: Hugo, Baudelaire, Lautreamont
(The question of the sublime, which links the idea of aest...)
The question of the sublime, which links the idea of aesthetic force with rhetorical impact and moral law, has been an important topic in discussion of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art and the shift between them. This book argues that the sublime is equally important in understanding the shift from romanticism to modernism later in the century. The author studies the work of three French authors conventionally considered pivotal figures in the trajectory from romanticism to modernism: Hugo, father of romanticism; Baudelaire, precursor of symbolist modernism; and Lautreamont, hero of (post) modernism. She traces this literary-historical as Hugo's Quatre-vingt-treize and L'Homme qui rit, Baudelaire's Spleen de Paris and Petits poemes en prose, and Lautreamont's Chants de Maldoror and Poesies - all seen from a perspective of the aesthetics of the sublime. This perspective is developed through analyses of the treatises on the sublime by Longinus, Boileau, Burke, and Kant. The author blends three points of view in her exploration - historical, theoretical, and literary - and demonstrates that specific questions relevant to our comprehension of romanticism, modernity, and the sublime pervade the texts studied. While each reading is meant to stand on its own and to respect the specificity of the work in question (as well as the broader commitments of that writer), the author suggests that a developing argument concerning the sublime can be appreciated only by following the connections made in the passage from one text to another. Finally, the author argues against the dominant critical treatment of the sublime in the Anglo-American context, which analyzes the sublime in phenomenological terms and associates it with a psychoanalytic notion of sublimation. Hugo, Baudelaire, and Lautreamont reveal the sublime to be at work in the modern French context in a desublimating and nonphenomenological mode, one that is ultimately more compatible with fundamental issues at stake in the sublime - such as the enhancement of, and challenge to, the notion of the aesthetic per se that characterizes art developments in the modern period.<
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804717869/?tag=2022091-20
Literary Polemics: Bataille, Sartre, Valéry, Breton
(During the 1960's and 1970's, the eruption of theory was ...)
During the 1960's and 1970's, the eruption of theory was presented as an epistemic break, reorganizing the field of questioning both prospectively and retrospectively. In the forefront of this new movement was the influential journal Tel Quel, which both canonized a body of preferred avant-garde texts (both literary and theoretical) and nullified prominent figures from preceding generations. In a broad remapping of French modernism, this book shows how the milieu of Tel Quel transferred myths of the powers of literature inherited from Bataille, Sartre, Valéry, and Breton to theory, in the process erasing the traces of these myths and their common ground. The author analyzes cultural and theoretical positions―pure art, automatism, engagement, and transgression―that structured the literary and critical field from the 1920's to the 1950's to show their strong impact on the formulation and elaboration of theoretical issues in more recent decades. Focusing on the question of relations between poetry and action, she reexamines these positions and uncovers proximities between them that significantly displace theoretical issues. These proximities emerge when a philosophical subtext of Bergson―antiphilosopher and nondialectical thinker―is revealed to operate alongside the more obvious subtext of Hegel. The discourse of Bergson shifts the category of action central to these literary polemics and revalues the visual register, suggesting a reconsideration of Surrealism. The book concludes by examining the ideological pressures associated with the eclipse of the discourse of Bergson as well as some of the effects of this erasure on our understanding of the modern as distinct from the postmodern.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0804727155/?tag=2022091-20
Suzanne Guerlac
Edit ProfileEducation
Bachelor in Philosophy magna cum laude, Barnard College, 1971; Master of Arts in French Literature, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1976; Doctor of Philosophy in French Literature, Johns Hopkins University, 1984.
Career
Visiting assistant professor, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 1983-1984; assistant professor, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, 1984-1986; assistant professor, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1986-1989; associate professor, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1989-1990; associate professor, Emory University, Atlanta, 1990-1995; professor, Emory University, Atlanta, since 1995.
Achievements
Works
book
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The Impersonal Sublime: Hugo, Baudelaire, Lautreamont
(The question of the sublime, which links the idea of aest...)
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Literary Polemics: Bataille, Sartre, Valéry, Breton
(During the 1960's and 1970's, the eruption of theory was ...)
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The Impersonal Sublime: Hugo, Baudelaire, Lautreamont
Membership
Member Modern Language Association, International Association Philosophy and Literature.
Connections
1 child, Catherine Lillian.
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Born
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Nationality
American
Education
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1971
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1976
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1984
Career
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1983 - 1984
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1984 - 1986
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1986 - 1989
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1990 - 1995