Madame de Lafayette Essays
Speech, Silences and Bodily Manifestations in Madame de Lafayette’s The Princess de Cleves and Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko
The Princesse de Cleves
In her essay, “Origins of the Novel”, Marthe Robert characterises the novel as knowing “neither rule nor restraint. Open to every possibility, its boundaries fluctuate in all directions”. Indeed, both Madame de Lafayette’s The Princess de Cleves...
Imitation and Desire: René Girard’s Mimetic Desire in Madame De Lafayette’s The Princess de Cleves College
The Princesse de Cleves
In “Triangular Desire,” René Girard uses his theory of mimetic desire to describe the nature of the self through the desires of individuals and the motives through which these desires manifest themselves. Girard asserts that desires are rooted not...
Nontraditional Women College
The Princesse de Cleves
The early modern period brought with it a reshaping of European culture, and in particular, the derogatory perception of women, rooted in a traditionally male view of the female as inferior in both mind and body[1]. This view pervaded the...