The Séance of Reading. Uncanny Designs in Modernist Writing by Professor Thomas Cousineau
The Séance of Reading. Uncanny Designs in Modernist Writing by Professor Thomas Cousineau
Author(s): Sorin CiutacuSubject(s): Customs / Folklore, Comparative Study of Literature, Romanian Literature, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology
Published by: Språk- och litteraturcentrum, Lunds Universitet
Keywords: Manole complex; architectural body; modernist literature; uncanny designs; intellectual thriller;
Summary/Abstract: Professor Cousineau demonstrates an impressive original scholarly kind of comprehension of modernist texts, submitting them under scrutiny with an archetypal critical lens and thus reveals “the uncanny return of the Manole Complex in nine masterpieces of literary modernism”. The intellectual spark that inspired Professor Cousineau was Mircea Eliade’s Commentaires sur la Légende de Maître Manole where Eliade’s claims that Manole’s wife does not actually die: “She is, rather, transformed; her soul leaves her body of flesh and bones and goes to live in the stone and plaster body of the monastery”. (Eliade, 1994, p.168) In each of the chapters of the volume under discussion, the author further elaborates on Eliade’s concept of architectural body, finding it under sundry metamorphoses in the iconic literary modernist works from Europe and USA.
Journal: Swedish Journal of Romanian Studies
- Issue Year: 7/2024
- Issue No: 2
- Page Range: 201-205
- Page Count: 5
- Language: English