The Department of French & Italian presents a Gertrude Force Weathers lecture by
Colin Davis
Camus's Self-Undoing
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
5:30 pm
State Room West, IMU
Abstract: The publication of Camus’s final, unfinished novel Le Premier Homme in 1994 prompted a renewal of interest in his work, and particularly in his relationship to his native Algeria. By contrast, the posthumous publication of Camus’s first completed novel La Mort heureuse more than two decades earlier in 1971 elicited a relatively muted response. The novel was seen as at best an interesting failure. It can nevertheless be seen as an important stage in the development of Camus’s literary aesthetic. It represents an unresolved struggle between lyrical, dogmatic and sceptical tendencies. Subsequently, Camus’s major texts begin by accepting the sceptical erosion of certainty. Literature becomes, for Camus, the ground to determine which, if any, values and beliefs can survive the test of radical doubt. The failure of La Mort heureuse to answer the challenge of scepticism is the condition which all Camus’s subsequent literary works, up to and including Le Premier Homme, continue to negotiate.
About the Speaker: Colin Davis is Research Professor at the University of London, Royal Holloway. His research is principally in the field of twentieth-century French literature, thought and film. He has written on major canonical authors such as Sartre, Beauvoir and Camus, Holocaust literature, recent French fiction, and thinkers such as Levinas and Derrida. He is particularly interested in ethical criticism and the links between philosophy, literature and film. His most recent book is Haunted Subjects: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis and the Return of the Dead (Palgrave, 2007), a study of ghosts and death in literature, film and theory. He is currently working on a philosophical reassessment of the 1930s films of Jean Renoir, to be published as Scenes of Love and Murder: Renoir, Film, Philosophy by Wallflower Press.
Sponsored by the Gertrude Force Weathers Fund of the Department of French & Italian.
If you have a disability and need assistance, accommodations can be made to meet most needs. Please call 855-5458.
