Love Stories: Narrative Discourses of Desire 1800 – the Present

1. Love Stories: Narrative Discourses of Desire 1800 – the Present Introduction Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

2. Agenda • Great love stories • Are all stories love stories? • Love and story: Jay Clayton, ”Narrative and Theories of Desire” • Hanif Kureishi, "Strangers When We Meet“ • Desiring vampires Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

3. Great Love Stories • Romeo and Juliet • Cathy and Heathcliff • Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara • Tristan and Isolde • Mina and Dracula • Mr and Mrs Wright • Gabriel and Gretta • Clay and Lula • Charles Raye and Edith Harnham Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

4. Other Kinds of Desire • Survival: Jack London, ”The Open Boat” • Ambition: James Joyce, ”The Dead” • Do we have texts without desire? • ”The Mark on the Wall”? Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

5. Love and Story: Jay Clayton, ”Narrative and Theories of Desire” • Stories are always about desire. Desire takes us beyond formalism: reference • Peter Brooks: desire propels narrative • Leo Bersani: narrative contains desire Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

6. Peter Brooks: desire propels narrative • Narrative = Freud’s dynamic model of the psyche, which is based on the analogy of the steam engine: • [1] The id, Freud described as our biological needs and drives, as: hunger, thirst, and sex, etc. The id provides energy for the system just as fire provides energy in thermodynamics. • [2] The superego, Freud explained as society's rules, our voice of conscience. In thermodynamic terms, the superego would be a lid on the apparatus that contained water, which was to be converted into steam. • [3] The ego is the conscious mind that contains one's thoughts, judgments and memories. In Freud's thermodynamic metaphor, the ego was the wheels and the escape valves where the steam is released. (http://www.humanthermodynamics.com/Freud.html) Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

7. Peter Brooks: desire propels narrative • Desire is a desire for meaning or sense • For humans meaning is storied • Narrative meaning is situated at the end • Desire is a desire for the end of desire • Desire is a desire for death Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

8. Leo Bersani: narrative contains desire • Desire is a desire for something else; desire is mobile, fluid, disruptive, and restless. • (Mimetic) narrative is a form of violence, a way of subduing desire. Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

9. Hanif Kureishi, "Strangers When We Meet“ • What does this story tell us about desire and narrative? • Story and plot (order, duration, frequency, ellipsis) • Character and characterization • The title Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

10. The story / plot model Story (future) Plot (beginning) Plot (middle) Plot (end) Story (past) Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

11. Hanif Kureishi, "Strangers When We Meet“ • Section One: The love story of Robert Miles and Florence O’Hara • Section Two: (”I have come to like …”) Nine years later. Rob and Florence meet again! Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

12. Hanif Kureishi, "Strangers When We Meet“ • The plot / discourse: • Happy love has no history: Storied desire concern desire’s obstacles and barriers, what seperates rather than unites the lovers Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

13. Hanif Kureishi, "Strangers When We Meet“ • Character and characterization • Desire is triangular: lover – beloved – rival • Intertextuality: Florence O’Hara (!) Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

14. Hanif Kureishi, "Strangers When We Meet“ • The title: Intertextuality Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

15. Richard Quine, Strangers When We Meet (1960) Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

16. Richard Quine, Strangers When We Meet (1960, 2005) Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture

17. Hanif Kureishi, "Strangers When We Meet“ • The title: intertextuality • Desire is a quotation, simulation, a copy • We fall in love in and through stories • The experience of love is conditioned by stories, we experience stories • We fall in love with stories Jens Kirk, Dept. of Languages and Culture