Abstract
This chapter focuses on the Gothic of three French modernist writers, Georges Bataille, Pierre Klossowski and Maurice Blanchot. It begins by contextualising Bataille’s philosophy alongside Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, arguing that Bataille’s work proved a major theoretical resource for twentieth-century gothic traditions. Focusing in particular on Bataille’s ideas of eroticism, excess and transgression, and his critical work on gothic fiction and figures including the Marquis de Sade and Gilles de Rais, the chapter then considers Bataille’s own contributions to gothic fiction. Focus then turns to the ways in which Bataille’s Gothic influenced two of his friends and most significant heirs in French modernism, Klossowski and Blanchot. In all three, the Gothic is written and theorised in relation to the traumatic events which ravaged France during the period of the First and Second World Wars.
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Whiteley, G. (2020). Three French Modernists. In: Bloom, C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Contemporary Gothic. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33136-8_65
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