The differential calculus as the model of desire in French fiction of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

The discovery of the calculus registers an epistemological shift. A differential calculus permits the localization of a point as a limit of a formal procedure, such as the maximum achieved by a curve. Under such localization, the imperfection of a mechanical measurement is corrected by the exact determination of the formal method. The actual physical contact of the scientist with his apparatuses serves as a culmination of his experimental encounter with the force of the universe. In like manner, desire emerges as a force independent from other social formations. An effort to localize this desire as sexual corresponds to the similar procedure that motivates the calculus's determination of a maximum. Where desire was previously regulated by narrative processes to maintain state legitimacy, the emerging fiction meditates on the suspension of the satisfaction of the narrative model. I situate my study of the differential calculus in the work of Pascal. Throughout his works a constructive notion of time, a fiction of duration, threads a narrative that extends from his scientific treatises to his theological and philosophical speculations. These writings portray a subject contemplating a tragic vision and I extend this vision to the fiction treated in this study: Madame de Lafayette's La Princesse de Cleve, Crebillon's Les Egarements du coeur et de l'esprit and Les Lettres de la Marquise de M*** au Comte de R***, Rousseau's Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise, and Laclos's Les Liaisons dangereuses. The model of the integral calculus offers justification for the localization of a point as part of a description of the totality of matter in the universe. When the subject considers his abandonment by a lover, he is offered a glimpse of a more profound rift, his separation from this integral totality. So this rift provides dynamic for desire that finds its sense of totality in a new image of the state. A general reading of Sade shows how this new totality is based on an inertia of desire.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

French

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2011

Author dc:creator

• Hockman, Kenneth Charles

Contributors dc:contributor

• Nelson, Robert J.

• Literature, Romance
• Mathematics
• Philosophy

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 1994 Hockman, Kenneth Charles

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

AAI9503216
(UMI)AAI9503216

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/18939