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Review of Le Nénuphar et l’araignée. Montréal : Les Allusifs
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Schaal, Michèle A. |
| Copyright Year | 2015 |
| Abstract | Le Nénuphar et l’araignée is Claire Legendre’s tenth publication and originally an invitation by Editor JeanMarie Jot to contribute to Les Allusifs’s collection—since terminated—“les peurs” (6). In a series of thirtyfive brief chapters, Legendre, indeed, charts and attempts to make sense of her hypochondria, anxiety, superstition, fear of dying and living, and other phobias such as of insects and spiders in particular. Disciplines Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies | French and Francophone Literature Comments This is a manuscript of a book review from Women in French Studies 23 (2015): 160. Posted with permission. This book review is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/engl_pubs/66 1 Legendre, Claire. Le Nénuphar et l’araignée. Montréal: Les Allusifs, 2015. Pp. 9-100. ISBN 978-2-923682-45-7. €11 (Paperback). Le Nénuphar et l’araignée is Claire Legendre’s tenth publication and originally an invitation by Editor Jean-Marie Jot to contribute to Les Allusifs’s collection—since terminated— “les peurs” (6). In a series of thirty-five brief chapters, Legendre, indeed, charts and attempts to make sense of her hypochondria, anxiety, superstition, fear of dying and living, and other phobias such as of insects and spiders in particular. From the onset, assigning a genre to this book becomes an arduous task. Labeled on the back cover as something “entre essai et chronique,” it could also be read as a diary of Legendre’s very fears: how they came into being; how they impact her personality, life, and even writing; how she tries (or fails) to manage them. As in a diary, some chapters cover the course of specific events. For instance, fourteen (“Nodule”) to twenty-eight (“Drama Queen”) deal with Legendre discovering that her thymus—an organ essential to growth but that self-resorbs at adolescence— did not follow its natural pattern. It now needs to be removed as it may become cancerous, a surgery from which the author successfully recovers. However, beyond a set of entries or self-analyses, the author also weaves, as a spider does, a specific thread that becomes the driving force behind all chapters. Even if in appearance unrelated, all sections in le Nénuphar et l’araignée illustrate the premise developed in the inaugural chapter “l’ironie tragique.” For Legendre, hypochondria, superstition, phobias, or anxiety, function like a Greek tragedy: the root of evil is glaringly there yet remains unbeknownst to the protagonist until the dramatic ending (10-11). Hence, a person afflicted by anxieties develops obsessions and rituals so as to never become “le dindon de la farce” (10). As a consequence, their lives center on “l’anticipation des soucis futurs” as they need to constantly check for the potential presence of sicknesses, obstacles, parasites or even rivals (11). This is a manuscript of a book review from Women in French Studies 23 (2015): 160. Posted with permission. |
| Starting Page | 160 |
| Ending Page | 162 |
| Page Count | 3 |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| DOI | 10.1353/wfs.2015.0001 |
| Volume Number | 23 |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1065&context=engl_pubs |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://doi.org/10.1353/wfs.2015.0001 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
