Synopses & Reviews
At the peak of his career, after having established himself as an accomplished writer, astute moraliste, and the foremost spokesperson of his generation for personal freedom and self-realization, Gide became aware, first, that his particular brand of bourgeois individualism was becoming increasingly irrelevant in the contemporary world and, second, that social commitment and even revolution could serve as a powerful source of inspiration and self-renewal. Over a ten-year period that began in the 1920s and ended with his public break with the Soviet Union in 1936, Gide the committed intellectual interacted with society in ways that were for him unprecedented. These essays examine the outcomes of Gide’s evolving commitment to a host of controversial issues ranging from the sexual to the political, from the literary to the social.
About the Author
Tom Conner is Associate Professor of French at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin.
Table of Contents
Introduction--Tom Conner * The Meaning and Impact of André Gide’s
Engagement --Daniel Moutote * The Unrepentant Prodigal: Gide’s Classical Politics and Republican Nationalism, 1897-1909--M. Martin Guiney * Practices of Posterity: Gide and the Cultural Politics of Sexuality--Michael Lucey * Gide and Justice: The Immoralist in the Palace of Reason--John Lambeth * Writing the Wrongs of French Colonial Africa:
Le Voyage au Congo and
Le Retour du Tchad --Walter Putnam *
Voyage au Congo and the Ethnographic Spectacle--Jeffrey Geiger * Setting the Mood: Intellectual Life on the Left Bank--Herbert R. Lottman * Left-Wing Intellectuals in the
entre-deux-guerres --Jean-François Sirinelli * Having Congress: The Shame of the Thirties--Roger Shattuck * Gide and Soviet Communism--Paul Hollander * Unfinished Business: André Gide’s
Genevievè and the Constraints of Socialist Realism--Peter F. DeDomenico * Gide and the Feminist Voice--Naomi Segal * Gide under Siege: Domestic Conflict and Political Allegory in the World War II
Journal --Jocelyn Van Tuyl * Theseus Revisited: Gide and the Commitment of Myth and Sexuality--Pamela A. Genova
Introduction--Tom Conner * The Meaning and Impact of André Gide’s Engagement --Daniel Moutote * The Unrepentant Prodigal: Gide’s Classical Politics and Republican Nationalism, 1897-1909--M. Martin Guiney * Practices of Posterity: Gide and the Cultural Politics of Sexuality--Michael Lucey * Gide and Justice: The Immoralist in the Palace of Reason--John Lambeth * Writing the Wrongs of French Colonial Africa: Le Voyage au Congo and Le Retour du Tchad --Walter Putnam * Voyage au Congo and the Ethnographic Spectacle--Jeffrey Geiger * Setting the Mood: Intellectual Life on the Left Bank--Herbert R. Lottman * Left-Wing Intellectuals in the entre-deux-guerres --Jean-François Sirinelli * Having Congress: The Shame of the Thirties--Roger Shattuck * Gide and Soviet Communism--Paul Hollander * Unfinished Business: André Gide’s Genevievè and the Constraints of Socialist Realism--Peter F. DeDomenico * Gide and the Feminist Voice--Naomi Segal * Gide under Siege: Domestic Conflict and Political Allegory in the World War II Journal --Jocelyn Van Tuyl * Theseus Revisited: Gide and the Commitment of Myth and Sexuality--Pamela A. Genova