Romantic Lies and Fictional Truths

Editor's Choice

֎ The long-awaited reprint of an academic classic

֎ A literary criticism reader that allows people to see through the "essence of love", and a class on famous Western literature.

֎ A book justifying the name of "envy, jealousy and hatred", it analyzes the truth in detail, and the philosopher proves to you that there is no love without vanity.

What are human desires? Does desire originate from "romantic" instinct, or is it a comparison with other people's desires? Through the analysis of novels such as "Don Quixote", "Madame Bovary" and "Reminiscence of Things Past", this book shows readers a kind of "isomorphism" of desire patterns-the desire of the subject cannot be spontaneously generated, and the subject Always imitating the desire of the third party. This third person can be placed outside the action of the novel, such as the chivalrous love in the fantasy of Don Quixote, or the romantic novels of Madame Bovary who induce it; it can also be internalized in the action of the novel, such as Stendhal and Prouss The protagonists of the novel, the object of their desire is itself one of the characters of the novel. Between the subject and his third party, mixed emotions of envy, hatred and competition form a subtle tension, and it is this tension that promotes the development of the novel's plot. Kilar's theory of desire and its subsidiary concept "attachment" were gradually confirmed by the later developed experimental psychology and became a far-reaching and recognized human psychological model.

This book focuses on the discussion of Cervantes, Stendhal, Flaubert, Dostoevsky and Proust. These five great European novelists lived at different times, wrote in different languages, had different styles, and were in very different literary traditions, yet the structure of "Imitation of Desire" brings their works together in one Together, on top of this common structure, they present an extremely interesting similarity that transcends any differences.

— Rene Kilar