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La Proie et l'ombre. Durtal et la confusion gastro-sexuelle
- Nineteenth-Century French Studies
- University of Nebraska Press
- Volume 30, Number 1&2, Fall-Winter 2001-2002
- pp. 121-130
- 10.1353/ncf.2001.0057
- Article
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In this article, we argue that the familiar conception of food as a prelude to the sexual act assumes obsessive and problematic proportions in Huysmans's 1891 novel Là-Bas. Durtal, a somewhat misplaced Casanova, seems to suffer from what we would call a gastro-sexual pathology and is therefore unable to enjoy sex or food. But there is a way to cure this "anomaly," and it is to be found in Catholicism, or perhaps rather, "decadence?" (In French) (MS)