Title: Understanding Céline /
Authors: Solomon, Philip H.
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press,
Year: 1992
Subjects: Céline, Louis-Ferdinand, Criticism and interpretation.
Abstract: "Solomon examines the principal themes and structures of the novels of French writer Louis-Ferdinand Céline, taking into account his theatre, anti-Semitic pamphlets, and critical works. A biographical introduction and a chronology note the historical and private events that shaped the author's life and influenced his development as a writer. An overview of Céline's writings explores the author's vision of the human condition and his perception of the redemptive value of the work of art by which the disorder of life is resolved by the order of writing. Emphasis is placed on the self-reflective nature of Céline's fiction, particularly on the function of the mythologized head wound to express the transition between autobiography and fiction. Each of the volume's principal chapters is devoted to an individual novel or closely related group of novels, considered in chronological order. A brief plot summary and indication of the work's particular relevance for the reader precedes the analysis of the text. Each work, from 'Journey to the End of the Night' to 'Rigadoon,' is considered not only with respect to its intrinsic interest but also in terms of its describing a phase in the apprenticeship of life that Céline's picaresque protagonist undergoes as he is progressively stripped of his illusions and comes to resemble the narrator more closely."--Back cover.
Contents: Reading Céline -- Journey to the end of the night -- Death on the installment plan -- Guignol's band, Guignol's band II: le pont de Londres -- Féerie pour une autre fois, Féerie pour une autre fois II: normance -- The wartime trilogy: Castle to castle, North, Rigadoon -- Other works: the playwright, the pamphleteer, the poet.