French Literature Reviews - 2026
É. Marsoin, Melville et l'usage des plaisirs
Other Literary Studies
Review published in Acta Fabula (January 2020, vol. 21, no. 1): Rémi Plaud, Melville ou le plaisir à l'œuvre
MELVILLE ET L'USAGE DES PLAISIRS
Édouard Marsoin
Presses Sorbonne Université
ISBN : 979-10-231-0618-3
Publication date: 03/05/2019
In the America often (and mistakenly) deemed puritanical at the heart of the nineteenth century, what forms of pleasure were possible? This is the question posed by Herman Melville's prose, which unfolds the potential and power of pleasure and jouissance, running counter to the image of an austere and disincarnate author favored by a certain critical tradition.
Melville et l’usage des plaisirs explores Melville's table-worlds, where life is a strange hybrid affair, woven from pleasure, joy, suffering, and jouissance caught in relations of antiperistatic tension. We encounter abundant materials of pleasure, body-foods, several cannibal feasts, numerous banquets of words, a con man who takes pleasure, a dash of physiological sublime, an ounce of desperate joy, symptoms of suicidal jouissance, a hint of tragic humor, ascetic regimes, many pleasureless marriages (save one), a bachelors' ball, a few erotic friendships, disciplinary pleasures, and various somatic economies...
Following Melville's recipe for a rich yet rigorous "intellectual chowder," this study brings together key contemporaries, admired predecessors, philosophers from various eras, and a delegation worthy of Anacharsis Cloots of critics and theorists, without whom today—two hundred years after his birth, one hundred years after his renaissance—it would be impossible to fully savor Melville.
The nineteenth-century American literary landscape is frequently associated with a puritanical ethos that prioritized moral restraint and spiritual discipline. The work of Herman Melville often complicates this narrative by integrating themes of bodily sensation, social ritual, and complex emotional states. Readers interested in the intersection of nineteenth-century American fiction and the aesthetics of pleasure may find this analysis of Melville’s thematic preoccupations relevant.
The concept of jouissance, often discussed in the context of psychoanalytic and literary theory, refers to an intense form of pleasure that frequently borders on pain or excess. Melville et l’usage des plaisirs examines how these experiences manifest in Melville’s work, including the physiological sublime, tragic humor, and various somatic economies. By engaging with a wide range of critics and philosophical perspectives, the study addresses Melville’s relationship with the body and social life, moving beyond the image of an austere and disincarnate author.