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    Circuits of desire and loss: Marivaux and "My Best Friend’s Wedding"

    Segal, Naomi (2008) Circuits of desire and loss: Marivaux and "My Best Friend’s Wedding". Journal of Romance Studies 8 (3), pp. 41-50. ISSN 1473-3536.

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    Abstract

    This essay draws a number of parallels between Marivaux’s love comedies and the 1997 Hollywood comedy My Best Friend’s Wedding. It looks at configurations of desire in terms of a series of ‘coloured shapes moving in space’: the chase, the chain, a variety of triangles (leaning, here, on comparisons with both classical tragedy and the nineteenth-century novel of adultery) and of configurations of four. What is the nature of the happy ending in comedy that brings resolution out of the defeat of a third party? How do formal arrangements induce in the audience a willingness to loop the circuit of desire in such a way that it can end on reason or dance?

    Metadata

    Item Type: Article
    Keyword(s) / Subject(s): Marivaux; comedy; desire; circuits; triangular desire; the chase; configurations of four
    School: Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Creative Arts, Culture and Communication
    Depositing User: Naomi Segal
    Date Deposited: 11 Jan 2013 10:48
    Last Modified: 09 Aug 2023 12:32
    URI: https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/5442

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