Tales of Love

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 “for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature.”Leon S. Roudiez (1917–2004) was professor emeritus and former head of the French Department at Columbia University.

• Translator’s NoteIn Praise of LovePart IFreud and Love: Treatment and Its DiscontentsPart IIManic Eros, Sublime Eros: On Male SexualityA Holy Madness: She and HePart IIINarcissus: The New InsanityOur Faith: The SeemingPart IVGod Is LoveEgo Affectus Est. Bernard of Clairvaux: Affect, Desire, LoveRatio Diligendi, or the Triumph of One’s Own. Thomas Aquinas: Natural Love and Love of SelfPart VDon Juan, or Loving to Be Able ToRomeo and Juliet: Love-Hatred in the CoupleStabat MaterPart VIThroes of Love: The Field of the MetaphorThe Troubadours: From “Great Courtly Romance” to Allegorical NarrativeA Pure Silence: The Perfection of Jeanne GuyonBaudelaire, or Infinity, Perfume, and PunkStendhal and the Politics of the Gaze: An Egotist’s LoveBataille and the Sun, or the Guilty TextExtraterrestrials Suffering for Want of LoveNotesIndex

Assuming the voices of psychoanalyst, scholar, and postmodern polemicist, Kristeva discusses both the conflicts and commonalities among the Greek, Christian, Roman, and contemporary discourses on love, desire, and self. . . . The analytical work is punctuated throughout by the personal, so that intelligently moving thoughts on motherhood aptly intervene. Kristeva makes a very strong case for the claim that the goal of analysis is not a truth in but a dynamic rebirth of the analysand via language.