Publisher's Synopsis
The 'banal object' is one whose very insignificance appears to hint at a hidden
meaning. In the texts Dr Segal examines here, the narrators have crucial encounters
with such objects: these scenes first dramatize, and later tentatively resolve,
a personal and literary crisis. Close analysis reveals many themes of radical
self-questioning, expressed in a language whose thematics - or, fundamental
imagery - reproduces the opposition of self and world seen in the relationship
between narrator and object, and displays a similar ambivalence of fear and
desire. The texts are also placed in a literary-historical context: their special
use of objects arises from the conflict between Symbolism and Naturalism, and
exemplifies a turning-point in modern European writing.
