“High Stakes” in the Symbolic Order: John Banville’s Love in the Wars Read through Jean Baudrillard

Authors

  • Hedda Friberg-Harnesk Sweden University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v22i1.3849

Keywords:

Banville, Baudrillard, Love in the Wars, Pentesiléia, Kleist, Greek myth

Abstract

John Banville’s shrouded fictional territory suggests a Nietzschean world in which the notions of truth and reality are questioned and in the center of which humanity might find “an infinite nothing.” From Nietzsche’s bleak vision, the mind readily moves to Jean Baudrillard’s envisioned universe – even bleaker, perhaps – in which simulation is a “dominant mode of perception.” Baudrillard’s ideas are in dialogue with John Banville’s textual explorations of a territory of radical uncertainty. Elements of what can be seen as Baudrillardean third-order simulation are readily discernible in Banville’s late work, but in his play Love in the Wars, at focus in this article, it is Baudrillard’s notion of a pre-Renaissance symbolic order – an age of “the rule,” not of “the roll of the dice” – that has proved a superior analytical tool.

Author Biography

  • Hedda Friberg-Harnesk, Sweden University
    Hedda Friberg-Harnesk is Associate Professor (retired), Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall. She has published widely on the work of Liam O’Flaherty and John Banville. Her monograph, Reading John Banville through Jean Baudrillard, was published by Cambria Press in 2018.

References

Agee, Joel. “Introduction.” Penthesilea by Heinrich von Kleist. Translated by Joel Agee. New York: Perennial/HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.

Banville, John. Love in the Wars: A Version of Penthesilea by Heinrich von Kleist. Oldcastle: Gallery Press, 2005.

Bataille, Georges. The Accursed Share. Vols. 1 and 2. New York: Zone Books, [1949] 1991.

Baudrillard, Jean. The Conspiracy of Art. Translated by Ames Hodges. New York: Semiotext(e), 2005.

---. Passwords. Trans. Chris Turner. London: Verso, 2003.

---. The Illusion of the End. Translated by Chris Turner. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994.

---. Simulacra and Simulation. Translated by Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

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Published

2021-02-20

How to Cite

“High Stakes” in the Symbolic Order: John Banville’s Love in the Wars Read through Jean Baudrillard. (2021). ABEI Journal, 22(1), 75-84. https://doi.org/10.37389/abei.v22i1.3849