Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語學系 === 104 === This thesis intends to interpret Bataille’s novella Story of the Eye with his notion of eroticism: “the disequilibrium in which a being consciously calls his own existence in question” (Eroticism 31). This questioning involves a general sense of loss, including the loss of the sense of ego, the sense of propriety, and that of reality. These losses endanger a being’s existence, but they also promise a sacred state which Bataille terms as la continuité de l'être (“continuity of being”). In this continuity a being is emerged in “the universal flow of all that is” like water in water.
This thesis is divided into three chapters. In Chapter One, I explain how Story of the Eye manifests the loosening of the sense of ego, propriety, and reality, with Bataille’s notion of heterology. In Chapter Two, I introduce the dualistic facets of la continuité de l'être — the elevated and the defiled. Both facets bring forward sacred continuity. I will support Bataille’s assertion that “religious and erotic passions are of one origin” by enumerating evidences from religious documents and scenes of Story of the Eye. In Chapter Three, I explain the nullification of ego as the way toward la continuité de l’être which is immanent for a being.
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