Books by Judith Mayne

The modern association of the word private with the individual, and the word public with the social did not occur until the emergence of capitalism separated family life from the workplace, creating the fundamental oppositions between home and business, female and male, and rest and labor that have defined life in industrialized societies through our time.Comparing the ways novels and films articulate middle-class culture, Judith Mayne reveals how both forms of narrative function as an encounter between private and public life, engaging the crucial relationships of a dualistic world--between men and women; between social classes; between readers or viewers and texts.Unlike past studies of the novel and film that have tried to establish one art form as superior to the other or have limited their analysis to the ways that novels have been translated into film, Private Novels, Public Films is a comparative study of the relationship between two forms of narrative and spheres of private and public life across different periods of history.

In all of the films discussed, the threshold between subject and object, between inside and outside, between virtually all opposing pairs, is a central figure for the reinvention of cinematic narrative.

Widely regarded as one of the most innovative and passionate filmmakers working in France today, Claire Denis has continued to make beautiful and challenging films since the 1988 release of her first feature, "Chocolat". The author's comprehensive study of these films traces Denis' career and discusses her major feature films in rich detail.

Judith Mayne examines and assesses the major theories of spectatorship as they have developed over the last fifteen years, to explore how the analysis of a genuine dialogue between history and theory can show us how cinema engages its viewers.