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Proposed Bibliography for La Morte Amoureuse
1. Mücke, Dorothea E. von. The seduction of the occult and the rise of the fantastic tale/ Stanford, California :Stanford University Press, 2003.

2. Ransom, Amy J.,The feminine as fantastic in the conte fantastique :   visions of the other/ New York:P. Lang, c1995.

3. Andriano, Joseph, Our ladies of darkness: feminine daemonology in male gothic fiction / University Park, Pa. : Pennsylvania State University Press,   c1993.

4. Misogyny in literature: an essay collection /New York: Garland,1992.

5. Milstein, Dana, "Musical Landscapes: Theophile Gautier and the Evolution of Nineteenth Century French Poetry" (2014). CUNY

Academic Works.

Response: Biblio has a limit of 1 book, you have 4. No dissertations, you have 1. References are also not properly formatted (options were MLA or Chicago 16th). Milstein reference, in addition to being a dissertation, is incomplete.

Plot
The story opens with the elderly priest Romuald recounting the story of his first love, Clarimonde. The day of his Ordination many years ago, he sees a beautiful young woman in the church. He hears her voice promising to love him and to make him happier than he would be in Paradise, if he will just leave the church. He finishes the ceremony despite her entreaties, but he immediately longs for the mysterious woman who promised to love him. As he leaves the church, a cold hand grasps his, and he hears a woman say "Unhappy man! What have you done!". When he turns around, she is already gone. On his way back to the seminary, a page greets him and gives him a card reading, "Clarimonde, at the Palace Concini".

Romuald continues his studies, but remains plagued by the memory of Clarimonde. Finally, he is notified of his new parish in the country. As he leaves town with Sérapion, an older priest who mentors him, he looks back on the town, which is covered in shadow with the exception of a golden palace on a hill. He asks Sérapion about the palace, and Sérapion answers that it is the Palace Concini, where Clarimonde the courtesan lives. He informs Romuald that it is a place of great debauchery.

Romuald lives quietly in the country, pining over Clarimonde, for an indefinite period of time. One night, a man on horseback arrives asking the priest to come quickly and offer last rites to his mistress. Romuald embarks through the forest to a mysterious castle. Inside the palace, he enters an ornately decorated funeral room where Clarimonde lies dead. In his grief, he kisses her, and his kiss brings Clarimonde back to life.

Romauld wakes up three days later in his home, and his maid tells him that he was brought back by the same horseman with whom he left. Sérapion also visits him, and tells him that after hosting an orgy that lasted more than a week, the famous courtesan Clarimonde died. Sérapion warns Romauld that it is not the first time Clarimonde has died, and that her lovers always meet untimely and miserable deaths. Romuald believes all that had passed with Clarimonde had been a dream; but a few days later, she appears to him in his room. She looks dead, but beautiful, and she tells him to prepare for a trip.

The second night, she returns, but she looks vibrant and alive. The two of them travel to Venice and live together. During the day, Romuald performs his priestly duties, who dreams about being a sinner and Clarimonde's lover, but at night, he is Signor Romuald of Venice, who dreams about being a priest. Clarimonde gets sick, but after she drinks a few drops of Romuald's blood (from an accidental finger cut) she immediately returns to health, and Romuald becomes suspicious. One night, he refused to take the sleeping draught that Clarimonde offers him each evening, and after feigning sleep, he realizes that every night she drinks a few drops of his blood while he sleeps in order to survive. However, Romuald admits that he would gladly give all his blood for her.

Eventually, this double life takes its toll on Romuald, and Sérapion begins to suspect what is happening. Late one night, Sérapion takes Romuald to Clarimonde's tomb and reveals her body, miraculously preserved thanks to Romuald's blood. Romauld watches as Sérapion pours holy water on Clarimonde's corpse, and she turns to dust. Clarimonde's ghost returns that night to reproach Romuald and informs him they will never meet again before she vanishes in the wind.

Back in the present, Romuald tells his audience that this was the greatest regret of his life and suggests that his listeners never look at a woman lest they meet the same fate, even as he still misses Clarimonde.

Guilt and Immobility
Romauld's feelings of guilt in regards to his love of Clarimonde prevent him from becoming a real agent within the story. He is always being acted upon, but almost never instigates any of the action within the story. In the opening scene when Romauld is supposed to be focused on his Ordination ceremony, Clarimonde seduces him with her looks and promises to love him, but he continues with the ceremony in a kind of petrified daze. He is too aware of all the people who would denounce his decision to renounce his desire to be a priest. Later in the story, Clarimonde sends her horseman to invite Romauld to her castle, but again Romauld would never have made the journey on his own. Clarimonde also nightly takes a few drops of blood from his arm in order to survive, but Romauld allows her to give him a sleeping draught so that he will not be conscious while she does so. Much of Romauld's interactions with Clarimonde involve him gazing upon her, but they rarely engage in conversation: each time one of them speaks the other is silent. In the end scene, Sérapion pours holy water on Clarimonde's body and she is reduced to ashes, but Romauld does nothing to stop this from happening.

All of the actions Romauld does not take display the immense guilt he feels for loving Clarimonde. “Guilt: The object of the hero’s desires is taboo, therefore, on the brink of possessing her, the hero is petrified into immobility…Once the subject of desire has been invested with a taboo, he who desires to possess it becomes a profaner." Romauld, who had spent his whole life training to be a priest, becomes an extreme example of a man petrified by guilt when he falls in love. He not only betrays himself, he betrays God. The fact that Clarimonde is also dead and a courtesan only heightens his feelings of remorse, but he feels powerless to change his situation.

Sexuality and Death
Throughout the story, material desire in intertwined with the threat of death. When Romauld first visits Clarimonde's castle after she has just died, he enters into her beautiful, perfumed tomb and sees her laying on her bed in a see-through dress. Romauld is taken with her beauty and imagines she is his bridesmaid, even though she is supposedly dead. The entire scene would seem to be leading up to a consummation of their marriage, and Romauld kisses her. Clarimonde awakens and announces that they are betrothed. Romauld immediately faints on top of her from shock, a kind of "feigned death" he experiences when his senses become too heightened: a kind of ecstasy that overwhelms his consciousness.

When Father Sérapion and Romauld go to dig up Clarimonde's grave, Sérapion pours holy water on Clarimonde's body and she turns to charred bones and dust. Romauld feels something die inside of him, and spends the rest of his days mourning his love for her. "The ultimate goal of the heroes’ desires, death, is also the final censor in Gautier’s stories, extracting the full price for desire expressed, whether or not that desire has been gratified."

 Edits//Brittany  Edits- Libby
 * for plot section: I think you did well giving a brief summary of the text, but I think you could make it even better by adding a little more detail; this could even be maybe: giving more background for how Romuald was building toward all his life to be a priest (would show more significance to him suddenly changing his mind when seeing Clairmonde), or how he realizes Clairmonde is a vampire, or more of his thoughts/feelings on his situation leading essentially a double life, or Serapion's constant warnings throughout the story especially each time he meets with Clairmonde.
 * for theme section: I like the themes you pointed out but, again, I would maybe elaborate more on the two ideas and make more use of the secondary source if that's what you're using for this section instead of just citing the one quote for each section.

Your plot summary looks good to me. It is clear and detailed. As for the themes section, having the quotes first is slightly awkward. You may want to introduce the theme and relevance first, and then add the quote for context, the connection between the quote and you commentary is a little confusing. I like the beginning sentence of Sexuality and Death, "Throughout the story, material desire in intertwined with the threat of death". The second sentence is a little redundant.