Teresa, My Love - by Julia Kristeva

About the Book

Mixing fiction, history, psychoanalysis, and personal fantasy, Teresa, My Love follows Sylvia Leclercq, a French psychoanalyst, academic, and incurable insomniac, as she falls for the sixteenth-century Saint Teresa of Avila and becomes consumed with charting her life.

Book Synopsis

Mixing fiction, history, psychoanalysis, and personal fantasy, Teresa, My Love turns a past world into a modern marvel, following Sylvia Leclercq, a French psychoanalyst, academic, and incurable insomniac, as she falls for the sixteenth-century Saint Teresa of Avila and becomes consumed with charting her life. Traveling to Spain, Leclercq, Julia Kristeva's probing alter ego, visits the sites and embodiments of the famous mystic and awakens to her own desire for faith, connection, and rebellion.

One of Kristeva's most passionate and transporting works, Teresa, My Love interchanges biography, autobiography, analysis, dramatic dialogue, musical scores, and images of paintings and sculpture to engage the reader in Leclercq's--and Kristeva's--journey. Born in 1515, Teresa of Avila outwitted the Spanish Inquisition and was a key reformer of the Carmelite Order. Her experience of ecstasy, which she intimately described in her writings, released her from her body and led to a complete realization of her consciousness, a state Kristeva explores in relation to present-day political failures, religious fundamentalism, and cultural malaise. Incorporating notes from her own psychoanalytic practice, as well as literary and philosophical references, Kristeva builds a fascinating dual diagnosis of contemporary society and the individual psyche while sharing unprecedented insights into her own character.

Review Quotes

Teresa, My Love is written with force, drive, and a verbal agility that carries the reader off and turns the book into a page-turner.--Verena Conley, Harvard University

Clearly documents the undeniable literary talent of author Julia Kristeva... a compelling and entertaining read that lingers in the mind long after the novel itself is finished... an extraordinary literary accomplishment-- "Midwest Book review"

Julia Kristeva's psychoanalytic investigation of love leads her to the extraordinary case of Teresa of Avila, and to the 'inoperable' rapport of desire and the need to believe. Kristeva remains faithful to psychoanalysis and to non-belief while offering this thoroughly engaging 'imagined life' of Saint Teresa. It is of the greatest pertinence in a world that seems to have revived the need to believe in aggressive forms.--Peter Brooks, Princeton University

About the Author

Julia Kristeva is professor emerita of linguistics at the Université de Paris VII. A renowned psychoanalyst, philosopher, and linguist, she has written dozens of books spanning semiotics, political theory, literary criticism, gender and sex, and cultural critique, as well as several novels and autobiographical works, published in English translation by Columbia University Press. Kristeva was the inaugural recipient of the Holberg International Memorial Prize in 2004 "for innovative explorations of questions on the intersection of language, culture, and literature."