SOURCE: “The Banquet Scene in ‘Moderato Cantabile’: A Stylistic Analysis,” in Romanic Review, Vol. LXIX, No. 3, May, 1978, pp. 222-35.

In the following essay, Bishop contrasts Duras's style in the banquet scene in Moderato cantabile with her style in the rest of the novella, contending that all of the book's themes are contained in the banquet passage.

In an earlier study of Moderato Cantabile we analysed the banquet scene rather briefly from the point of view of neo-classical principles of composition that inform the entire novel.¹ But the scene deserves to be studied in detail for the brilliant stylistic effects that are attempted and achieved. In this single chapter Duras has distilled all of the novel's significance, summarizing all that has preceded and foreshadowing what will follow as well as presenting a memorable—although muted—moment of crisis and anagnorisis.

Until this chapter, which is the next-to-last, the novel's...