Sublime enjoyment : on the perverse motive in American literature / Dennis A. Foster.

By:

Foster, Dennis A

Material type: Text

TextSeries: Cambridge studies in American literature and culturePublication details: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1997.Description: 1 online resource (viii, 180 pages)Content type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

0511005105
9780511005107

Subject(s):

Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Sublime enjoyment.DDC classification:

810.9/353 21

LOC classification:

PS169.S84 F67 1997eb

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

Introduction: the problem with pleasure -- The sublime community -- Re-Poe man: Poe's un-american sublime -- "Too resurgent": liquidity and consumption in Henry James -- Alphabetic pleasures: the names -- J.G. Ballard's Empire of the senses: perversion and the failure of authority -- Fatal west: W.S. Burrough's perverse destiny -- Conclusion: agency in the perverse.

Review: "Linking classic American literature to contemporary popular culture, Sublime Enjoyment argues that the rational systems of normal social life are motivated and sustained by "perverse" desires. This perversity arises from the failure of symbolic satisfactions - love, work, success - to make us happy, and from our refusal to accept that failure. Hoping to achieve satisfaction, we respond ultimately to situations that evoke older, more primary drives and their attendant emotions. But while a conventional pervert knows exactly what to want, the healthy pervert must find enjoyment inadvertently: in the abject or the sublime, in duty and reason, and in the obligations of a "fun morality." Examining the ways in which this inadvertence is represented in American literature and culture, Dennis Foster identifies ways that longings are linked to social forces."--Jacket.

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Includes bibliographical references (pages 171-176) and index.

"Linking classic American literature to contemporary popular culture, Sublime Enjoyment argues that the rational systems of normal social life are motivated and sustained by "perverse" desires. This perversity arises from the failure of symbolic satisfactions - love, work, success - to make us happy, and from our refusal to accept that failure. Hoping to achieve satisfaction, we respond ultimately to situations that evoke older, more primary drives and their attendant emotions. But while a conventional pervert knows exactly what to want, the healthy pervert must find enjoyment inadvertently: in the abject or the sublime, in duty and reason, and in the obligations of a "fun morality." Examining the ways in which this inadvertence is represented in American literature and culture, Dennis Foster identifies ways that longings are linked to social forces."--Jacket.