Sublime Enjoyment

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 satisfaction--love, work, success--to make us happy, and from our refusal to accept that failure. 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.

List of contents

1. Introduction: the problem with pleasure; 2. The sublime community; 3. Re-Poe Man: Poe's un-American sublime; 4. Too resurgent: liquidity and consumption in Henry James; 5. Alphabetic pleasures: The Names; 6. J. G. Ballard's empire of the senses: perversion and the failure of authority; 7. Fatal West: W. S. Burrough's perverse destiny; 8. Conclusion: agency in the perverse; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

Summary

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. Examining the ways in which this inadvertence is represented in American literature and culture, Dennis Foster shows how longings are linked to social forces.

Product details

• Authors: Dennis A. Foster
• Assisted by: Albert Gelpi (Editor), Ross Posnock (Editor)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 23.01.2015
• EAN: 9780521584371
• ISBN: 978-0-521-58437-1
• No. of pages: 194
• Dimensions: 157 mm x 235 mm x 15 mm
• Weight: 440 g
• Series: Cambridge Studies in American
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies