Sublime Enjoyment: On the Perverse Motive in American Literature
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.
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Sublime Enjoyment: On the Perverse Motive in American Literature
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.
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Sublime Enjoyment: On the Perverse Motive in American Literature

Sublime Enjoyment: On the Perverse Motive in American Literature

by Dennis A. Foster
Sublime Enjoyment: On the Perverse Motive in American Literature

Sublime Enjoyment: On the Perverse Motive in American Literature

by Dennis A. Foster

Hardcover

$120.00 
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Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780521584371
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Publication date: 11/13/1997
Series: Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture , #112
Pages: 194
Product dimensions: 5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.55(d)

Table 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.
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