In this Book
- The Entrapments of Form: Cruelty and Modern Literature
- Book
- 2016
- Published by: Fordham University Press
summary
Arguing that cruelty acquires a new meaning in modernity, The Entrapments of Form follows its evolution through exchanges between French and American literature over the contradictions of Enlightenment (slavery, genocide, libertine aristocratic privilege). Catherine Toal traces Edgar Allan Poe's influence on the Sadean legacy, Melville's fictional dramatization of Tocqueville, and Henry James's response to the aesthetic of his French contemporaries, including Flaubert. The result is not simply a work that provides close readings of key literary texts of the nineteenth century-Benito Cereno, The Turn of the Screw, Maldoror-but one that shows how in this era cruelty develops a specific narrative structure, one that is confirmed by the manner of its negation in twentieth-century philosophy. The final chapters address this shift: the postwar French reception of Sade and the relationship between American cultural theory and the rhetoric of the so-called war on terror.
Table of Contents
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- Title Page, Copyright
- pp. i-iv
- 1. The Forms of the Perverse
- pp. 18-42
- 3. Murder and “Point of View”
- pp. 66-93
- 5. American Cruelty
- pp. 115-136
- Acknowledgments
- pp. 137-138
Additional Information
ISBN
9780823269389
Related ISBN(s)
9780823269341
MARC Record
OCLC
945611128
Pages
184
Launched on MUSE
2016-04-08
Language
English
Open Access
No