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 object of 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 in which longings are linked to social forces.
| ISBN: | 9780521584371 |
| Publication date: | 3rd May 1998 |
| Author: | Dennis A Foster |
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press |
| Format: | Hardback |
| Pagination: | 208 pages |
| Series: | Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture |
| Genres: |
Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000 |
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 object of 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 in which longings are linked to social forces.
Sublime Enjoyment features in the following genres: Literary studies: c 1900 to c 2000
Sublime Enjoyment is available in Hardback
Sublime Enjoyment was written by Dennis A Foster and published by Cambridge University Press
Sublime Enjoyment has 208 pages
Yes it is part of Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture series
£85.50