The Poetics of Tenderness

On Falling in Love

Fiction & Literature, Literary Theory & Criticism
Cover of the book The Poetics of Tenderness by Robert Cantwell, Lexington Books
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Robert Cantwell ISBN: 9781498548342
Publisher: Lexington Books Publication: December 13, 2017
Imprint: Lexington Books Language: English
Author: Robert Cantwell
ISBN: 9781498548342
Publisher: Lexington Books
Publication: December 13, 2017
Imprint: Lexington Books
Language: English

The Poetics of Tendernessa literary-critical essay on love, grounded in the developmental theory of the British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott and shaped by recent work on the neurobiology and anthropology of love. Itmaintains that sexual love is not merely an artifact or “invention” of culture, but a vital manifestation of the culture-making power itself. Calling upon Andreus Capellanus, Plato, Schopenhauer, Freud, William James, Hardy, Dreiser and Fitzgerald, D.H. Lawrence and Tom Stoppard, among others, the book’s aim is to turn the discussion of sexuality around--to substitute for ideas and figures of violence and predation which have dominated our sexual imaginary for more than four decades much older and more durable associations of sex and love with care, affection, beauty, memory, worthiness, and ideality. It argues for a resurrection of tenderness, and holds out the possibility that even where anything goes love may yet be a source of sweetness and light, that mutual respect, equity, justice and decency in the spheres of sex and love will more likely flow from compassion and sympathy than from anger, fear, suspicion, mistrust, resentment, and bitterness.
Close readings of two widely read novels, Dickens’ Great Expectations and Nabokov’s Lolita, preside over the discussion, exploring these authors’ distinctively detailed and probing accounts of love’s unfolding in particular social, cultural, historical and psychological settings.Both novels proceed from deep within the authors’ interior life; both novels release love from its normally deep entanglements with intimacy and isolation, compatibility and incompatibility, social place and social possibility, inspiring in their narrators a prolonged introspective inquiry into an all-consuming preoccupation which ultimately restores them to the moral order.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

The Poetics of Tendernessa literary-critical essay on love, grounded in the developmental theory of the British psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott and shaped by recent work on the neurobiology and anthropology of love. Itmaintains that sexual love is not merely an artifact or “invention” of culture, but a vital manifestation of the culture-making power itself. Calling upon Andreus Capellanus, Plato, Schopenhauer, Freud, William James, Hardy, Dreiser and Fitzgerald, D.H. Lawrence and Tom Stoppard, among others, the book’s aim is to turn the discussion of sexuality around--to substitute for ideas and figures of violence and predation which have dominated our sexual imaginary for more than four decades much older and more durable associations of sex and love with care, affection, beauty, memory, worthiness, and ideality. It argues for a resurrection of tenderness, and holds out the possibility that even where anything goes love may yet be a source of sweetness and light, that mutual respect, equity, justice and decency in the spheres of sex and love will more likely flow from compassion and sympathy than from anger, fear, suspicion, mistrust, resentment, and bitterness.
Close readings of two widely read novels, Dickens’ Great Expectations and Nabokov’s Lolita, preside over the discussion, exploring these authors’ distinctively detailed and probing accounts of love’s unfolding in particular social, cultural, historical and psychological settings.Both novels proceed from deep within the authors’ interior life; both novels release love from its normally deep entanglements with intimacy and isolation, compatibility and incompatibility, social place and social possibility, inspiring in their narrators a prolonged introspective inquiry into an all-consuming preoccupation which ultimately restores them to the moral order.

More books from Lexington Books

Cover of the book Solidarity by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Racism, Latinos, and the Public Policy Process by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Acceleration of History by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Letting the Other Speak by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Building a Social Democracy by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Japan's Siberian Intervention, 1918–1922 by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Performance on Behalf of the Environment by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Early Modern Skepticism and the Origins of Toleration by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Higher Education by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Celebrity Media Effects by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book The Burden of Academic Success by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Afrofuturism 2.0 by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book James Friedrich and Cathedral Films by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics by Robert Cantwell
Cover of the book Higher Education and Equality of Opportunity by Robert Cantwell
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy