The Entrapments of Form: Cruelty and Modern Literature (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780823269358)

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, Les Chants de 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.

Author: Catherine Toal
ISBN-10: 0823269353
ISBN-13: 9780823269358
Publisher: Modern Language Initiative
Language: English
Published: 03/01/2016
Pages: 184
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.60lbs
Size: 8.90h x 6.10w x 0.60d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2016