The Entrapments of Form: Cruelty and Modern Literature
Catherine Toal
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Description for The Entrapments of Form: Cruelty and Modern Literature
Hardback. This book describes the narrative form of cruelty in modern literature. It focuses on the two main literary traditions that carry the legacy of revolutionary upheaval in modernity, the French and the American, and shows the transfers of influence that create the contemporary outline of the concept. Num Pages: 184 pages. BIC Classification: DS. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 3887 x 5817 x 18. Weight in Grams: 408.
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 ... Read more
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 ... Read more
Product Details
Format
Hardback
Publication date
2016
Publisher
Fordham University Press United States
Number of pages
184
Condition
New
Number of Pages
184
Place of Publication
New York, United States
ISBN
9780823269341
SKU
V9780823269341
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 15 to 20 working days
Ref
99-15
About Catherine Toal
Catherine Toal is Professor of Literature and Dean of the College at Bard College Berlin, Germany.
Reviews for The Entrapments of Form: Cruelty and Modern Literature
"This is a bracing book, a powerful argument on a topic of real import, written with unusual elegance and panache."
-Amanda Claybaugh Harvard University
-Amanda Claybaugh Harvard University