In "Sex, Lies, and Autobiography" James O'Rourke explores the
relationships between literary form and ethics, revealing how
autobiographical texts are able to confront readers with the moral
complexities of everyday life. Tracing the ethical legacy of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau's "Confessions" in a series of
English-language texts, the author shows how Rousseau's doubts
about the possibility of ethical behavior in everyday life shadows
the first-person narratives of five canonic works: William
Wordsworth's "Prelude, "Charlotte Bronte's "Jane Eyre" and
"Villette, "Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein, "and Vladimir Nabokov's
"Lolita." Offering a fascinating new way of thinking about ethics
through literature, Sex, Lies, and Autobiography challenges the
most fundamental principles of the philosophical study of ethics,
revealing the innate difference between morality in life and
morality in literature.
O'Rourke begins with Rousseau's inability to reconcile his
intuitive belief that he is a good person with the effects that his
actions have on others, and he goes on to show how this same
ethical impasse recurs in the five aforementioned texts. The
ethical crises these texts describe, such as when Jane Eyre's
happiness can be purchased only at the cost of Bertha Mason's
suicide, or when Humbert Humbert's artistry demands the sacrifice
of Dolores Haze, are not instances of authorial ethical blindness,
O'Rourke says, but rather are ethical challenges that force us as
readers to consider our own lives. In each of these works, a
narrator attempts to justify his or her behavior and fails; in each
case, the rigorous narrative of self-examination demands a similar
effort from the reader, whose own sense of moral rectitude is put
into question.
Confronting the long-held philosophical construction that links
ethical principles and life choices, thereby reassuring us of the
ethical coherence of everyday life, the narrators of these literary
autobiographies come to a very different conclusion; by looking
back on their lives, they cannot understand how their most
benevolent desires led to such damaging life stories. By leaving
meaning inexplicit, O'Rourke argues, these texts are able to
recover traumatic material that is ordinarily repressed and then
bring that repressed knowledge to bear on self-justifying
narratives.
For readers interested in autobiographical studies, ethical
criticism, and trauma and literary studies, "Sex, Lies, and
Autobiography" provides a groundbreaking analysis of the role of
ethics in literature.
General
Imprint: |
University of Virginia Press
|
Country of origin: |
United States |
Release date: |
February 2006 |
First published: |
February 2006 |
Authors: |
James ORourke
|
Dimensions: |
229 x 152 x 24mm (L x W x T) |
Format: |
Hardcover
|
Pages: |
208 |
ISBN-13: |
978-0-8139-2512-7 |
Categories: |
Books
|
LSN: |
0-8139-2512-6 |
Barcode: |
9780813925127 |
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