States of Desire - Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and the Irish Experiment (Paperback)

States of Desire argues that what people desire is fundamentally connected to how they write and read. Not only do language and narrative shape desire (and vice versa), but because these processes are socially conditioned, some political circumstances, such as those present in Ireland at the turn of the century, foster experimental desire more successfully than others. Mahaffey's contribution to the critical discourse on literary modernism is to assign a political motive to the art of modernist wordplay; in doing so, she offers a more compelling and socially driven version of the oft-told tale of literary modernism. Irish writers, she argues, sought to disrupt the rigidity of political thinking and social control by turning language into a weapon; by opening up infinite new possibilities of meaning and association, linguistic play makes it impossible for thought to be monopolized by the state or any other institutional power. In this light, the text becomes a prism of political, cultural, and erotic desires: a fountain of conscious and unconscious linguistic suggestion. Defying semantic control and refuting societal repression, Wilde, Yeats, and Joyce literally fought, in their lives and in their work, for a freedom of expression which-as was painfully evidenced in the case of Wilde-was not to be had for the asking.

General

Imprint:	Oxford UniversityPress
Country of origin:	United States
Release date:	June 2017
Authors:	Vicki Mahaffey (Professor of English)
Dimensions:	234 x 167 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	298
ISBN-13:	978-0-19-062398-2
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > From 1900
LSN:	0-19-062398-5
Barcode:	9780190623982

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!