By Eugene Goodheart (NHC Fellow, 1987–88) Challenging the imperialism of desire in contemporary academic discourse Goodheart confronts a crucial strain of utopianism in modern thought and literature. This utopianism is the position of desire in modern culture. Goodheart argues that the classic moderns (Proust, Durkheim, Mann, and Lawrence) appreciated desire for its potential to liberate … Continued
By Patricia Meyer Spacks (Trustee; NHC Fellow, 1982–83; 1988–89) Desire and Truth offers a major reassessment of the history of eighteenth-century fiction by showing how plot challenges or reinforces conventional categories of passion and rationality. Arguing that fiction creates and conveys its essential truths through plot, Patricia Meyer Spacks demonstrates that eighteenth-century fiction is both profoundly … Continued
By Linda S. Kauffman (NHC Fellow, 1983–84) Kauffman looks at a neglected genre–the love letter written by literary heroines. Tracing the development of the genre from Ovid to the twentieth-century novel, she explores the important implications of these amatory discourses for an understanding of fictive representation in general.
By Jean H. Hagstrum (NHC Fellow, 1985–86; 1986–87) A magisterial book by one of our most distinguished literary historians, Esteem Enlivened by Desire illuminates (and celebrates) the ideal of lasting love from antiquity to the high Renaissance. Love that leads to marriage is a relatively recent "invention," or so critics and historians often say. But in this … Continued
By Toril Moi (NHC Fellow, 1994–95)
By Toril Moi (NHC Fellow, 1994–95) What is a woman? And what does it mean to be a feminist today? In her first full-scale engagement with feminist theory since her internationally renowned Sexual/Textual Politics (1985), Toril Moi challenges the dominant trends in contemporary feminist and cultural thought, arguing for a feminism of freedom inspired by Simone de … Continued