Description
Book SynopsisFlirtations: Rhetoric and Aesthetics This Side of Seduction, opens by asking a fundamental first question: What is flirtation, and how does it differ from seduction? The essays thereby address the under-theorized terrain of flirtation not as a subgenre of seduction but rather as a phenomenon in its own right.
Trade Review"Moving in a conceptual field characterized by levity, hint, diversion, intentional ambiguity, formal undecidability, and non-directed pleasure, flirtation serves as an alternative to strategies of seduction. As a model of engagement with people, objects, texts, or thoughts, it re-orients not only discourse on the erotic (in the broadest sense) and erotic practices (also in the broadest sense), but epistemological strategies. This beautifully executed volume brings the idea of flirtation to bear on wide-ranging, often delightfully unexpected materials, some well-known, some from the margins. Its authors are scholars dedicated to rigorous theoretical thought in conjunction with close literary reading, representing, to my mind, one of the most valuable traditions in the US humanities." -- -Silke-Maria Weineck University of Michigan "Flirtations makes an everyday practice and pleasure newly available to critical thought. Usually avoided as frivolous, lacking the disruptive grandeur of seduction or the power of the truly erotic, flirtation gets left aside as a minor social form. This volume, by turns deeply erudite and playful, effectively corrects this neglect. Many readers, no doubt, will share the temptation to show the authors the new etchings in their collections." -- -Martin Harries University of California, Irvine
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments "Almost Nothing; Almost Everything": An Introduction to the Discourse of Flirtation Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz, Barbara Natalie Nagel, Lauren Shizuko Stone Meta-Flirtations Interlude. Barely Covered Banter: Flirtation in Double Indemnity Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz The Art of Flirtation: Simmel's Coquetry without End Paul Fleming "The Double-Sense of 'the With'HS": Rethinking Relation after Simmel Daniel Hoffman-Schwartz Rhetoric's Flirtation with Literature, from Gorgias to Aristotle: The Epideictic Genre Rudiger Campe "A Plaything for Myself": Notes on the Self-Reference of Flirtation Arne Hocker Flirtation with the World Interlude: Staging Appeal, Performing Ambivalence Lauren Shizuko Stone Life Is a Flirtation: Thomas Mann's Felix Krull Elisabeth Strowick The "Irreducible Double-Stroke": Flirtation, Felicity, and Sincerity Lauren Shizuko Stone Frill and Flirtation: Femininity in the Public Space Barbara Vinken Learning to Flirt with Don Juan Christophe Kone Flirtation and Transgression Interlude: Three Terrors of Flirtation Barbara Natalie Nagel The Luxury of Self-Destruction: Flirting with Mimesis with Roger Caillois John Hamilton Wartime Love Affairs and Flirtation: Freud and Caillois on Identifying with Loss Sage Anderson Bestiality: Mediation More Ferarum Jacques Lezra Doing It as the Beasts Did: Intertextuality as Flirtation in Gradiva Barbara Natalie Nagel Notes List of Contributors Index
