Description
Book SynopsisExamines the ambivalent role that pleasure plays in early modern English writers’ attempts to defend the utility of literature. Traces how that ambivalence gets replayed in modern critical frameworks as well as debates about the value of the humanities and liberal arts.
Trade Review"If the humanist defense of literature calls attention to the work of art, identifying aesthetic practice with the production of social value, then Corey McEleney's bold new book asks an indispensable question: Can art escape such coercive labor without making it escape the value it then labors to affirm? Identifying futility as the queer component in literary production, Futile Pleasures reimagines queer theory in relation to early modern thought. The result is a major work of criticism that contributes not only pleasurably, but also-we must admit it-valuably to debates in both of those fields." -- -Lee Edelman Tufts University
Table of ContentsFutilitarianism: An Introduction 1. Pleasure without Profit 2. Bonfire of the Vanities 3. Art for Nothing's Sake 4. Spenser's Unhappy Ends 5. Beyond Sublimation Coda: Less Matter, More Art Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index
