Description
Book SynopsisExploring a variety of everyday human longings as they arise in modernist fiction, this book poses a direct challenge to psychoanalytic criticism that characterises desire as sexual or powerful in nature. Using continental philosophy as its framework, it contends that human longings are as endless in kind as they are in manifestation.
Trade ReviewSara Crangle's inventive book shifts our attention from great desires to the little desires of everyday life, such as the desire to laugh, to be relieved of boredom or to be freed of desire altogether. It is these low-key, "prosaic desires," Crangle argues, that galvanize the modernist imagination. Making ingenious use of Levinas's ethical thought, Crangle combines theoretical insight with sinuous close reading in this scintillating contribution to modernist studies. -- Maud Ellmann, Randy L. and Melvin R. Berlin Professor of the Development of the Novel in English, University of Chicago In this penetrating new study, Sara Crangle argues persuasively that the crisis-driven aesthetics of literary modernism persistently grounded its unfulfilled longings in the "small urgent feelings of the everyday". Boredom, laughter, anxious anticipation - these constitute the surprisingly "prosaic" emotional register that governed the modernists' radical experiments with literary form. -- Peter Nicholls, Professor of English, New York University Sara Crangle's inventive book shifts our attention from great desires to the little desires of everyday life, such as the desire to laugh, to be relieved of boredom or to be freed of desire altogether. It is these low-key, "prosaic desires," Crangle argues, that galvanize the modernist imagination. Making ingenious use of Levinas's ethical thought, Crangle combines theoretical insight with sinuous close reading in this scintillating contribution to modernist studies. In this penetrating new study, Sara Crangle argues persuasively that the crisis-driven aesthetics of literary modernism persistently grounded its unfulfilled longings in the "small urgent feelings of the everyday". Boredom, laughter, anxious anticipation - these constitute the surprisingly "prosaic" emotional register that governed the modernists' radical experiments with literary form.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Mortal Self, Infinite Longings; 1. Dying To Know; 2. Haunted By Boredom; 3. Inclining Towards Laughter; 4. In The Meantime; Conclusion: Endlessnessnessness; Notes; Bibliography; Index.
