Description
Book SynopsisA powerful critique of the revolutionary mentality and sexual aggression represented in the works of authors including D. H. Lawrence, Georges Bataille, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer.
Trade Review“
The Limits of Ferocity is a fascinating and essential book for the student of modernity. Daniel Fuchs identifies one of the key strands in modernist thought and cultural behavior in this authoritative, intellectually sophisticated treatment of modernist outrage at the repressions and civilized limits implied in Freud’s theory of the superego, and of the anti-bourgeois attempts of many modernists to go beyond all such boundaries and limits through utopian sexual transcendence. This is interdisciplinary cultural/historical critique at its best.”—
Gloria L. Cronin, author of
A Room of His Own: In Search of the Feminine in the Novels of Saul Bellow“An epic achievement,
The Limits of Ferocity is a significant contribution to the study of modern fiction and to psychoanalytic criticism. Daniel Fuchs yokes familiar writers and thinkers together in a new way, making us rethink their relationship.”—
Andrew Gordon, author of
An American Dreamer: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Fiction of Norman Mailer“At a time in which the American political environment could hardly be more extreme or polarized, Daniel Fuchs’s trenchant critique of modernist literary rebellion issues a resounding call for restored moderation, civility, and humanism in our cultural values and perspectives…. Sociological critique bows to Fuchs’s sensibility as a literary critic and his empathetic appreciation of the dynamic tensions of inner life as expressed by the literary imagination. That sensibility shines through in this supremely intelligent and humane book.” -- Barbara Schapiro * D.H. Lawrence Review *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
1. Freud and the Postwar Temper 11
2. Freud and Others on Aggression 24
3. Wilhelm Reich 40
4. Norman O. Brown 53
5. Deleuze and Guattari 67
Interchapter. Deleuze and Guattari on Lawrence and Miller 88
6. The Marquis de Sade 102
7. D. H. Lawrence 145
8. Georges Bataille 194
Interchapter. Bataille on Sade 224
9. Henry Miller 232
Interchapter. Miller on Lawrence 271
10. Norman Mailer 293
Interchapter. Mailer on Mailer 332
Conclusion. The Naked and the Clothed 346
Notes 363
Index 391
